Immigration policy congruence and political trust: a cross-national analysis among 23 European countries

This study examines how immigration policy impacts citizens’ trust in politicians and political institutions. The article argues that immigration policy affects political trust through policy congruence. More specifically, it claims that the level of restrictiveness of immigration policy impacts political trust heterogeneously, conditional on whether citizens are anti- or pro-immigration and additionally on how strongly citizens are seeking information about political issues, the latter making it potentially easier for them to identify policy (in-)congruencies. Combining country-level data on immigration policy outputs in European countries with individual-level data to complex multilevel models, the findings reveal that the level of congruence of immigration policy to citizens’ immigration preferences alone does not impact political trust. But they show that immigration policy impacts the political trust of citizens who are highly anti-immigration and at the same time very strongly seeking political information. Overall, however, the article concludes that the impact of immigration policy congruence on political trust is moderate at best.