Testing the backlash argument: voter responses to (pro-)immigration reforms

Do significant pro-immigration reforms – that open legal pathways for labor and family immigration – increase populist voting? Despite the common assumption that such reforms would lead to counter-productive voter backlash informed by the literature on immigrant group threat, the extent to which immigration policy itself influences voters has been unclear. To address this question, this paper estimates the impact of immigration policies on (right-wing) populist voting and immigration attitudes by exploiting the timing of major changes to immigration legislation in a new dataset linking the best available public opinion and policy data across the last 40 years in 24 European countries. My analysis shows that while the <i>absolute levels</i> of immigration policy openness are associated with slightly higher populist voting across countries in a naive cross-sectional analysis, pro-immigration (or anti-immigration) policy <i>changes</i> do not affect populist voting or immigration concerns within countries. This suggests that pro-immigration reforms do not backfire due to voter backlash.