The European Divide: Composition, Returns, and the Divergence of Attitudes Toward Immigrant Acceptance, 2002–2020

European attitudes toward immigrants moved in strikingly different directions over the two decades from 2002 to 2020. Northern and Western Europe liberalized modestly, Southern Europe opened markedly, and Eastern Europe became more closed. Drawing on European Social Survey data from over 300,000 respondents in 18 countries, this paper asks why. The answer is counter-intuitive. The divergence is not, in the main, a story about changing populations. European populations became more educated and demographically shifted in ways usually thought to encourage openness. A decomposition analysis shows that in Eastern Europe these compositional changes would on their own have produced modest liberalization—yet the observed trend went the other way. Nor is the divergence explained by individual characteristics such as education or political orientation operating differently in different regions; this once-popular argument does not survive rigorous statistical testing, with one exception: the left–right ideological divide on immigration is genuinely weaker in post-socialist Eastern Europe. What is changing instead is the broader social and political context within which attitudes form. Future research should focus on the specific economic, political, and institutional conditions that shape how individual characteristics translate into attitudes.