Tim Reeskens

• PhD
• Professor (Associate) at Tilburg University

As the asylum crisis hit Europe in tandem with the Great Recession, concerns about declining support for equal welfare provision to immigrants grow. Although studies on welfare deservingness show that immigrants are deemed least entitled to welfare compared to other target groups, they have fallen short of isolating welfare claimants’ identity (i.e...

Some participants of the public debate have argued that the world before and after the coronavirus crisis will look fundamentally different. An underlying assumption is that this crisis will alter public opinion in such a way that it leads to profound societal and political change. Scholarship suggests that while some policy preferences are quite v...

The tenuous relationship between ethnic diversity and welfare solidarity has become a central focus in sociological and political inquiry. Yet, the question whether ethnic composition of the residential environment affects welfare chauvinism (favouring an encompassing welfare state that is preserved for ingroup members) has remained fundamentally u...

Do Europeans really feel European? Do they trust each other and are they solidary? What do they think of immigration and refugee influx? Do they want a greener and more sustainable Europe, and at what cost? Are democracy and human rights ingrained in Europe or are they under pressure? A new edition of the ‘Atlas of European Values’ answers these a...

Recent studies have shown that the coronavirus pandemic not only temporarily increased support for incumbent politicians and trust in experts but also triggered an authoritarian response. Because the pandemic has significantly affected individuals’ goals, needs, and control over their lives, we expect that it has generated emotional reactions. In t...

Recent studies have shown that the coronavirus pandemic not only temporarily increased support for incumbent politicians and trust in experts but also triggered an authoritarian response. Because the pandemic has significantly affected individuals’ goals, needs, and control over their lives, we expect that it has generated emotional reactions. In t...

Including a large number of predictors in the imputation model underlying a multiple imputation (MI) procedure is one of the most challenging tasks imputers face. A variety of high-dimensional MI techniques can help, but there has been limited research on their relative performance. In this study, we investigated a wide range of extant high-dimensi...

Multiple Imputation (MI) is one of the most popular approaches to addressing missing values in questionnaires and surveys. MI with multivariate imputation by chained equations (MICE) allows flexible imputation of many types of data. In MICE, for each variable under imputation, the imputer needs to specify which variables should act as predictors in...

An important question in understanding the war in Ukraine is whether Russian President Putin’s claim that Russians and Ukrainians are ‘one people’ or whether the statement made by European Union Commission President von der Leyen, echoing Ukrainian government’s position, that Ukraine is ‘one of us’ receives more support. In our contribution, we ass...

Including a large number of predictors in the imputation model underlying a multiple imputation (MI) procedure is one of the most challenging tasks imputers face. A variety of high-dimensional MI techniques can help, but there has been limited research on their relative performance. In this study, we investigated a wide range of extant high-dimensi...

We use representative longitudinal panel data from the Dutch European Values Survey (EVS) to study whether the COVID‐19 pandemic shifted opinions about how a woman's full‐time employment impacts family life. The data was collected before the COVID‐19 pandemic in 2017 and in May 2020. The analysis focuses on groups whose unpaid and paid work situati...

Multiple Imputation (MI) is one of the most popular approaches to addressing missing values in questionnaires and surveys. MI with multivariate imputation by chained equations (MICE) allows flexible imputation of many types of data. In MICE, for each variable under imputation, the imputer needs to specify which variables should act as predictors in...

This book on Reflections on European Values is a Liber Amicorum honouring Loek Halman’s contribution to the European Values Study. For years, he has been a key figure in this longitudinal and cross-national research project on moral, social, and political values, dedicating his academic life to advancing the understanding of values in Europe. This...

The COVID-19 pandemic and particularly lockdowns that were imposed to curtail the spread of the novel coronavirus have had a profound impact on our sociability, restricting our sex lives as a result. Less is known, however, about the extent to which people have justified casual sex less during the pandemic. Scholarship argues that such moral values...

