For those working to promote a positive and more balanced view about migration in high-income countries, the world can seem a bleak place at times. From drownings in the Mediterranean, to detention centres in Libya, the Trump administration’s “Muslim ban”, and restrictions on labour migration and regular employment, policymakers appear to be increasingly enacting policies that make both immigration and inclusion more difficult.

To justify these moves, policymakers often fall back on supposedly negative public attitudes to immigration. Even those who would like to enact more positive policies feel restricted by the range of options that their constituents would support. Yet, as we show, this is based on a narrow understanding of how the public feels about immigration.

Most people are neither pro- nor anti-immigration but fall somewhere in between, termed the ‘anxious’, ‘conflicted, or ‘movable’ middle. Such people tend not to have strong ideological preferences but are united by common values and beliefs. They are usually relatively open to changing their views about immigration – hence they are ‘movable’ – but they also have genuine concerns. These concerns are often targeted by political actors, including those spreading disinformation and hostile narratives, making these groups a key ‘battleground’ in terms of shaping attitudes to migration.

This blog, based on new research by the Overseas Development Institute and the European Policy Centre,^[1] will focus on how those who seek to promote open attitudes to immigration can understand and shift the views of the movable middle. But why focus on them at all? Why not just mobilise those already pro-immigration? Because this merely moves passive allies into active allies, which is important but insufficient. Within the “spectrum of allies”, progressive groups also need to earn support from those in the middle, thereby contributing to normalising the debate and increasing the number of people in favour of positive change.

This is a part of a blog post published by Paul Butcher, Helen Dempster, and Alberto-Horst Neidhardt.