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Generational change and attitudes to immigration
Abstract
This paper examines the extent to which generational change is likely to be producing attitude change on the issue of immigration in Europe. Using multi-level modelling on seven rounds of the European Social Survey (2002–2014) and 16 European countries, we investigate the question of whether there are significant differences in anti-immigration sentiment between cohorts of Europeans, focusing on the roles that education and far-right mobilisation are likely to play in the process of generational change. The paper’s findings indicate that it is the most educated amongst the youngest cohorts who appear to be persistently more positive about immigration, even controlling for aging processes, but this combined effect of cohort and education diminishes for younger cohorts socialised in the context of a strong far-right anti-immigration presence. Thus, generational-change-induced attitude change in the realm of immigration attitudes may be occurring but this is likely to be dependent on individuals having adequate education skills to process the vast changes brought by immigration; in contexts where the far-right is likely to be mobilising anti-immigration sentiment these education skills appear to have a more limited impact on attitudes to immigration.
... The corpus of cross-national comparative research on anti-immigrant attitudes, and changes in such attitudes, has grown to substantial proportions (e.g. Quillian, 1995;Scheepers, Gijberts and Coenders, 2002;Meuleman, Davidov and Billiet, 2009;Gorodzeisky and Semyonov, 2018;McLaren and Paterson, 2020). By way of contrast, relatively few studies to date have examined attitudes towards asylum seekers from a cross-national comparative perspective Hangartner, 2016, 2017;Hercowitz-Amir, Raijman and Davidov, 2017;Heizmann and Ziller, 2020); even fewer studies have examined over-time changes in public attitudes towards asylum seekers. ...
... Traditionally, one main disadvantage of using crosssectional data for the study of over-time changes in attitudes was the inability to examine period-related effects net of cohort variations and generational replacement in national populations. Using innovative approaches to modelling generational differences, a few recent studies on attitudes towards immigrants (as a generic group) have addressed this issue (Wilkes and Corrigall-Brown, 2011;Gorodzeisky and Semyonov, 2018;McLaren and Paterson, 2020;McLaren, Neundorf and Paterson, 2021). The studies that examined anti-immigrant attitudes from a cross-country comparative perspective found that the over-time changes in such attitudes during the last two decades in European countries can indeed be attributed to both periods and cohort effects (Gorodzeisky and Semyonov, 2018;McLaren and Paterson, 2020). ...
... Using innovative approaches to modelling generational differences, a few recent studies on attitudes towards immigrants (as a generic group) have addressed this issue (Wilkes and Corrigall-Brown, 2011;Gorodzeisky and Semyonov, 2018;McLaren and Paterson, 2020;McLaren, Neundorf and Paterson, 2021). The studies that examined anti-immigrant attitudes from a cross-country comparative perspective found that the over-time changes in such attitudes during the last two decades in European countries can indeed be attributed to both periods and cohort effects (Gorodzeisky and Semyonov, 2018;McLaren and Paterson, 2020). In other words, cohort replacement in national populations provides an explanation for at least a meaningful proportion of over-time changes in attitudes towards immigrants across Europe. ...
The article studies over-time changes in public attitudes towards asylum seekers, from a cross-national comparative perspective. The article applies the ‘hierarchical age-period-cohort’ model to data from the European Social Survey collected in 17 European countries. The findings demonstrate that cross-cohort variations play a negligible role in the over-time changes in attitudes towards asylum seekers in Europe; and that most of these over-time changes can be attributed to period-related effect. The main findings reveal that not only exposure to an actual high inflow of asylum seekers (i.e. living in a country with an especially high inflow of asylum seekers) is associated with exclusionary attitudes towards asylum seekers, but also exposure to the potential of such an inflow (i.e. living in a country bordering countries with a high inflow of asylum seekers).
... Instead, some suggest that differences in attitudes across age groups are due to an ideological shift between younger and older generations (Wilkes and Corrigall-Brown 2011). Recent research has empirically demonstrated that age-specific patterns regarding immigration attitudes are due to a person's year of birth, rather than his or her biological age (Calahorrano 2013;Gorodzeisky and Semyonov 2018;McLaren and Paterson 2019;Schotte and Winkler 2018;Ford 2011). The reasons for this are not immediately apparent, as the trend from one cohort to the next is non-linear and fluctuates . ...
