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Does the politico-economic system affect preferences for immigration? In this study, I show that individuals exposed to life under state socialism have formed and persistently hold different attitudes toward immigration. By exploiting the division and reunification of Germany, I estimate the influence of state socialism on attitudes toward immigration. Drawing on rich individual panel data, I find that East Germans who lived under state socialism, are 15 percent more likely to oppose immigration than West Germans who spent their entire life in a democratic, capitalist country. This difference in attitudes toward immigration is persistent over time and across space, and largest for cohorts born and raised under state socialism. This gap in attitudes can be traced back to a longer-term deterioration in trust. Evidence from members of a group that opposed the authoritarian system highlights the importance of state socialist ideology for attitude formation.

Does the politico-economic system affect preferences for immigration? In this study, I show that individuals exposed to life under state socialism have formed and persistently hold different attitudes toward immigration. By exploiting the division and reunification of Germany, I estimate the influence of state socialism on attitudes toward immigration. Drawing on rich individual panel data, I find that East Germans who lived under state socialism, are 15 percent more likely to oppose immigration than West Germans who spent their entire life in a democratic, capitalist country. This difference in attitudes toward immigration is persistent over time and across space, and largest for cohorts born and raised under state socialism. This gap in attitudes can be traced back to a longer-term deterioration in trust. Evidence from members of a group that opposed the authoritarian system highlights the importance of state socialist ideology for attitude formation.

The empirical literature is inconclusive about whether a country's democratization has a long-lasting impact on former supporters or opponents of the bygone regime. With newly available individual-level data of former residents of the socialist German Democratic Republic (GDR), we analyze how supporters and opponents of the socialist system performed within the market-based democracy after reunification. Protesters, those who helped to overthrow the socialist regime in the Peaceful Revolution show higher life satisfaction and better labor market outcomes in the new politico-economic system. Former members of the ruling socialist party and employees in state-supervised sectors become substantially less satisfied. These results do not seem to be driven by differential reactions in the post-transition period, but rather by the removal of discriminatory practices in the GDR. Additional results indicate that conformism in the GDR also explains political preferences over the almost three decades after the reunification of Germany.