Immigration Attitudes: Labour elites versus the white working class

Last time, I noted that the white working class in the UK are about 37-46 percentage points more likely to want immigration reduced than young graduates. Here I compare the immigration attitudes of the white working class (defined the same way as before) to those of "Labour elites"––individuals with a university degree who support the Labour Party. Data are again from the 2013 wave of the British Social Attitudes survey.

The first chart plots the distributions of responses to the question, "Do you think the number of migrants to Britain nowadays should change?" The second chart plots the distributions of responses to the question, "Would you say it is generally bad or good for Britain's economy that migrants come to Britain from other countries?" And the third chart plots the distributions of responses to the question, "Would you say that Britain's cultural life is generally undermined or enriched by migrants coming to live here from other countries?"

Perhaps unsurprisingly, in all three cases there is a vast difference in attitudes between the white working class and Labour elites; the former have a substantially less favourable view of the economic and cultural effects of immigration than the latter.