... Answers are coded on an eleven-point scale where 0 is the most negative and 10 is the most positive reply. We created an additive index ranging from 0 to 30. 13 The index has been widely used by other scholars studying attitudes to immigration McLaren and Paterson 2019;Sides and Citrin 2007). Those respondents with missing values on any of the three items 14 were excluded from the analysis. ...
Recent studies have demonstrated generational differences in attitudes towards immigration, however, less is known about what are the exact factors behind these differences. Our study investigates why cohorts formulate distinct patterns in attitudes towards immigration through a collective process of political socialization during their formative years. The theoretical arguments are tested using hierarchical age-period-cohort modelling across thirteen cohorts in thirteen European countries using micro attitudinal data (2002-2020) integrated with historical macro-political data. We find that contextual exposure to the principle of equality in the formative political climate is central to the formulation of a person's attitudes towards immigration later in life. While the prevalence of the principle of equality affects immigration attitudes in adulthood positively, the principle of tradition does not. The findings imply that even subtle and cyclical shifts in national politics affect the political orientations of those undergoing the process of political socialization.
... As the literature has shown, these effects are neither only nor primarily due to life-cycle effectspeople getting less progressive as they age -, but most likely the expression of a cohort ("generational") effect. More recent cohorts are consistently more progressive regarding morality, Europeanization, and gender equality (Lauterbach and De Vries, 2020;McLaren and Paterson 2020;Rekker 2018;O'Grady and Tom, 2022). In contrast, the evidence for immigration attitudes is mixed, pointing to a polarizing effect of immigration among more recent birth cohorts (Lancaster 2022;McLaren and Paterson 2020). ...
... More recent cohorts are consistently more progressive regarding morality, Europeanization, and gender equality (Lauterbach and De Vries, 2020;McLaren and Paterson 2020;Rekker 2018;O'Grady and Tom, 2022). In contrast, the evidence for immigration attitudes is mixed, pointing to a polarizing effect of immigration among more recent birth cohorts (Lancaster 2022;McLaren and Paterson 2020). Other authors also show that life-cycle effects can be detected, but that issue attitudes are relatively stable once formed and habituated in the impressionable years (Peterson et al., 2020). ...
The 2021 German Federal Election saw an increasing variation in voting behavior between both age groups and geographic groups. This paper brings these developments together and argues that the urban-rural divide is much bigger among younger than among older voters. We combine data from the German Longitudinal Election Study with original survey data and introduce the number of freelance artists at the ZIP code level as a new measure of urbanity. Using this data, we show that the urban-rural age divide concerns cultural attitudes as well as the propensity to vote. While the Greens mainly attract young voters in cities, the AfD performed well among young rural voters, particularly in Eastern Germany. At the same time, the differences between the young and the old are larger in cities than in the countryside. These results suggest that the importance of the urban-rural divide is likely to increase in future elections.
... The low prevalence of foreigners and asylum seekers in Slovakia severely restricts opportunities for intergroup contact with the native population, being possibly one of the reasons, together with a limited history of migration and a less extensive welfare state (Koos & Seibel, 2019), for Slovak natives' negative attitudes toward immigrants and immigration. Compared to frequently researched destination countries with more extensive welfare states, histories of migration, and opportunities for intergroup contact (like Germany or the Netherlands), Slovakia as a transit country remains an understudied case, especially when it is often not included in comparative cross-country studies (Czymara, 2020;Ford & Mellon, 2020;McLaren & Paterson, 2020). Generating new evidence about which personal attributes of applicants inform the immigration preferences of the young Slovak adults can help fill this gap and inform the design of immigration policies and school-based education and intervention programs mitigating anti-immigrant stereotypes, prejudice, and discrimination (Jones & Rutland, 2018). ...
... Future research could address some of the shortcomings of our present research design, especially the limited generalizability of a sample of university students to the general Slovak population, especially when considering more positive attitudes of younger generations toward immigration (McLaren & Paterson, 2020). A larger number of participants would allow for the study of additional attributes (e.g., vulnerability, language skills, previous job, and family situation) and attribute levels (e.g. ...
