Professor Tom Turner, Department of Work and Employment Studies, University of Limerick.

Ireland is relatively unique in a European context in the absence of an established right-wing populist party with anti-immigrant policies and representation in the national parliament (the Dáil) despite having a sizeable immigrant population with a greater number of immigrants per 1000 inhabitants than traditional countries of immigration like Germany, France and Sweden (Eurostat, 2021).In the absence of a credible anti-immigrant party, opponents of immigration may be more likely to focus their ire on the democratic system itself. Clearly there is opposition to the influx of immigrants into the country in recent years as demonstrated by various local protests nationally against temporary shelters for asylum seekers and the violent anti-immigrant riot in Dublin city on November 23^rd, 2023 (Carroll, 2023). Using two pooled rounds of the European Social Survey in 2012 and 2020 this paper explores whether opposition to immigration spills over into weaker attachment to democracy itself.

Opposition to immigration and democratic sentiment

Central to the ideology of right-wing populism is the notion of nativism a xenophobic form of nationalism which holds that states should be occupied only by members of the native group or nation while non-native elements represent a threat to the homogenous nation-state (Mudde, 2007). A central platform for nativists is the curtailment and control of immigration flows and in the Irish context is reflected in the slogans of the nascent far-right Irish Freedom Party such as ‘Ireland is full’ and ‘Ireland for the Irish’.  Nativism and opposition to immigration are commonly attributed to a perceived economic and cultural threat to native people (Schlueter & Scheepers, 2010; Gu et al., 2022). Historically governments in Ireland have broadly supported the inclusion and integration of immigrants into the country since the commencement of immigration (Privalko et al, 2025; McGinnity et al, 2020; Gilmartin & Dagg, 2021). All the established political parties in Ireland generally subscribe to policies to promote the integration of immigrants into Irish society.

Given the surge in the number of immigrants in Ireland since the beginning of the 21^st century, nativists who favour a more restrictive policy on immigration are likely to blame established political parties and politicians for liberal immigration policies. Beliefs about immigration as a source of economic loss and cultural threat are likely to have political consequences. Opponents of immigration may be more likely to trade democratic norms, such as rights for minority groups, for non-democratic alternatives, where immigrants are excluded from the social and economic entitlements of native citizens (Buyuker & Filindra, 2020). Hence, we assess whether opponents of immigration are more likely to display lower levels of support for a liberal democracy compared to citizens with more liberal views of immigration.

Attitudes to immigrants and democracy

 Opponents of immigration scored significantly lower on the importance of free and fair elections, a critical media, protection of minorities and the importance of living in a democracy (see table).  These respondents also displayed significantly stronger authoritarian tendencies, being more likely to accept a strong leader above the law compared to those with more liberal attitudes towards immigrants. These differences are hierarchically ordered across the three categories with those in favour of allowing many significantly higher than other categories and those allowing some/few significantly higher than opponents of immigration.

Attitudes to immigrants¹ and attachment to liberal democracy

	Allow many   immigrants	Allow some/few	Allow no immigrants
Core principles of liberal Democracy2	% above midpoint 2	% above midpoint	% above midpoint
Free and fair elections are important for democracy	95	90	85
A media free to criticise is important for democracy	93	88	81
Protection of minorities is important for democracy	95	87	74
Important to live in a democracy	93	90	87
Strong leader above law acceptable3	12	29	49

¹Identifying who the opponents of immigration are derived by combining two items that gauge the extent to which respondents agree with allowing: (i) immigrants of the same race or ethnic group as the majority of Irish natives, to come and live in Ireland (ii) immigrants of a different ethnic group from the majority of Irish natives, to come and live in Ireland. Three possible responses are: Allow many to come and live here; Allow some\few; Allow none.

² Above the midpoint refers to respondents who score between 6 and 10. However respondents who score a 6 or 7 on the range can  be categorised as moderate supporters of democracy at best, while a score of 9 to 10 would indicate strong support for liberal democracy.

³Scored: 0=not important to 10=very important.

Source: ESS pooled round 6 (2012) and 10 (2020).

Consequently, opposition to immigration appears to be consistently associated with a weaker commitment to democracy. Our results provide substantial support for the proposition that opponents of immigration are more likely to display lower levels of support for the legitimacy of democracy as a political system compared to citizens with more liberal views of immigration. These results remain statistically significant using multivariate analysis with controls for economic disadvantage, unemployment, gender, age, educational level and political orientation.

