Birthplaces That Don't Matter? How Early-Life Exposure to Local Unemployment Shapes Immigration Attitudes

Theories of globalization and labor market risk portray economic insecurity as a key driver of nativism. Yet individuals’ current economic conditions only weakly predict their immigration attitudes. I argue that the missing link is formative exposure to economic insecurity, which fosters a persistent sensitivity to economic risk and makes individuals more susceptible to threat-based immigration narratives. Building on political socialization research that identifies adolescence as a critical period for attitude formation, I test this argument using data from the German Socio-Economic Panel (1993–2023) linked to district-level historical employment data. The results show that individuals who grew up in districts with higher unemployment express stronger concern about immigration in adulthood. By linking formative economic experiences to adult political outcomes, this study identifies a novel economic-socialization pathway to explain immigration attitudes. It contributes to understanding how economic uncertainty is transmitted across generations and how formative experiences shape the foundations of democratic politics.