The COVID-19 pandemic is posing a threat to people all across the globe. According to traditional literature, threat perceptions induce anti-immigrant sentiments, as ingroup identity and self-interest are strengthened at the expense of the outgroup. In this study, we investigate whether the COVID-19 pandemic indeed increases anti-immigrant sentimen...

This contribution examines how the Great Recession has affected human values, social attitudes and subjective well-being in 24 European countries between 2008 and 2016. With the European Social Survey, we have constructed a cross-national pseudo-panel wherein we follow socio-demographic peer groups based on country, cohort, gender and educational l...

Tim Reeskens (Tilburg University) and Leen Vandecasteele (University of Lausanne) explored the effect that the 2008 economic crisis had on human values. This was done by focusing on Round 5 (2010/11) data collected immediately after the economic crisis and comparing it with human values data combined from several waves.

Although European welfare states receive high levels of public support, insights into what kind of general redistributive principles Europeans would prefer to be applied in welfare provisions—equity, equality or need—is scarce and fragmented. Analysing the 2008 wave of the European Social Survey, we find that most European populations share a prefe...

Inspired by Wim van Oorschot’s research on perceived welfare deservingness, we showed in earlier work that even if immigrants combine favorable criteria, like having been laid off because of a company reorganization to indicate no control over their unemployed situation or doing voluntary work as an example for reciprocity, they are never able to f...

Amidst the COVID-19 pandemic, governments, supported by health experts and ethicists, released guidelines about which groups should receive priority access to both (intensive) care and vaccines as resources are limited. To achieve political legitimacy, support from the general public is important, as deservingness theory informs us that not all gro...

The European Values Study (EVS) was first conducted in 1981 and then repeated in 1990, 1999, 2008, and 2017, with the aim of providing researchers with data to investigate whether European individual and social values are changing and to what degree. The EVS is traditionally carried out as a probability-based face-to-face survey that takes around 1...

The worldwide COVID-19 pandemic has granted national governments far-reaching political powers to implement drastic non-pharmaceutical interventions to curtail the spread of the virus. For these measures to be effective, governments should be granted widespread political legitimacy. This is established when populations’ expectations from government...

While scholarship on wage discrimination has confirmed that ‘racism’ is persistent, recent insights indicate that ‘colorism’ – the idea that lighter skin tones are rewarded more compared to darker ones, all else equal – is often more relevant in some societies where race or ethnicity are less salient markers. In this article, the following underlyi...

In this study, we explore trends in sexual-ethical permissiveness in the Netherlands during the last decades. Using Dutch data from the European Values Study (1981-2017), we show that tolerance towards homosexuality, abortion, divorce, euthanasia, and suicide increased in this period. About a third of this trend can be explained by cohort replaceme...

In this study, we explore differences in values between educational groups in the Netherlands. Scholars argue that, due to e.g. globalisation, these differences may have grown over time, leading to a new cleavage in society. Using Dutch data from the European Values Study (1999-2017), we assess whether this cleavage exists in the Netherlands. In ad...

Recent insights have shown subjective status to impact health and health behavior. It is however unclear how this exactly happens. In this study we explore two mechanisms: this of a direct, mediating effect of subjective status explaining the impact of material class on health outcomes and behavior and an indirect, moderating impact on the relation...

Descriptives of the ELSA and Whitehall II-sample. (PDF)

Material class and subjective social status regressed on the separate health biomarkers with control variables. (PDF)

The traditional approach to class voting has largely ignored the question whether material class positions coincide with subjective class identification. Following Sosnaud et al. (2013), this study evaluates party preferences when Europeans' material and subjective social class do not coincide. Seminal studies on voting behavior have suggested that...

This book addresses new perspectives on the perceived popular deservingness of target groups of social services and benefits, offering new insights and analysis to this quickly developing field of welfare attitudes research. It provides an up-to-date state of the art in terms of concepts, theories, research methods and data. The book offers a multi...

With the aftermath of the economic crisis starting to fold out, the extent and the conditions under which the experience of economic hardship thwarts subjective well-being spark academic interest. In this paper, we examine the cushioning impact of three immaterial buffers embedded within civil society—namely social networks, religiosity, and confid...