Discussion

Using Ireland as a case study we explored whether opposition to immigration is associated with lower levels of attachment to a democratic regime. Our theoretical argument for these relationships ascribed them to tension between the distribution of scarce resources and the integration of immigrants favoured by the political establishment. Opponents of immigration tend to believe that the influx of immigrants into the country brings both economic and cultural costs with a redistribution of scarce material goods away from Irish nationals. These opponents are more likely to suffer economic and social disadvantage and adopt a nativist position that favours the exclusion of outsiders from any share in such goods. Yet, successive governments and the political establishment generally have promoted and supported inclusionary policies aimed at the integration of immigrants into Irish society. For many opponents of immigration these policies represent the abandonment of the true native Irish and we argued were likely to spill over into negative views of democracy itself. Our results broadly support this proposition and indicate that extreme anti-immigrant attitudes if politicised have the potential to erode the democratic public sphere.

A crucial question is whether restrictive beliefs about immigration and the accompanying political disenchantment present the conditions for the emergence of a populist-type party that would challenge the extant political establishment. The substantial and prolonged economic shock associated with the financial crisis in 2008 appeared to provide the ideal conditions to facilitate the emergence of a populist party with considerable electoral support as occurred in many European countries. Yet, the only established right-wing populist type party, the Irish Freedom Party, launched in 2018, failed to win any elected seats in Dail Eireann in the 2020 national election receiving less than one per cent of the vote. However, in the Local and European elections in June 2024 right-wing populist-type parties won a number of council seats for the first time with a combined vote of 1.7 per cent in the local elections and 4.9 per cent in the European elections excluding like-minded independents which could have greatly increased the populist vote. Even so, these modest increases in the populist vote failed to translate into any parliamentary seats in the last general election in November 2024.

Nevertheless, the growth in support and visibility of populist-type parties with anti-immigration policies in recent elections may act as a signal for many voters that perceived political norms have shifted to ‘make anti-immigrant views less stigmatised’ and more legitimate and acceptable (Valentim (2021). In this scenario a growth in the vote for parties with anti-immigrant policies seems likely in future elections. An important issue is whether increased support for parties with anti-immigration policies will be accompanied by a weaker attachment to the core institutions of a liberal democracy. To ensure that immigration does not become a corrosive political issue at local and national level in Ireland is likely to be a central and challenging task for established political parties and the legislature.

References

Buyuker, B., & Filindra, A. (2020.  Democracy and “the Other”: Anti-Immigrant attitudes and white support for anti-Democratic norms. Available at SSRN:  http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3585387

Carroll, R. (2023). Government is not listening: anger over immigration spills into riot on Dublin’s streets. The Guardian Newspaper, November 24^th. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/nov/24/anger-immigration-riot-dublin-ireland

Eurostat (2021). Migration and migrant population statistics https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php?title=Migration_and_migrant_population_statistics:

Gilmartin, M. and Dagg, J. (2021). Integration as making place, Journal of Immigrant & Refugee Studies, 21(3),  pp.276–290.

Gu, Y., Zhang, X., & Lin, Z. (2022). Factors affecting attitudes toward migrants: An international comparative study. Chin. Polit. Sci. Rev. 7(2), pp.234–258. 

McGinnity, F., Enright, S., Quinn, E., Maître, B., Privalko, I., Darmody, M., & Polakowski, M. (2020). Monitoring report on integration 2020. ESRI/Department of Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth.

Mudde, C. (2007). Populist radical right parties in Europe. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Privalko, I., McGinnity, F., Curristan, S., & Enright, S. (2025). How do migrants fare in the Irish labour market? Country of origin, gender, asylum and ethnicity effects. Journal of Immigrant & Refugee Studies, 23(2), pp.268-291.

Schlueter, E., & Scheepers, P. (2010). The relationship between outgroup size and anti-outgroup attitudes: A theoretical synthesis and empirical test of group threat-and intergroup contact theory.  Social Science Research, 39(2), pp.285-295.

Valentim, V. (2021). Parliamentary representation and the normalization of radical right support. Comparative Political Studies, 54(14), pp.2475-2511. 

This blog post draws on Tom’s recently published article in Irish Political Studies, ‘Opponents of Immigration in Ireland: a threat to the democratic sphere?’ (available here).