Polarization of attitudes to immigration: myth or reality?
It is a common perception in the Norwegian public that Norway is becoming more polarized. Immigration and integration is, possibly together with the climate issue, the most heatedly debated topic, the issue that creates the sharpest divisions and the policy area where polarization is perceived as most precarious. In this study, we examine whether there have been changes in attitudes in the population's views on different aspects of immigration and integration and to what extent these point in the direction of increasing polarization. We scrutinize different dimensions of polarization, such as whether survey responses are characterized by increasing disagreement, whether there is increasing correlation with views on other questions and whether there are increasing divisions between subgroups in the population. The data sources will be the Integration Barometer (2005-19) and The National Election Study surveys (1997-2017), which contains data on the population's attitudes to other political issues. The output will be one English language article.