So far, little is known about which personal attributes of immigrant applicants play a role in public preferences on who should be given an opportunity to live in Slovakia. To provide novel evidence and to test theoretical predictions of economic and socio-psychological approaches to immigration attitudes, we conducted a preregistered conjoint experiment with a sample of young Slovak adults (N = 873). We found that participants preferred younger, more educated, female, and non-Muslim applicants and to a lesser extent, applicants coming from non-Muslim majority countries. Participants' gender and place of residence played inconclusive roles in their immigration preferences.
... Recent research has empirically demonstrated that age-specific patterns regarding immigration attitudes are due to a person's year of birth, rather than his or her biological age (Calahorrano, 2013;Gorodzeisky and Semyonov, 2018;McLaren and Paterson, 2019;Schotte and Winkler, 2018). The reasons for this are not immediately apparent, as the trend from one cohort to the next is non-linear and fluctuates (Gorodzeisky and Semyonov, 2018). ...
... We created an additive index ranging from 0 to 30. 6 The index has been widely used by other scholars studying attitudes to immigration (Gorodzeisky and Semyonov, 2018;McLaren and Paterson, 2019;Sides and Citrin, 2007). Those respondents with missing values on any of the three items 7 were excluded from the analysis. ...
This study investigates how the tenor of the political climate during a person's youth affects his or her attitudes towards immigration in adulthood. We analyze why cohorts formulate distinct patterns in attitudes towards immigration through a collective process of political socialization during the formative years. The theoretical arguments are tested using hierarchical age-period-cohort modelling across twelve cohorts in nine European countries using micro attitudinal data (2002 - 2016) integrated with historical
macro political data. We find that contextual exposure to principles of equality and tradition in the formative political climate are central to the formulation of a person's attitudes towards immigration later in life. While the prevalence of the principle of equality affects immigration attitudes in adulthood positively, the principle of tradition does so negatively. The findings imply that even subtle and cyclical shifts in national politics affect the political orientations of those undergoing the process of political socialization.
... The insignificant influence of tertiary education observed in Hong Kong implied that other factors might offset the impact of education. For example, research has concluded that local identity may counteract the liberalizing effects of education (McLaren & Paterson, 2020). The moderating effect of local contexts on education is worth further investigation. ...
... В одной из статей на европейском мате риале изучались поколенческие различия в восприятии иммиграции с учетом фак тора образования и активности в той или иной стране правых партий. Оказалось, что поколения, социализация которых проходила в период сильного мобилизую щего воздействия на общество правой идеологии, наиболее негативно воспри нимают мигрантов, причем роль образования в этом случае невелика [McLaren, Paterson, 2020]. Это означает, что идеологические убеждения могут нивелировать значение формального факта наличия диплома. ...
Научно-обзорная статья посвящена сравнительному анализу массивов западных и отечественных работ об отношении принимающего населения к мигрантам в России и ЕС. На основе сравнения данных Европейского социального исследования (ESS) делается вывод, что на фоне стран Западной и в особенности Восточной Европы Россия не выглядит страной, уникальной с точки зрения масштабов мигрантофобии. По мнению автора, более важной задачей, чем сопоставление цифр, является анализ факторов, провоцирующих или усиливающих мигрантофобию в различных социальных контекстах.
В работе обращается особое внимание на познавательный потенциал качественных методов при изучении причин и проявлений негативизма по отношению к мигрантам, а также при анализе его локальных особенностей. На примере исследований в Германии и Великобритании, проведенных на микроуровне, показаны результаты применения в данном проблемном поле ряда концептов (имидж места, контактная гипотеза, реакция на разнообразие и др.), а также возможности приложения этих концептов к миграционной ситуации в различных российских городах.
Благодарность. Научно-обзорная статья подготовлена при финансовой поддержке РФФИ в рамках научного проекта № 20-111-50532 (программа «Экспансия»).
... This assumes lifelong openness to attitudinal changes for every individual, regardless of their phase in life. In contrast to this, the "impressionable years" hypothesis states that adolescence and early adulthood are most pivotal in attitude formation (Henry & Sears, 2009;McLaren & Paterson, 2020). Later in life, individuals are said to be less susceptible to attitudinal change, as attitudes formed during the impressionable years are then "crystallized" and relatively stable. ...
