#6 Autocrats, Democrats and Immigration Policy

Borders of Equality Podcast

In this episode, we talk about the differences between democracies and autocracies in how they regulate immigration. We could assume that democracies and autocracies have different ways to regulate immigration: democratic governments should support more open immigration policies, while autocrats, in contrast, should push for more closed immigration policies. In her talk, Katharina Natter shows that, in fact, democracies and autocracies have pretty similar immigration policies. Openness or closure don't vary that much by regime type, at least not systematically. This doesn’t mean that the political process democracies and autocracies are similar. Katharina Natter is a political scientist at Leiden University. Her talk was recorded as part of the Leiden interdisciplinary migration seminars.