How We Miscategorize the Categorizers
Essay · Marc Helbling & Alexander Kustov on Polarization, Immigration Attitudes, and Why the Pro/Anti Binary Fails
Are immigration attitudes as binary as we think?
No — and treating them that way makes polarization worse. Marc Helbling and Alexander Kustov show that even people labeled “anti-immigration” hold nuanced, conditional views. The real problem isn’t disagreement on migration — it’s that oversimplified categories turn policy differences into identity conflicts.
Essential points in this essay:
· Majority populations categorize each other — not just minorities
· Polarization is driven by social distance, not diverging policy positions
· Policy bundling can turn competing priorities into building blocks for compromise
About the authors: Marc Helbling is Professor of Sociology at the University of Mannheim and Director of the Mannheim Centre for European Social Research (MZES). Alexander Kustov is Associate Professor at the University of Notre Dame’s Keough School of Global Affairs and author of In Our Interest: How Democracies Can Make Immigration Popular (Columbia University Press, 2025).
When social scientists talk about how people are put into categories and what these categories do to them, they almost always look at disadvantaged minority populations. They rightly ask how these groups are seen by the majority and whether they are treated as equal members of society. Much less often, however, do they ask how the majority categorizers are themselves categorized, and how these categorizers understand who they are.
But self-descriptions and labels from others can diverge not only for minorities, but also for majorities. Even those who are portrayed as stigmatizers – such as white native-born Europeans and right-wing populists – often see themselves as stigmatized. On migration issues, these labels have become especially consequential: they assign bad moral character and intent to people based mostly on their group membership.
Majority–minority relations are further complicated by the fact that the “majority” is never just one unified group that stands in opposition to minority groups. In contemporary political conflicts, we tend to divide people into supporters and opponents of a given issue: more or less redistribution, stronger or weaker climate policies, higher or lower military spending, or more or fewer rights for LGBT* people. As societies polarize, this image of two homogeneous, clearly separated camps becomes even more dominant.
From Policy Disagreement to Social Distance
What we see in these processes of polarization is not necessarily that people’s substantive positions are drifting further apart. In the field of migration, for instance, public opinion has been relatively stable over decades. What has changed instead is the salience of the topic. Migration has become more important in people’s lives, for example when they decide which party to vote for. At the same time, people increasingly reject not just specific policies, but also the people who hold (supposedly) completely different views.
It is not necessarily the minorities that categorize the majority in a certain way, but rather groups among the majority that categorize each other. This kind of affective polarization encourages people to avoid others who disagree with them. Many end up in ideological bubbles and barely know anyone who votes for a different party or has a different idea of how society should be organized. As a result, people develop very simplistic images of “the others,” and the lines that divide groups within the majority population harden. In other words, our public categories do not just summarize opinion. They distort it, by forcing multi-dimensional views into a binary that was never designed to fit.
“Our public categories do not just summarize opinion. They distort it, by forcing multi-dimensional views into a binary that was never designed to fit.”
This has a profound effect on public debate. Often there is more talk about the other side than about the actual issue. Instead of discussing what the problem is and how to solve it, people feel under attack, feel they must justify themselves, and insist that they are not who others say they are.
Beyond the Binary Simplifications
People with more restrictive views on immigration complain that they are quickly branded racist, even if they only support stricter regulations in some areas but not across the board. People with more liberal views do not want to be seen as naïve just because they are not prepared to treat all refugees as potential criminals. This does not mean that there are no racists on one side or overly naïve people on the other. But broad umbrella labels like “supporters” and “opponents” hide how complex and nuanced people’s relationships with minorities actually are.
These nuances become visible when we look at how people draw boundaries between “us” and “them.” In debates about national belonging and how immigrants are categorized as potential members of the nation-state, researchers have long distinguished between two basic ways of thinking: An ethnic understanding of citizenship ties membership mainly to ancestry and a shared culture. In this view, immigrants and minorities who are ethnically different tend to be seen as permanent outsiders, even after many years of residence. A civic understanding of citizenship defines membership in terms of legal status, residence, and commitment to shared political rules rather than origin. Here, immigrants and minorities can be accepted as full members if they fulfill civic obligations.
Immigration Attitudes as Nuanced, Conditional Preferences
For a long time, these were treated as abstract ideal types. More recent empirical research, however, shows that these categories are themselves overly simplistic, even though they are still widely used in public debate. Among people who are critical of immigration, there is disagreement about how important non-voluntary characteristics like ancestry and religion really are for being considered a full member. Many in this group accept immigrants into the national in-group if they integrate culturally, emotionally, and in terms of values. Conversely, among those with generally open views, there are differences as well. Some are willing to accept everyone as a full member as long as they respect the country’s civic institutions. Others also expect migrants to speak the national language and identify with their new country.
Just as people draw symbolic boundaries in complex ways, their preferences for how to regulate national borders and integration are highly differentiated. Public attitudes are not simply “open” or “closed” across all areas. Instead, many citizens hold a mix of permissive, restrictive, and indifferent views, depending on the specific policy: people may support stricter language requirements and integration tests while at the same time favoring more open access to the labor market and welfare benefits.
Understanding the Pragmatic Middle and Finding Compromise
Distinctions between the “pro-immigration” and “anti-immigration” camps often turn out to be matters of degree rather than direction. Both groups reveal comparable mixtures of support and opposition to particular measures. Many citizens are also willing to make trade-offs: those who generally oppose immigration are prepared to support higher numbers if entry criteria become more selective, while those who are generally in favor of immigration accept lower numbers if newcomers receive more rights. Most people are not choosing between ‘welcome’ and ‘close the gates.’ They are choosing between packages that combine various important considerations they care about.
These patterns suggest that compromise can be built. Parties, advocates, and policymakers can stop arguing over single, symbolic measures and instead propose explicit bundles that balance immigrant numbers, border selectivity, and migrant rights, then make the trade-offs understandable and clear. One reason this is possible is that pro- and anti-immigration constituencies prioritize different normative principles: the more pro-immigration side primarily emphasizes migrants’ rights, while the more restrictive side focuses on selective admission criteria.
“If the future of difference depends on living with disagreement, then getting our categories of ‘who disagrees’ less wrong is a practical precondition for doing it.”
Bundling can turn these competing priorities into bargaining chips rather than identity markers. Recognizing this complexity is a first step toward moving beyond caricatures of majority groups and having more productive conversations about how we want to shape our shared societies. If the future of difference depends on living with disagreement, then getting our categories of ‘who disagrees’ less wrong is a practical precondition for doing it.
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Watch: Why Social Categories Matter — Steven Vertovec & Georg Diez
Read: Why Social Categories Matter More Than Ever — Steven Vertovec
Futures of Difference is produced by Steven Vertovec at the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Religious and Ethnic Diversity.