Research shows that immigrants tend to bring their prejudices with them, adopting the anti-immigrant sentiments of their new hosts. Middle-class immigrants may fear a loss of status. Others simply seek to distinguish themselves from a stigmatised group.
I think it is a lot more of a continuous spectrum than the binary classification that you’ve characterized it as. I also don’t see it as “greed” per se, more as seeking opportunities/escaping poverty.
It is also important to recognize that “cultural/wanderlust immigrants” are likely vastly more privileged than the “economic immigrants”. Most people in the global south do not have the resources to emigrate just to experience other cultures unless they are very lucky. It’s also not easy to acquire work or immigrant visas in most countries as a person from Africa/Asia etc. While it may be possible for citizens of the EU/US/Canada etc to move between countries easily with their strong passports, it’s simply not possible for the rest of the world. Immigrant blue collar workers are often either refugees, or have family in the countries they immigrate to willing to sponsor them. White collar workers either enter as students, or have intentionally acquired skills that will make it possible for them to get a job/visa.
I do agree though that “economic immigrants” are often more wedded to their own values, though that is not always the case, but that doesn’t necessarily mean they’re right-wing. It doesn’t completely explain why their children are conservative either, given that they have to necessarily integrate a lot more with their host country’s culture. The “pulling up the ladder” phenomenon is very frustrating though, and I see it sometimes as a result of the precarious position that these people hold in their host country. They’ve likely spent a long arduous time and lot of resources immigrating, and likely will be the first ones who will be targeted by unfavorable immigration policies, so they don’t want anyone to “rock the boat” lest they lose the life they’ve built for themselves. I’ve seen this shift in mentality quite a few times, and it is very unfortunate.
One thing about integration though, it really is a two way street. Immigrants very often don’t make the effort to integrate, but on the other hand discrimination against certain races and cultures make it much harder for them to as well. It’s a bit of a vicious cycle in that sense.
Absolutely, it’s a spectrum rather then perfectly defined groups, just like pretty much everything else about humans not just psychological but even physiological.
That said, looking at my own country, Portugal, which had people having to emigrate due to poverty during the Fascist times (which was well before the “strong” passport), then most people not really having the emigrate (80s, 90s, 00s) unless they wanted to, then people once again having to emigrate due to poverty (the youth in the last decade and some, because of low salaries and an insane realestate bubble), most of those who went to live abroad were very different in different phases and it’s almost a joke around here that those who emigrated during that first phase are more rightwing than those who stayed (and you see a similar phenomenon now with Brazilian immigrants in Portugal: the immigrant vote in Portugal for the Brazilian Presidential Elections is invariably far more to the Right than the vote in Brazil).
I believe those with wunderlust always leave in more or less the same numbers, but during the hard times the number of those leaving because they have to rather than because of their desire for new experiences, is far larger and outstrips those driven by wunderlust (and, as you pointed out, when everybody is poor the ones with wunderlust both want to and need to leave).
Although from this one might expect that immigrants from poorer countries will be more rightwing in average because of the higher fraction of economic relative to wunderlust immigrants, that’s not the point I’m trying to make. The point I’m trying to make is that in their host countries there are two kinds of behaviors of immigrants because there are two kinds of drives to leave one’s homeland, which is as true for richer countries as for poorer countries, even if the ratio of one kind to the other kind is different because poverty makes more people leave for economic reasons.
Basically people shouldn’t be assuming shit about all immigrants because of effects like the one described in this article: whilst the aggregated numbers might project a certain impression, in reality there are different kinds of immigrants with different drives to emigrate and hence different behaviors in their host country, and the wunderlust ones who are the minority in the immigration from poorer countries shouldn’t be tainted by the way the other kind behaves as they’ve very different and behave differently.