While economic downturns have adverse effects on young people's life chances, empirical studies examining whether and to what extent human values, social attitudes and well-being indicators respond to sudden economic shocks are scarce. To assess the claim that human values are less affected by economic shocks than social attitudes and well-being, t...

Over the last decade, the topic of national-identity has gained considerable importance after various heads of states have made it an important political issue in the context of ongoing globalisation and European integration processes. There is also a large, mainly historical literature that has emphasised the role of the political elite in the for...

Ever since the introduction of the national political programme of “Building a new socialist countryside” (BNSC) in the early 2000s, renewed focus has been cast on how the Chinese government manages the gap between its rural and urban areas in the new millennium. Previous research has mostly studied the social and political consequences of the BNSC...

De schaar in de Amerikaanse droom.Boekbespreking: Putnam, R.D. (2015) Our Kids. The American Dream in Crisis.

Redactionele inleiding bij themanummer Ongelijkheid in Nederland

An oft-heard concern about the sustainability of the welfare state is that generous social welfare provisions serve as an important pull factor in immigrants’ consideration of their preferred country of destination. With their accumulated social risks, immigrants are averagely more likely to claim welfare benefits, suggesting that generous provisio...

Empirically-oriented students of national identity have in general concerned themselves with its dimensionality and its attitudinal correlates. We develop an account of patriotism that contextualizes it in the context of national politics. The intuition behind our Politics-Pride-Public Opinion (PPP) model is simply that patriotism is not some sui g...

While research has traditionally focused on first- and second-generation immigrants' socio-economic incorporation and to a lesser extent on their cultural and political integration, we analyse their affective attachment to the host country. Specifically, we assess: (1) the extent to which immigrants appear more or less ‘patriotic’ than non-immigran...

As European governments have embraced the credo of austerity, the perennial discussion whether welfare states erode the quality of social networks has taken on a more prominent position on political and social science research agendas. While non-believers of this so-called ‘crowding out’ thesis argue that social networks flourish well in welfare st...

Recent research on the consequences of ethnic diversity for social cohesion indicates that the effects of diversity are not necessarily universal. In this article we hypothesise that the rhetoric of political parties conditions whether diversity negatively affects generalised trust. Political campaigns might highlight the salience of cultural diver...

As comparative research has repeatedly demonstrated that societies where people trust each other more easily are better able to generate a series of positive externalities, the study of generalized trust has taken pandemic forms. However, critical voices have warned that the levels of trust (the intensity to cooperate) are conceptually different fr...

An oft-made claim is that national identity (NI) can function as social glue underpinning public support for the welfare state by encouraging the identification with co-nationals essential for redistribution. Empirical tests have largely ignored the possibility that the relationship depends on the kind of NI people hold, that various dimensions of...

A spate of work has demonstrated tensions between ethno-cultural diversity and social capital. Some have suggested that attachment to the nation can foster cross-group trust, particularly if this national self-definition is “civic” in character rather than “ethnic” (the Miller thesis). Similarly, others have argued that civic nations are less likel...

Although European welfare states receive high levels of public support, insights into what kind of welfare state individuals prefer – i.e., one based on the redistributive principle of equity, of equality or of need – is scarce and fragmented. Using the 2008 wave of the European Social Survey, we find that most European populations share a preferen...

In the present ‘Age of Migration’, public policy as well as social scientists are puzzled by the ‘New Liberal Dilemma’ (Newton, 2007) of finding popular support for welfare programs that have been installed in times of cultural homogeneity. In this article, we are interested in the question of whether opinions about immigrants’ access to welfare pr...

In the aftermath of the global financial crisis of 2008, youth unemployment has risen worldwide. In cross-national perspective, research on youth employment has thus far paid attention to the transition from school to work, but underemphasized the importance of the social psychology of labour market entrance. In this article, European young adults’...

The societal effects of the welfare state are a perennial issue in the public debate. Critics accuse the welfare state of having unintended economic and moral consequences rather than producing its intended social goals. Popular perceptions of possible consequences of the welfare state are a crucial component of welfare state legitimacy, but have r...

