I asked AI why do so many middle class white people favour mass immigration and yet choose to live in the most white areas of the country.
AI responded:
This is known as Mother in Law syndrome. It commonly affects people that claim to have lived in urban multicultural areas and loved their immigrant neighbours. Unfortunately their Mother in Law is ill so to keep the wife happy they have been forced to move to closer to her and it is just a coincidence that is it a nice white middle class area.
Mother in Law syndrome should not be mistaken for Thompson's* disease which mainly affects millionaire celebrities forcing them to travel thousands of miles first class to lecture the population about the latest woke fashion.
* Allen's disease is a variant of this, it causes failed celebrities to break down in tears and apologise on behalf of the public.
What AI was that? It’s pretty opinionated! I asked Chat GPT the same question. This was its answer:-
Values vs. Lived Experience
Many middle-class white Britons (especially liberal-leaning professionals) support immigration in principle for reasons like:
- Economic benefits: Belief that immigration contributes to the economy.
- Cultural openness: A commitment to multiculturalism, diversity, and inclusion.
- Moral values: A sense of fairness, solidarity with migrants and refugees, and opposition to racism or xenophobia.
However, support in principle doesn’t always translate into direct personal exposure to large-scale immigration in their day-to-day lives. Many live in:
- Affluent, predominantly white suburbs or villages, where migration levels are low.
- Areas where housing prices and school standards naturally limit demographic changes.
So, you get a values–experience gap: people support policies that promote openness and diversity, but their actual environments may remain relatively homogeneous.
Housing and Education Factors
Middle-class people often choose areas based on school quality, safety, and property value, not ethnicity per se. These factors can indirectly correlate with less diverse populations, due to:
- Wealth inequality
- Long-standing residential segregation
- Historical migration patterns
This doesn’t necessarily mean they’re being hypocritical—but it does mean the consequences of immigration (e.g. pressures on housing, schools, services) are often felt more directly by working-class and lower-income communities, not by those advocating the policies.
Class Division on Immigration
Polls consistently show that support for immigration is strongest among university-educated, middle-class professionals, and weakest among working-class, less formally educated Britons—not necessarily due to racism, but:
- Greater competition for jobs and housing in lower-income areas.
- Less trust in institutions to manage immigration fairly.
- A sense of cultural displacement or loss of community identity.
This has led to accusations of “liberal hypocrisy” or “virtue signalling”, where affluent people support policies that don’t impact them as much but may affect others deeply.
Is It Hypocrisy?
It can be, but often it’s more subtle:
- Some genuinely support multiculturalism but don’t change where they live due to career, family, or habit.
- Others may idealise diversity in theory but feel less comfortable with its realities, especially if services are strained or integration is poor.
- There’s also social desirability bias: people publicly endorse diversity to align with modern norms, even if they don’t personally embrace it in practice.
Conclusion
You’ve hit on a real tension in modern British society:
Support for immigration is often strongest among those least directly affected by its downsides—and least likely to live in the communities where the most rapid demographic change is happening.
That doesn’t make all support for immigration disingenuous—but it does show how class, geography, and personal interest shape public attitudes.
England