This study applies the dynamic perspective of realistic conflict theory to assess whether and the extent that individuals’ negative attitudes toward ethnic minorities changed and were linked to changes in individuals’ economic situations. Employing Dutch panel data, we found that negative attitudes toward ethnic minorities were remarkably stable. Differences in attitudes toward ethnic minorities were more pronounced between individuals than within individuals. The small changes that did occur over the 10-year study period were hardly explained by economic characteristics. Only increased individual dissatisfaction with the national financial situation was associated with more negative attitudes. These results cast doubt on whether attitudes toward ethnic minorities are susceptible to change and raise questions about realistic conflict theory’s relevance in explaining attitudinal change.
... 2019). In particular, older individuals appear to be more negative about immigration when compared to younger individuals(McLaren & Paterson, 2019). Cultural threat (e.g.,Sniderman et al., 2004) and realistic conflict theory (e.g., Meuleman, Abts, Schmidt, Pettigrew, & Davidov, 2018) have both provided a rationale for this trend. ...
... 2019). In particular, older individuals appear to be more negative about immigration when compared to younger individuals(McLaren & Paterson, 2019). Cultural threat (e.g.,Sniderman et al., 2004) and realistic conflict theory (e.g., Meuleman, Abts, Schmidt, Pettigrew, & Davidov, 2018) have both provided a rationale for this trend. ...
This report contains the findings of two studies that investigated perceptions of
security (economic, cultural, and personal) and how such perceptions are related to attitudes
towards foreigners. The studies were carried out with Maltese people aged 18 and over. The
following are the key findings of the two studies.
... Additionally, innovative debate formats have been introduced as the media have evolved and diversified over the past 60 years, which may have influenced the candidates' rhetoric and verbal style (Macnamara, 2010;Scolari, 2013). Moreover, shifts in international power structures (Cox, 2012), changing attitudes toward a range of social issues (Lee & Mutz, 2019;McLaren & Paterson, 2020;Schnabel & Sevell, 2017), increasing campaign negativity and personalization (Geer, 2012;Maier & Nai, 2020), and declining political trust (Rainie & Perrin, 2019) combined with society's continued secularization (Bruce, 2021) and polarization (Jurkowitz et al., 2020) have disrupted traditional approaches to policy deliberations. Surprisingly, however, very little research has analyzed how presidential debate rhetoric has changed over the decades. ...
Televised U.S. presidential debates are the most-watched, if not the most-researched, political events in history. While prior studies have largely focused on general election contests, this longitudinal content analysis used DICTION software to parse the effects of election level, partisanship, and time on the candidates’ word choices or verbal styles in 35 general and 121 primary election debates. The results indicate that general election debate rhetoric contained significantly more optimism and certainty than primary debate rhetoric. Additionally, the rhetorical cleavage between the parties was located in the primary debates where the Democratic candidates used significantly more rhetorical realism, activity, and commonality than Republican candidates who used more rhetorical certainty. Further, we also found significantly less rhetorical certainty in the 2010s and the 2020 general election debate rhetoric than in the 1960s and 1970s. Finally, we found interaction effects on optimism and realism that also supported our propositions that U.S. presidential candidates’ rhetoric is meaningful at the semantic level, and that their verbal styles may reveal informative perspectives on the speakers and their speech acts.
... Older generations, those with few qualifications and in low-skilled jobs express stronger anti-immigrant views. Younger people and those with higher educational levels or better paid skilled jobs are linked to greater support for immigration, though these factors have limited impact on anti-immigrant attitudes among those younger people who have been socialised in the context of strong far-right, anti-immigration mobilisations (McLaren and Paterson, 2020). ...
At a time of rising right-wing populism, the heightened political salience of immigration as an issue is linked to conceptions of ‘the national’. In this article, we analyse tweets from non-elites, defined as isolated users with low network influence, engaged in a ‘conversation’ about migration on Twitter. We investigate the values embedded in these attitudes, and what these tell us about constructions and contestations of the symbolic boundaries of the nation amongst ordinary people. Our corpus includes tweets posted in temporal proximity to the lifting of transitional controls on Romanian and Bulgarian migrants in the UK (1 October 2013 to 1 March 2014). Thematic analysis reveals a cohesive set of anti-immigrant/immigration sentiments linked to UKIP and that express an exclusionary nationalism based on assumptions about race, ‘whiteness’ and entitlement. Also evident is a counter-narrative of pro-immigration sentiments that draw on multiple and sometimes contradictory values. Some of these values contest racialized understandings of the nation but do not coalesce in ways to disrupt the dominance of right-wing anti-immigrant sentiments on Twitter. Our findings demonstrate the importance of investigating values embedded in both anti and pro-immigration attitudes amongst non-elites and what these values indicate about the possibilities of re-framing migration debates amongst non-elites in ways that construct more inclusive symbolic national boundaries. Additionally, in using the networked properties of Twitter engagement to identify non-elite users, we make a methodological contribution to scholarship on immigration attitudes.
