Immigration: a class issue

Who supports anti-immigration policies? It's not just racists. This newly updated paper (pdf) by Anna Maria  Mayda concludes that economic interests also matter. Evidence from around the world, she says, shows that:

Individual skill is positively correlated with pro-immigration preferences in high per capita GDP countries, and negatively correlated with pro-immigration preferences in low per capita GDP countries.

For example, in Germany, people with higher education are more likely to be pro-immigration, whilst in the Phillipines educated people are more likely to be anti-immigration.
This is just what international trade theory predicts. It says that in countries with many skilled workers, immigration raises the relative supply of unskilled workers and so raises the premium on skills. In western countries, immigration is a source of cheap labour for skilled workers - but it's competition for unskilled ones. This is true even though immigration benefits the economy in general.
So, mirabile dictu, the Stupid Party is right: "it's not racist" to oppose immigration - for some people, it's economically rational.
Herein, though, lies a quirk. The Stupid Party's anti-immigration stance is, in effect, a bet on class dealignment.
Traditionally, unskilled workers who are disproportionately hostile to immigration have been Labour loyalists, so there hasn't traditionally been much point in Tories being anti-immigration. London dockers might have marched in support of Enoch Powell in 1968, but come the 1970 election, east London constitutencies such as Poplar, Stepney and West Ham provided the biggest Labour majorities.
Michael Howard, it seems, is betting that this class loyalty  to Labour is weakening, and so he can win votes with anti-immigration policies. But can he?

Update: I should have linked to this election briefing (small pdf) from the Centre for Economic Performance - one in what looks like being a useful series. It points out that ther skill composition of immigrants has been similar to that of the indigenous population, with the result that  immigration has had no significant effect on the wage distribution. I don't think this gravely undermines my fundamental point. Unskilled workers might oppose future immigration for fear that it will depress their wages - because it will comprise largely unskilled workers - even if this has not happened in the past.

Comments

[Rob]

It's worked for them in the past. Parts of Liverpool which were a) working-class and b) had large numbers of Irish immigrants (but not enough for them to control the constituency) voted in Tories through most of the first half of the last century. Working-class Toryism is an electoral force of no little potential.

[Rob]

Although I should add that, in the case of working-class constituencies in Liverpool electing Tories in the early twentieth century, those who voted for the Tories probably were at least sectarian, if not outright racist.

[Blimpish]

Working-class Toryism certainly did have a lot of potential - back before Labour, the Tories were the party the working classes voted for (the Liberals were the party of the commercial class, of course).

Far more important, though, is the example of the US: the industrial white working class is now the Republican core vote. There was an article last year in the Public Interest showing how social conservatism dominates the white male electorate, forming the basis of the GOP's current electoral dominance.

[Monjo]

The swing vote is more female than male, women are mostly interested in education (if aged 25-40) and healthcare (if aged over 45). The Conservatives need to show nice faces of doctors, teachers and nurses and talk about how it will make school and hospitals cleaner and safer.

Labour have in their time in opposition actively worked to win the young male vote and then in the mid-90s they went after the swing female vote. This has built them a strong core of stable voters, when added with their natural vote.
The Conservatives since 1997 have done little to win a generation of young male voters and cant really do much damage on health and education to get the female swing either.

[dearieme]

Can you suggest why the Labour Party has had immigration policies so inimical to the interests of working class voters for so long?

[Alan Kennedy]

That is an interesting theory, but one problem is many migrants are doctors from third world countries and are settling mainly London and south east england, so it seems it is the other way around it is skilled classes most worried about immigration which would explain why the tories are campaigning on it so much

[Rob]

Blimpish,

it's not quite true to say that before Labour the Tories were the party of the working class. The skilled working class, particularly where it was non-conformist, tended to vote Liberal in the late nineteenth century (once it got the vote: questions as to what the unskilled working-class did are irrelevant, since they didn't have the vote until 1919). Thus, mining areas, particularly in Wales, for example, more or less uniformly voted in Liberal candidates, and Labour was generally only able to win them with Liberal support (although the reverse was also true). Indeed, class (in the mainly economic sense) only really takes over as the main determinant of voting behaviour from religion in the period immediately before world war one. The aforementioned Welsh miners voted Liberal largely because they were non-conformist.

[esbonio]

Mother, who went to chapel three times on a Sunday, was introduced to LLoyd George as a child. All the family voted Liberal but she converted to conservatism on marriage.