The public’s attitude toward immigration is changing

One fifth of British people have become more positive about immigration over the last few years, mainly because of a more “positive publicity” about immigration.

Over 20% of people surveyed by the research firm Ipsos MORI have recently become more positive about the impact of immigration, of which half had changed their views after becoming more aware of how much migrants contribute to the country.

Ipsos MORI has been surveying British adults on their attitudes to immigrants since 2015. The headline finding is that 47% of people now think that immigration has had a positive impact, compared to 29% who think it is negative. That is a significant improvement since the EU referendum.

That question looks back at the impact of immigration to date; when asked to look forward to whether immigration should be reduced, a majority (54%) are still against this, but that has fallen from 67% in early 2015.

Returning to the question of whether migration has had a positive or negative impact up to now, 21% of people had changed their mind over the past few years, becoming either more positive or less negative. Of those, 51% said that they had shifted views because “the discussions over the past few years have highlighted how much immigrants contribute to the UK”.

That means that around 276 people out of the 2520 surveyed, or 11%, had both changed their mind and given positive coverage of immigration as a reason for doing so.