... This paper makes several contributions. First, the paper draws attention to generational differences in immigration sentiments and attempts to establish empirically (and systematically) whether generations differ in their views towards immigrants, thus adding to a small but growing body of research on this topic (Coenders and Scheepers, 1998;Ford, 2011;Gorodzeisky and Semyonov, 2018;McLaren and Paterson, 2019;Wilkes and Corrigall-Brown, 2011). Much of this existing research is unable to incorporate earlyyears diversity into its analyses, however, and so the paper's second contribution is to shift the analysis of the impact of macro-level diversity from contemporary to past diversity, to show how a context of relatively high diversity in the country during an individual's formative years may ultimately produce more positive immigration attitudes later in life (though this may be dependant on inequality conditions, as noted above). ...
The question of whether high immigration produces anti-immigration hostility has vexed researchers across multiple disciplines for decades. And yet, understanding this relationship is crucial for countries dependant on immigrant labour but concerned about its impact on social cohesion. Absent from most of this research are theories about the impact of early-years socialisation conditions on contemporary attitudes. Using the British sample of the European Social Survey (2002–2017) and two innovative approaches to modelling generational differences – generalised additive models and hierarchical age‒period‒cohort models – this paper shows that rather than producing hostility to immigration, being socialised in a context of high immigrant-origin diversity is likely to result in more positive attitudes to immigration later in life. This implies that through generational replacement, countries like the UK are likely to become increasingly tolerant of immigration over time. Importantly, however, a context of high-income inequality may diminish this effect.
... Through trend analysis of data from the British Social Survey and the World Values Survey, we show that the present generation of 18-to 30-year-olds expressed more negative and restrictive views on immigrants than previous generations of this age group. Furthermore, while this analysis also found that the present generation of young people were still more accepting of immigrants than older generations (as a spate of other studies have found; see Mclaren & Paterson, 2019), this generation gap had narrowed considerably over the last 20 years. For instance, in 1990 45% of 15-to 29-year-olds and 64% of those 50 and over supported the idea that employers should give priority to people 'of this country' over immigrants in times of high unemployment; by 2006 this difference had reduced to just 6% with as many as 57% of the 15-to 29-year-olds expressing support for this idea (Janmaat & Keating, 2019, p. 55). ...
Previous research on youth attitudes towards immigration has tended to focus on explaining why young people are more accepting of immigrants than their elders. In this article, therefore, we focus on the young people that are opposed to immigration. First, we use nationally representative survey data from young adults in England to highlight that a substantial minority hold negative attitudes towards immigrants. In the second half of the article, we then turn to qualitative data (in-depth interviews) to explore how young people talk about and justify holding these negative attitudes. Both the qualitative and the quantitative data suggest that anti-immigrant attitudes among young people are linked to the perception that immigrants pose an economic and cultural threat, and to the spread of culturalised forms of citizenship. What the qualitative data also reveal, however, is how these distinct discourses reinforce one another and how they intersect with other types of prejudice. We will argue that the idea of Hard Work is central to understanding anti-immigrant attitudes, as this has become a deeply-embedded cultural norm that is being used to include and exclude (immigrants and others), and to distinguish between who is deserving of membership of British society and who is not.
... La disminución de la parcela económicamente activa de la población tiene un efecto muy pernicioso sobre la sostenibilidad de la seguridad social y del sistema de pensiones. Dos caminos principales (aunque muchas veces interconectados) son remarcados por los partidos políticos desde hace varios años: 1. el incremento de la natalidad y 2. la entrada de migrantes (regulares) 140 . ...
