Beyond ‘all or nothing’: How policy choices shape attitudes towards irregular migrants

The presence of millions of irregular migrants in Europe poses a complex challenge for both voters and policymakers: how to protect individuals’ fundamental rights while maintaining effective migration controls? We theorise that public preferences for regularisation and access to legal rights for irregular migrants depend both on how policies are designed – specifically the balance between protective and control-oriented elements – and on migrants’ socio-economic trajectories in terms of prior legal status and contributions to society. Using original data from a conjoint survey experiment with 20,000 respondents across Austria, Italy, Poland, Sweden, and the UK, we find that host country residents generally favour policies that include, rather than exclude, targeted pathways to regularisation. Public support is stronger for granting access to in-kind services, such as primary health care, than for extending cash benefits. Consistent with prior research, we show that combining rights with controls can enhance public approval. Crucially, public support for inclusive policies is highest when directed at visa overstayers with a history of regular employment in the host country, particularly in essential occupations. These findings highlight that concrete policy choices and the characteristics of irregular migrants significantly shape policy preferences, offering important insights for policy reforms across Europe.