Recently, various attempts have been undertaken to develop a comprehensive social cohesion index to monitor the social progress of society. However, classical sociological theories predict that contemporary modern communities function according to a different type of social cohesion than traditional communities. From both a theoretical and a method...

The traditional distinction between civic and ethnic citizenship continues to dominate the study of citizenship concepts. In recent years, various authors have questioned the dichotomous character of these concepts. In this article, we empirically investigate the applicability of this dichotomy based on an analysis of International Social Survey Pr...

In recent years, various governments and education agencies have developed stricter policies to reduce truancy levels, mainly based on the argument that truancy is associated with risk behaviour, crime and substance abuse. In this article, we use a large, 28-nation comparative survey among 14 year olds to detect general patterns in consequences and...

While most current research documents a negative relation between ethnic diversity and generalized trust, it has to be acknowledged that these results often originate from one-country analyses in North America. In this article, attitudinal measurements from the European Social Survey are combined with Organization for Economic Co-Operation and Deve...

Various theoretical approaches have provided us with insights to explain the pattern of migration flows. Economic theory considers migration to be a reaction to labor market and economic incentives. Cultural theories predict that migration flows will occur according to a center-periphery pattern, while social network analysis assumes that migrants...

Generalized trust features as the most prominent attitudinal element of social capital, and as such the concept is widely used in comparative research. In this article we investigate the cross-cultural equivalence of the three-item scale on generalized trust that is included in the European Social Survey 2002 and 2004 waves. The use of metric equiv...

Various theoretical approaches have provided us with insights to explain the pattern of migration flows. Economic theory considers migration to be a reaction to labor market and economic incentives. Cultural theories predict that migration flows will occur according to a center-periphery pattern, while social network analysis assumes that migrants...

In this article we try to explain the influx of labour migrants in 17 European countries over the 1980-2004 period, using OECD data on the number of work permits issued yearly. These data show strong differences between countries, but also a steady increase in labour migration throughout Europe. The basic research question is whether economic push-...

In recent years, various authors have tried to develop a comprehensive explanation for the electoral success of extreme-right parties in Europe. While some authors stress individual-level factors (ethnocentrism, political cynicism, distrust), others stress macro-level variables (party strategy, electoral system). In this field of research cross-nat...

Within the sociology of religion, the relation between religious involvement and ethnocentrism has been a major topic of research, already since the work of Gordon Allport (1958). While most studies demonstrate a positive relation between religious involvement and ethnocentrism, others assume that religion could have a negative impact on ethnocentr...

In this research note we report on the results of an experimental study among 469 respondents in Belgium. The study shows that the familiar gender differences in political knowledge can be substantially reduced when including more questions on female politicians. Using confirmatory factor analysis and item response theory measurements, we can obser...

IDO Working Paper nr. 7 De registratie van niet-EU-kiezers voor de gemeenteraadsverkiezingen van 8 oktober 2006 Een analyse van de gemeentelijke performantieverschillen

Recently, students of attitudes toward ethnic minorities, immigrants and immigration have shown considerable interest in contextual factors that shape these attitudes. Various studies lead to the conclusion that ethnic diversity has a general negative effect on immigration attitudes. Yet, the currently available research has some shortcomings, as m...

Abstract will be provided by author.

One of the most abundantly used concepts in contemporary social sciences and among policy experts is 'social cohesion'. However, it is difficult to grasp how social cohesion is defined or measured. In this paper, we follow the line of reasoning of urban sociologists Kearns and Forrest (2000), who ascribed five dimensions to social cohesion. Althoug...

Abstract will be provided by author.

Abstract will be provided by author.

Amidst the worldwide financial crisis, European governments are in the grip of severe budget cutbacks, with also the welfare state target of severe reforms. In the ‘Age of Austerity,’ the aim of this paper is to assess whether respondents at the political right – traditionally against state intervention – are more supportive for redistribution afte...