The formation of institutional trust among immigrants: what is the role of democracy?

This article studies how trust in institutions is shaped amongimmigrants, considering the level of democracy in the countriesof both origin and destination. Democracy is relevant toinstitutional trust as this system provides citizens with betterperformance, procedures and accountability. Immigrants use a‘dual frame of reference’ when asked the extent to which theytrust public institutions. They use their experiences in theircountries of both origin and destination. Therefore, the differencebetween the levels of democracy in these two contexts mayaffect their trust in the institutions of the destination country.This article also considers the role of the length of timeimmigrants have lived in the host country and the age at whichthey migrated. Longer stays may make immigrants more similarto native citizens in their scepticism about institutions, whileearly-age migration may limit experience in the country of origin.To test these arguments the study applies a ‘double comparativedesign’ to data from the European Social Survey and the V-Demproject, and finds that trust in public institutions increases asimmigrants move from less to more democratic countries,depending on their length of stay and age at migration