En el punto de mira de los partidos ultranacionalistas, la migración desde África (marroquís, somalís y, en menor medida, etíopes, kenianos, ugandeses, congoleños y chadianos) hacia la Unión Europea abarca no solamente a ciudadanos africanos, sino también a personas procedentes de Oriente Próximo y Oriente Medio/Asia. La mejora de las condiciones de vida en esos países de origen puede atenuar las corrientes migratorias hacia Europa, aunque los esfuerzos actuales por parte de la sociedad internacional se diluyen en función de sus muchos desafíos globales-terrorismo, cambio climático, etc.-que demandan atención y recursos inmediatos y dificultan su canalización hacia la consecución de los Objetivos de Desarrollo Sostenible. Paralelamente, los países de acogida pueden beneficiarse de los flujos migratorios para su propio desarrollo nacional, dependiendo esencialmente de la voluntad política e inteligencia en la concepción y aplicación de los programas nacionales.
... This paper will explore how people define and react to new situations: what predicts why some adapt better than others and how to help those maximize the opportunity that culture travel provides (Furukawa, 1997). It also considers tangentially also the research on ever increasing migrants and refugees (Crawley & Skleparis, 2018;McLaren & Paterson, 2019;Titzmann & Lee, 2018) as well as Psychology sojourners (Geereaet, Li, Ward, Gelfand, & Demes, 2019) and expatriates (Valenzuela & Rogers, 2018) as well as the often ignored shock of being visited: namely a host person coming into contact with travelers to his or her home (McGhee, 2006). ...
... The tenth article, authored by McLaren and Paterson (2019), 'Generational change and attitudes to immigration', examines the extent to which generational change is likely to be producing attitude change on the issue of immigration in Europe. The authors investigate whether there are significant differences in anti-immigration sentiment between older and younger generations of Europeans, focussing on the roles that education and far-right mobilisation are likely to play in the process of generational change. ...
s: This research aims to explore cultural distinctions and investigate the adaptability of foreign teachers in both public and private secondary schools. A mixed methods approach was employed, utilizing semi-structured interviews and questionnaires as study instruments. The study instruments included the Self-Perceived Communication Competence Scale (SPCC), Intercultural Sensitivity Scale (ISS), and Tromso Social Intelligence Scale (TSIS). Data analysis relied on descriptive statistics. The findings revealed that foreign teachers in both public and private secondary schools demonstrated the highest levels in three key factors: Friends, Interaction Attention, and Social Information Processing. These factors corresponded to self-perceived communication competence, self-reported intercultural sensitivity, and social intelligence, respectively.
This paper unites disparate literature to test the influence of religious belonging and behavior characteristics along with secular welfare boundaries on anti‐immigrant attitudes. We suggest that welfare states varied in their religious foundations during the transition from religious‐based solidarity to modern state‐based solidarity and formulate a novel analytical framework to hypothesize effects across individuals and welfare regime types. Using eight waves of the European Social Survey (2002–16), we find that religious effects are strongest in welfare states with the most religious foundations, the Southern European welfare states, and weak in the universalist welfare states, which lacked historical state‐church tensions. Other welfare types show a mix of religious effects, with some challenging expectations. Furthermore, Christian majority membership is often associated with heightened anti‐immigrant attitudes, most consistently in contrast to the non‐Christian minority. For welfare‐based forms of inclusion, we find consistent institutional trust effects and two competing logics for secular boundaries: a propensity for welfare chauvinism and a culture of inclusion.
Background: This article investigates how European public opinion has responded to short-term variations in regional immigration over the past decade (2010-2019).
Methods: Combining data from the European Social Survey and the European Union Labour Force Survey and using multilevel modelling, we test how natives’ opinions over migration policy and the contribution of immigrants to society have changed with the net rate of international migrants in 183 EU regions from 21 countries.
Results: We find that while European natives living in regions with a higher share of foreign-born populations are generally less anti-immigrant, a short-term increase in the number of immigrants within a given region is associated with more negative attitudes.
Conclusion: Our findings demonstrate the importance of temporal dynamics for attitudes to immigration. They also point to the relevance of regional variations in attitudes beside cross-country differences.
