People hold inaccurate and occasionally contradictory attitudes on issue which is shaping up as central to federal election
Australians have a nuanced view of migration, according to a new study: the majority would like lower levels of migration but they support more skilled migration and oppose decreasing international students numbers.
Immigration is tipped to be a key battleground in the looming federal election. Peter Dutton last year pledged to cut permanent migration levels, in part to alleviate the housing crisis. The Labor government has also planned to cut net migration this financial year.
But the survey by Australian National University researchers found that many Australians hold inaccurate – and sometimes contradictory – ideas about migrants and levels of migration. While a majority think migration is too high, many people change their minds when given new information, the researchers found.
“Telling people a positive narrative about how migrants can contribute to solving the housing crisis made people 4.5% more likely to support more migration overall,” said Alyssa Leng, one of the study researchers.
Conversely, “telling people a negative narrative decreased the likelihood of people wanting immigration levels to either stay the same or increase, by about six per cent,” she said.
The ANU survey, with a sample of more than 5,000 people, found just over 50% think migration levels are too high. Respondents also tended to think most Australians wanted lower levels of migration than they themselves do.
High levels of migration have been repeatedly blamed for a variety of problems, including rising housing costs.
Guardian Australia has previously found that the link between migration and housing costs is less clearcut than some politicians claim. And, while there has been a post-Covid lockdown boom in migration, net migration is still lower than was expected before the pandemic, due to border closures.
Despite a majority thinking migration levels were too high, an even greater share wanted the numbers of international students to stay the same or even increase. More than 40% thought the same for permanent and other temporary migration.
That was just one apparent contradiction the research revealed.
Leng said there is “a large misperception” surrounding the proportion of migrants in Australia who are students.
“People thought about 38% of working-age migrants in Australia over the last 10 years or so were full-time students,” she said. “But the actual proportion in the 2016 census was around 20%.
“So people think there are more international students than there actually are.”
Student levels weren’t the only misconception the study highlighted.
Respondents underestimated the number of new migrants but overestimated migration numbers over a 10-year period.
Some of the largest discrepancies were in regions of origin, with estimates of migrants from the Middle East and Pacific regions several times higher than reality, while estimates for European migrants were lower.
The study broke participants into groups to test the impact new information might have.
One group was told a “positive” narrative, Leng said, “saying that basically if we have more foreign tradies that will help us boost housing supply”.
A “negative treatment group” was given a story saying high immigration corresponds with higher housing prices in Australia; while a third received a “balanced narrative” stating that there is foreign demand for housing in Australia but it is just a small portion of house purchases overall.
“People don’t really know that much about migrants in Australia,” Leng said. “And they do change their minds. So we need to communicate carefully about the issue when we talk about it, because it can change people’s minds.”