Voters in Britain have grasped that an economic recovery is under way, but precious few are feeling the benefit, according to a Guardian/ICM poll that shines a spotlight on the anxiety of a nation.

A majority of the public (56%) accept that the economic recovery is real, but fewer than one in five voters, just 18%, say their families are benefiting.

However, if the initial findings appear to validate Ed Miliband's focus on the cost of living, when asked what underlies their economic uncertainty, voters point the finger at immigrants undercutting employment terms and conditions more than anything else.

A total of 46% cite concerns about immigration, although worries about the level of wages and concern about unreliable and dead-end jobs also feature.

The poll's findings form part of a wider Guardian investigation into the mood of the nation, examining social, economic and cultural trends in towns and cities around the UK in the aftermath of last month's European and local elections.

"This shows that Britain isn't out of the woods; that people have gripes about how the world of employment has now changed, how little things around the country that they cherish have changed, such as the character of the local pub," said Martin Boon, director of ICM Research. "Ten years ago immigration would have been in the second half of the top 10 of Britons' list of concerns. Now it is in the top three."

Misgivings about the sort of recovery that is unfolding extend a long way. Almost twice as many voters reject as accept the suggestion that new growth should "eventually ensure our children's generation" do better than their own.

When asked whether the recovery would eventually allow the next generation to do better than them, 20% of voters agreed while 38% disagreed, indicating that the long-term pessimism YouGov uncovered a year ago has yet to diminish despite the recovery now taking hold.

Statisticians and politicians have recently traded blows on whether average wages are finally overtaking inflation, but after six years of stagnation, Britain as a whole still regards the pay squeeze as its chief economic concern.

A majority (57%) say "wages that lag behind living costs" are among the greatest worries about their own job, or those of friends and family.

The research chimes in with separate findings from the British Social Attitudes survey, published on Tuesday, which found one in five people in working households reported struggling financially, with 44% stating they were living comfortably and 38% stating they were neither comfortable nor struggling. Almost two-thirds believe there is "quite a lot" of poverty in Britain.

Penny Young, chief executive of NatCen Social Research, which carried out the British Social Attitudes survey, said: "The ICM/Guardian figures also reflect what British Social Attitudes shows: a Britain increasingly divided over a keystone issue, immigration. Old lines are being further entrenched and new ones are being drawn, with graduates and Londoners set poles apart from the rest of the nation."

Asked which two or three factors "you personally think are most responsible" for current economic fears, "immigrants undercutting British workers" is seen as important by 46% in the Guardian/ICM survey. Other factors include "ruthless companies exploiting staff", cited by 42%, and banks "that rip customers off and refuse to fund companies properly", cited by 38%. Some 40% blame mistakes by the last Labour government, while 36% blame the coalition. The mood is definitely ripe for blaming somebody or something specific: the vaguer suggestion that the "chill economic winds" of the global economy are responsible for all the anxieties is endorsed by only 16%.

The salience of immigration is reinforced by a separate question in which "curbing immigration" comes top of varied populist policies as the "single action politicians could take to bolster your faith in politics", with 26% picking that priority, as against 19% who prefer tax cuts and 15% who prioritise a referendum on Britain's membership of the EU. Leftish proposals for winning back trust command less support – more NHS funding being chosen by 13% and a higher minimum wage by 12%.

The tendency to blame immigration for economic insecurity is most pronounced among the over-45s, working-class voters and voters in northern England, with outright majorities in all three categories suggesting that undercutting by new arrivals has been important in giving rise to economic fears.

The BSA study supports the Guardian/ICM findings on immigration with 77% of people stating they wanted immigration reduced "a little" or "a lot" - a figure that is largely unchanged since the last time the question was asked in 2008.

However, the BSA found considerable regional and class differences. Londoners and graduates are the most likely to think immigration has had a positive economic impact – 54% of Londoners compared with 28% of the general UK population, and 60% of graduates compared with 17% of people with no qualifications. These are striking findings, but in the past surveys have found that voters are more concerned about immigration in the abstract than as a pressing problem in their day-to-day life, and the Guardian/ICM poll reaffirms this.

When voters consider problems in their neighbourhoods, immigration is deemed much less important. Antisocial families (cited by 30%), neighbours not knowing each other (29%) and the vaguer sense of being "stuck within a country that's lost its direction" (23%) are all seen as more pressing local issues than new arrivals from overseas (22%) in voters' own communities.

Instead of tapping into the mood of alienation, the European elections suggested that all the big Westminster parties have fallen prey to it. Just as when ICM asked a similar question at Christmas, political promise-breaking is still the single biggest turnoff, given by 56% as a reason not to vote for the Westminster parties.

But the main parties' second biggest problem – cited by 44% – is careerist MPs who "look and sound the same". There is more concern about identikit MPs than about parliamentarians lining their own pockets (37%), unappealing party platforms (26%) or the lack of distinction between these (26%). Mainstream politicians' failure to "say what they believe" is seen asan obstacle to supporting them for 23% of the electorate.

ICM Research interviewed an online sample of 2,014 adults aged 18+ on 4-6 June 2014. Interviews were conducted across the country and the results have been weighted to the profile of all adults. ICM is a member of the British Polling Council and abides by its rules