What is the relationship between the electoral success of populist radical right parties (PRRPs) and public attitudes toward immigration? Previous research suggests that PRRP success can lead to more negative attitudes due to the breaking down of anti-prejudice norms and more prominent anti-immigration party cues. However, we argue that greater PRRP success could have a positive relationship with immigration attitudes, reflecting negative partisanship, polarisation, and a desire to re-emphasise anti-prejudice norms, which we call a "reverse backlash effect". Using the best available electoral and public opinion data across the last thirty years in 24 European countries, our TSCS analyses show the predominance of such "reverse backlash effects" across several operationalisations of PRRP success. Our argument has important consequences for the understanding of possible PRRP effects on public opinion, as well as attitudinal formation via party cueing and social norms more generally.
The aim of this paper is to present the immigration policy of Great Britain from
the end of the Second World War until today, emphasizing anti-immigration movements
that emerged during this period. Given the recent situation regarding Britain’s
exit from the European Union, it is interesting to examine movements, both formal
and informal, that have set themselves the goal of opposing immigration into Britain.
Also, given that one of the dominant narratives in the campaign to leave the Union
was an anti-immigration stance, it is important to examine which forms of action
within specific groups in the second half of the twentieth century laid the foundation
for anti-immigrant sentiment in British society. In a separate chapter, we will focus
on the relationship between the youth and anti-immigration movements through
the prism of the skinhead subculture, which is an important component of the British
subcultural scene. It is important to show the connection of the subcultural group
with institutionally recognized political parties, as well as the informal political/activist
activities of young people gathered around the skinhead movement.
Young French men and women are worried. This pessimism is symptomatic of the idea that French society does not offer young people any chance at success. The global crises that have rocked the French republican model, based on the welfare state and its associated conception of citizenship, have also shaped its youth in a way that differs from its European counterparts. Although the standard of openness—which is tied to a certain understanding of our shared humanity and the desirable political consequences of this understanding—has become widespread, it has not been accepted without conflict. Tensions have arisen from how social cohesion has been defined, ideologically speaking, throughout France’s history, and how this definition has been modified by globalization. The data show how French youth is torn between paradoxical and contradictory orientations.
Identifying and describing attitudes to immigration , let alone explaining them and their effects, is not a simple matter. In this chapter, we first outline the major scholarly works explaining attitudes to immigration. We identify six broad theoretical categories: economic interests, socialisation, psychological explanations, cueing, contact and context, and finally 'attitudinal embeddedness'. For each of these we present the key findings and consider the strengths and shortcomings of the literature, where applicable. We also sketch out existing research on the politics of immigration and the effects of attitudes to immigration on democratic politics, which we categorise as research on policy responsiveness, effects on party family support (notably the radical right), party competition, and polarisation. We end by considering future avenues for research.
Migration and migration-related diversity are likely to remain key topics of the European policy and research agenda for the foreseeable future. This asks for a rethinking of the research agenda on migration, from a strategic perspective as well as from a research perspective. The objective of this chapter is to suggest applications that are useful in shaping the next funding opportunities for migration research, and to provide roadmaps for the optimisation of research efforts in order to avoid overlapping and, where possible, to close the gaps in the global spectrum and national initiatives on migration. Questions such as How to benefit from and get access to available knowledge and expertise? How to promote the accumulation of knowledge and expertise? and How to address gaps in knowledge? have been at the heart of the Horizon 2020 CrossMigration research project and have led to the definition of its strategic research agenda . This chapter considers the need for a future agenda on migration studies, addressing methodological issues; what funding to focus on; how funding might be organised; who should be involved in funding (and procedures); and what prospects there are for the future. We will also propose three strategies to consider how an agenda might help provide towards: (1) keeping the road safe for achieving the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals in 2030, (2) contrasting current and future pandemic/epidemic disease, and (3) establishing a fruitful dialogue with the African scientific community.
This chapter will focus on labour migration , that is the movement of persons with the aim of employment or income-bringing activities (e.g., entrepreneurship), developing the topic which was also touched upon in Chap. 10.1007/978-3-030-92377-8_3 on conceptual understanding of migration drivers. Research on labour migration has developed across various disciplines (e.g., sociology, anthropology, and geography), but most prominently in economics. It has resulted in a range of theoretical frameworks, starting with neoclassical economic theories and advancing through the New Economics of Labour Migration (NELM), dual labour market theory, and social network theory, to more recent transnational approaches or theories dedicated to particular forms of labour migration. These diverse approaches offer insights into labour migration on macro-, meso- and micro-levels. Although a dichotomy based on skills (high-skilled vs. low-skilled workers) can be seen as controversial or misleading as a division between workers representing these two types of skills is often vague or difficult to determine, the distinction does reflect recent debates on labour migration. Thus, a high−/low-skills dichotomy serves as a guide to the structure of this chapter.
