This research, commissioned by the Transatlantic Council on Migration, an initiative of the Migration Policy Institute (MPI), for its seventh plenary meeting, held November 2011 in Berlin, highlights the following conclusions:

• The most extreme reactions to immigration and migrants are fomented by the radical or extreme right, not the left, but their popularity is highly circumscribed across North America, Western Europe, and Central and Eastern Europe.
• Migration patterns do not drive radical-right voting although immigration as a political issue has contributed to their electoral success.
• There is no clear relationship — either way — between rising numbers of immigrants and extremist incidents.
• Both the process of globalization and the (related) public attitudes toward immigrants influence the support for radical-right parties in a much more complex manner than is often assumed.
• The radical right frames the immigration debate consistently across countries on the basis of two main themes: a cultural threat (recently amalgamated as a cultural-religious threat) and a security threat (recently amalgamated as a criminal-terrorist threat). Secondary themes include economic competition and an anti-elite/anti-politics narrative.
• States have tightened immigration policies, but the radical right is only one causal factor; furthermore, counterforces, particularly state-sponsored antidiscrimination laws, have blunted the rise of more extremist parties
• There is a complex relationship between immigration and extremism in which some parties have profited, especially in Western Europe, though many countries do not have a relevant party — and not at all in Central and Eastern Europe.

Author: Cas Mudde - DePauw University