Irish attitudes to immigration during and after the boom

Given the huge size, relatively speaking, of the human influx into Ireland over the past decade or so, the evolution of Irish attitudes to immigration is of more than parochial interest. In this paper we use the six rounds of the European Social Survey (2002-2012) in seeking to account for those attitudes and chart their evolution. We also employ standard Blinder-Oaxaca decompositions in order to identify the relative importance of shifts in ‘tastes’ and of changes in underlying economic conditions in accounting for changes before and after the collapse of the Celtic Tiger.