Geographies of EU dissatisfaction: Does spatial segregation between natives and migrants erode the EU project?

ABSTRACTThis article examines whether the spatial segregation of immigrant groups conditions the relationship between the share of migrants and attitudes towards EU integration. Do varying degrees of clustering of migrants in space diminish, mitigate or exacerbate the effect of immigration on EU attitudes? We combine data from the European Social Survey with fine-grain spatial segregation measures captured by the D4I project across four European Union countries. We find that those who live in regions with a greater share of migrants from Eastern Europe have more positive attitudes towards the EU but that this positive influence diminishes in highly segregated areas. The analysis also shows that the effect is primarily driven by the working class. Our findings have important implications as they show that the joint consideration of both the levels and the distribution of migrants in space is crucial to understanding the relationship between immigration and attitudes towards the EU.KEYWORDS: EU integrationimmigrationspatial segregationsocial classEastern Europe AcknowledgmentsWe want to thank the anonymous reviewers for their useful insights. We also want to thank Dominik Schraff, Sofia Vasilopoulou, Mads Dagnis Jensen and Anders Ejrnæs for their comments and suggestions, as well as all attendees on the workshop ‘Regional Inequality and Political Discontent in Europe’, which took place in Copenhagen on 13-14 October 2022.Disclosure statementNo potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).Notes1 If we use Bayesian multi-level models, the findings are consistent.2 Including fixed effects for countries, in lieu of random intercepts, had no substantive effect on the findings.3 If we add other regional-level control variables, such as population density and unemployment (see Table C.2), or if we run the models with country FEs, results remain robust.Additional informationFundingThis research was funded, in part, by the “la Caixa” Foundation, under Grant HR19-00336.Notes on contributorsToni RodonToni Rodon is Assistant Professor of Political Science at the Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Catalonia, Spain.Jonathan KentJonathan Kent is an academic guest in the Social Networks Lab at ETH Zürich, Switzerland.