ABSTRACT

This article contributes understanding to a question that has vexed scholars of immigration politics, and is formulated succinctly by Gary Freeman (2002: 77-78): ‘The central puzzle of the politics of immigration in liberal democracies is the large and systematic gap between public opinion and public policy.’ This ‘gap’ thesis builds on a comparative survey which observed general trends regarding immigration policies in most industrialised democracies: first, that the distance between policy goals and effects was becoming larger; and, second, that policies were becoming more ‘liberal’ (Cornelius et al. 1994). Such claims stimulated Freeman (1995, 1998, 2002), and others (Joppke 1998), to advance explanatory models. Freeman has arguably gone furthest in developing a theoretical model to explain the purported paradox or ‘gap’ between expansionist policies and restrictive publics. According to him, the scepticism and hostility towards immigration expressed by publics in surveys, has not been substantively reflected in policies. Immigration policies remain more ‘liberal’ and ‘expansionist’ than

public opinion indicators would predict, which is surprising for liberal democracies, where one would expect popular preferences to have a more decisive impact on policy directions. Brubaker (1995) questioned the validity of the thesis, answering that European immigration policies were largely restrictive, thus making any purported ‘gap’ rather small. Another somewhat simplistic answer came from postnationalists (Soysal 1994, Sassen 1999), that ‘expansionism’ has been forced on restrictive nation states by powerful supranational and transnational institutions and discourses. Without repeating the substantive refutations of postnationalism,1 we follow Freeman (1998: 87) who convincingly argues that the national domestic arena is where immigration policies are primarily determined: ‘domestic politics, rather than constituting a powerful and uniform stimulus for restrictionism, is a much more complex force that actually undermines such efforts.’ Leaving aside general theories of immigration policies’ directions, perhaps

more interesting is Freeman’s theorisation regarding what political mechanisms could account for a persistent ‘gap’ between expansionist policies and restrictive public opinion. Crucial is the role of the ‘organised public’, collective action by interest groups and NGOs, which pressurises national political elites to be more expansionist than mass popular opinion dictates. Here we test this thesis with original data. Our focus is on the relationship of the ‘organised public’ of civil society that lobbies and/or publicly campaigns to elites, which leads to policy outcomes. Drawing from original data sources on the UK we examine the ‘multi-organizational field’ (Curtis and Zurcher 1973) linking the policy and public domains, and we consider whether collective action is sufficient to influence immigration policies toward expansionism or restrictionism. First, we discuss the relationships between elites, ‘organised publics’, and public opinion, critically assessing Freeman alongside insights from social movement research.