Change in migrants’ political attitudes: Acculturation and cosmopolitanization

This paper investigates change in international migrants’ political attitudes. It theorizes a novel attitudinal typology distinguishing polity‐specific attitudes influenced by national contexts and transnational attitudes forged by migratory experience. It applies the typology to four dimensions of political competition in contemporary Europe: redistribution, homosexuality, European integration, and immigration. The paper tests the new theory using cross‐sectional and panel data spanning nearly 380,000 observations from 104 sending and 28 destination countries. It introduces a new strategy to model cross‐classified hierarchical data, addresses issues inherent to group comparison, and pioneers two empirical inquiries into migrants’ self‐selection. The results show that migration prompts the acculturation of polity‐specific attitudes and the cosmopolitanization of transnational attitudes. Migrants adopt their host countries’ attitudes toward redistribution and homosexuality while developing a uniquely liberal outlook on European integration and immigration. These findings carry major implications for our understanding of attitudinal change and the dimensionality of the ideological space.