What Impacts Does Immigration Have on Support for Increasingly Right-Wing Ideology?

How do perceptions of immigration influence support for right-wing ideology? In the current literature, political scientists propose a relationship between immigration and the expansion of immigration policies. Scholars, particularly in Europe are interested in examining the connection between immigration and the rise of right-wing ideologies in increasingly diverse communities. These two variables appear to be inversely related. As immigration increases, support for left-wing ideologies tends to decline in European societies. Recently, right wing ideology has led to mistrust in society, particularly towards immigrants who are blamed for societal problems and used as a scapegoat for many economic problems. Thus, voters have tended to lean toward the right, expressing a desire for more restrictive immigration policies. In this paper, I argue that immigration in the 21st century, driven by factors such as civil rights, safety concerns and asylum seekers has contributed to the spread of right-wing ideologies among voters in Europe. To test this hypothesis, I analyzed data from the European Parliament Election Study from 2024 using logistic regression. The findings suggest that individuals who favor stricter immigration policies tend to position themselves further to the right on the political spectrum. This means that shifting from support for more restrictive policies to less restrictive ones reduce the odds (or decreases the likelihood) of identifying with the ideological right.