Public opinion on emigration in Europe: The role of national identity

The article examines the link between national identity and an under-researched side of migration attitudes—attitudes toward emigration. We investigate the role of the strength of national identification and conceptions of nationhood in public opinion on emigration, adopting a comparative multi-country perspective. Based on structural equation models on nationwide samples from six European countries (N = 7810), we found little evidence for the hypothesized positive link between national identification and anti-emigration sentiment, as well as for the moderating role of conceptions of nationhood, highlighting the need to further study the drivers of emigration attitudes.