Anti‑immigrant backlash: the Democratic Dilemma for immigration policy
Anti‑immigrant backlash: the Democratic Dilemma for immigration policy
This section tackles a difficult choice policymakers often face: restrict immigration to prevent democratic backlash, risking unjust exclusion, or maintain open policies and risk democratic instability. Zsolt Kapelner proposes a framework to assess how policy can navigate this tension.
The responses offer different critiques. Alexander Kustov questions the empirical basis of Kapelner’s claim, suggesting backlash is limited; Laura Santi Amantini rejects the democracy-versus-justice framing as unethical; and Daniel Thym explores legal alternatives that move beyond a simple open/closed border binary.
Explore the debate
Read the complete working paper, or view individual contributions below.
Anti-immigrant backlash has emerged in recent years as a considerable threat to democracy. In many countries illiberal and anti-democratic political forces driven in part by anti-immigrant sentiment have damaged or threaten to damage the proper functioning of democratic institutions. Should policymakers try to avert this threat by implementing more restrictive immigration policy? If they do so, they may expose immigrants to unjust exclusion. If they do not, they may risk democratic dysfunction, even democratic failure. I will call this the Democratic Dilemma for immigration policy. In this paper I argue that this is a hard ethical dilemma that does not lend itself to a straightforward resolution. I propose an analytic and evaluative framework for assessing possible policy responses to the Dilemma to aid policymakers’ as well as the public’s ethical judgement.
In this discussion piece, I consider several major descriptive and causal empirical questions about anti-immigration backlash that I believe should feature more centrally in our normative thinking on the issue and that should also qualify its policy implications. After reviewing the evidence from my and other recent research on the topic, I conclude that, while counterproductive backlash to freer immigration is possible, it only applies to some limited immigration types and policies. The backlash argument is thus not a good justification for most existing immigration restrictions, and it should not be used to argue against programmatic pro-immigration reforms that demonstrably benefit citizens in receiving countries.
Should liberal democratic governments opt for unjust immigration restrictions to reduce the threat to democratic stability posed by illiberal and undemocratic parties, or accept putting democratic stability at risk to avoid unjust immigration restrictions? I argue that focusing on a purported choice between saving democracy and pursuing immigration justice leads us to a dead end. Kapelner’s article stimulates discussion about the unaddressed claims behind the anti-immigrant backlash and about ethically permissible pre-emptive and mitigating strategies. If we intend to protect democracy, following illiberal and undemocratic political forces down the path of unjust immigration policies would be both unethical and ineffective.
The question of whether we should restrict immigration to save democracy from far-right populist threats is not only of scholarly interest, but also has great practical significance. In my paper I argued that this question is best understood as a hard ethical dilemma – to address it, we may have to compromise one of two important values: democracy or immigration justice. The three responses may be seen as arguing, in their specific ways, that this is not as much of a dilemma, or at least not as hard, as I make it out to be. My goal here is to try to put some pressure on the arguments presented by the respondents. Not because I am unconvinced by their reasoning – in fact, I find many valid points in their views – but rather to facilitate further discussion and critical thinking about these important matters.