Panel 'Electorate’s attitudes towards immigration in Europe: individual and contextual determinants' Immigration is an increasingly politicised issue across Western European countries. While theories of modernisation would suggest that individuals, and particularly those from younger generations, should be increasingly more tolerant and open-minded, experiences such as economic crisis and difficulties finding employment may lead individuals to have more negative views of immigration and immigrants. This paper focuses on exploring the nature and extent of generational differences in attitudes to immigration and diversity across Western Europe. It also analyses trends in such attitudes and the extent and nature of age-group differences across time to examine the extent to which socialisation experiences of different generations can be seen to explain differences in attitudes. We also examine cross-national differences in the above patterns to shed light on whether divergent contexts, rates and histories of immigration have an impact on the distribution of individual-level preferences.
