Highlighting Immigrants' Worth Alters Public Views

A study conducted during the 2024 French elections finds that information about immigrants' efforts to overcome poverty and learn French reduces negative beliefs about immigration and modestly decreases opposition to immigration among voters. Amine Sijilmassi and colleagues conducted three studies in France examining whether emphasizing "deservingness" cues—such as immigrants' motivation to work, efforts to learn French, job-seeking behavior, and children's upward mobility—could reduce anti-immigration attitudes. In one study, 480 participants rated fictional immigrant profiles more favorably when the profiles exhibited deservingness traits. Additional longitudinal studies were conducted around the European Parliament elections (1,506 participants) and French parliamentary elections (1,255 participants). Participants who received accurate information correcting misperceptions about immigrants' deservingness showed substantial reductions in negative beliefs, with probabilities of endorsing misperceptions dropping by 20–38 percentage points. The intervention also produced modest but significant reductions in opposition to immigration, corresponding to a 3–5% reduction on the attitude scale. Effects on voting behavior were small and inconsistent across analyses. The effects on beliefs persisted one week after the intervention. According to the authors, these findings suggest that communication strategies emphasizing immigrants' efforts to cooperate with the host society represent a promising approach to reducing anti-immigration bias, particularly because the effects were consistent across political ideologies.