60% of Catalonia's population agrees with immigration

The presentation was given by Oriol Bartomeus, director of the ICPS (UAB - Barcelona Provincial Council) and lecturer in the UAB Department of Political Science and Public Law.

All indicators show a stable increase in favourable responses to the migratory phenomenon when compared to data obtained thirty years ago. This fact is even more remarkable when taking into account that at the beginning of the 1990s, the number of foreigners with residence permit in Catalonia reached slightly over 100,000, while now this group includes more than one million people, representing a tenfold increase.

Thus, the image projected by the public's opinion in the ICPS's 2023 survey is one in which the majority of voters are in favour of immigration. Almost 60% of people surveyed agree with immigration, while 22% disagree.

The degree to which they agree with immigration coincides with what was registered in the first seven years of this century (in 2003 the survey reached 60.3%). However, the degree of disagreement is significantly lower than in that period, in which one-third of the Catalan adult population showed their disagreement with immigration.

An opinion that clearly varies when compared to thirty years ago is the need to limit the immigration reaching the counrty. A majority found it necessary to limit the entrance of immigrants (65%), while now the population in favour of no limits on immigration is at a slight advantage (51%). Nevertheless, this is a very critical element, since 44% do agree with this limitation.

With regard to situations that can be associated to immigration, practically all people surveyed do not find anything wrong with having an immigrant neighbour (96%), although the majority would not like to have a mosque built close to their home (73%). In both cases, the figures are much more positive than in previous years.

There is also an improvement in the opinion people have of having a boss at work who was from a different race, an opinion that was already positive thirty years ago. Already then, 80% of the people surveyed disagreed with the phrase "I would not like to have a boss who is of a different race" and now this figure has risen to 94%.

There is an increase in those who disagree with justifying violent actions perpetrated against immigrants, although the percentage of people who agree with this has not varied greatly (12%, only five points less than thirty years ago).

There has also been a noticeable change in how rejecting immigration is perceived. While in 1992 the majority of answers (55%) pointed to work reasons ("They take away our work"), thirty years later only 17% agree with this answer. In contrast, the majority (35%) point to emminently cultural reasons ("They do not accept our customs", "They have a different religion"). The increase in this answer is of 20 points, as well as those pointing out religious differences, which go from 3% to 10%.

Young women, most favourable with immigration

The people who agreed least with immigration were usually men aged over 64 and women aged over 49, with secondary school studies or lower, voters of centre-right to right-winged parties such as PP, VOX or Ciutadans, belonging to the property-owning class or manual labourers, and with a speical incidence among people who do unpaid housework.

Those most favourable with immigration are women under 50 with higher education levels, voters of left and centre-left parties such as Comuns or CUP, and belong to the service class (managers and professionals).

In general, new generations are seen to have a more favourable view on immigration than the older generations, which could explain this general change in opinion among Catalan voters.

The ICPS annual polls have incorporated questions to ascertain opinion on immigration since their first years. The organisation highlights the fact that “the resurgence of the phenomenon as a problem coincides with its return to the public debate, favoured by the presence of extreme right-wing parties, which in some cases have caused other formations to include the issue in their discursive repertoire”.

Thus, the conclusions of the survey show that “the debate on immigration seems to respond more to a desire to create an opinion from some political positions than to an authentic social demand on the subject”. Even so, they assure that “despite the artificial nature of the creation of an immigration problem, it should not be ruled out that immigration could end up becoming a topic of debate capable of straining Catalan society if no action is taken to stop it”.