The article takes up the immunization hypothesis propagated in previous research, according to which Christian religiosity protects against voting for populist right parties, and develops an alternative interpretation of the linkage. Relying on the 2015 and 2017 German Longitudinal Election Study (GLES) and the 2018 German General Social Survey (GGSS), I provide an internal differentiation of Christian voters. The focus is not on common dimensions of religiosity, but on Christians’ claim to religion. It is assumed that Christian voters with an exclusive religious claim more often vote for populist right parties than do those with an inclusive religious claim, and that the more pronounced populist right positions of Christians with an exclusive religious claim are responsible for this. Theoretically, these assumptions are justified in four steps. First, a perceived threat among Christian voters with an exclusive religious claim is diagnosed. Second, mobilization arguments of populist right parties are identified that can provide a response to this threat perception. Third, interdependencies among religious and political worldviews are addressed, suggesting that an exclusive religious claim and populist right positions are linked via the function of nomization. Finally, the translation of populist right positions into voting for populist right parties is explained. Empirically, the link between religious claim and voting for populist right parties as well as the mediating effect of populist right positions can be confirmed. This demonstrates that religiosity can have an immunizing effect on voting for populist right parties in the case of an inclusive religious claim, but it can also have a catalyzing effect in the case of an exclusive religious claim. This indicates a shift in relevant cleavages in the German electorate.
Multilingualism can potentially increase empathy and facilitate contact between a given country’s own nationals and immigrants. A proof of concept exercise was conducted with students from the US (N = 112) and Spain (N = 107), and a small nonstudent sample (N = 22) also from Spain. The effect of the number of languages spoken on immigration acceptance was assayed in all three samples using a questionnaire based on the European Social Survey, and empathy and contact with immigrants were additionally determined in the Spanish samples. The results showed that multilingual students were significantly more accepting of immigrants than monolinguals in the samples from both the US and Spain. The number of languages spoken was a significant mediator between contact with immigrants and immigration acceptance. Empathy was significantly correlated with the acceptance of immigrants from poor countries, without any apparent connection to the number of languages spoken. The results emphasize the importance of multilingualism in improving crosscultural attitudes by increasing the quality of contact with immigrants. Learning the languages spoken by immigrants could be explored as a method for facilitating positive contact between groups in host societies.
Immigration control has emerged as a fiery partisan issue in American politics as evidenced by the controversies over policies of the Trump administration over the last four years. While legislative reform remains deadlocked at the federal level, a number of states have passed laws with reference to immigrants—documented or otherwise—within their boundaries. This study draws upon group threat theory to identify the factors affecting restrictive immigration laws at the state-level. Using cross-sectional time-series state-level data from 2005-2017, this study expands upon existing research in several important ways, including by investigating the effect of the non-Hispanic white working class. Results indicate that the passage of restrictive immigration legislation over the period of study was driven by increases in state-level inequality and increases in the size of the low-skilled white population. Implications for group threat theory are discussed.
Public opinion climates on immigrants are subject to certain dynamics. This study examines two mechanisms for such dynamics in Western EU member states for the 2002–2018 period. First, the impact of cohort replacement and, second, the impact of periodic threat perceptions, namely, changing macroeconomic conditions and shifts in immigration rates. To date, empirical research on anti-immigrant sentiments rarely combines these two concepts simultaneously to disentangle the interplay of period and cohort effects and determine the factors for long- and short-term attitude changes in societies. Motivated by this gap in the literature, I conduct multiple linear regression analyses of pooled data from all waves of the European Social Survey to show that the process of cohort replacement has led to a substantially more positive opinion climate toward immigrants since the 2000s. However, results indicate that in the future, this positive development is likely to come to a halt since younger cohorts no longer hold significantly more immigrant-friendly attitudes than their immediate predecessors. Furthermore, we observe different period effects to impact cohorts’ attitudes. Fixed-effects panel analyses show that the effect of changing macroeconomic conditions on cohorts’ attitudes is low. Changes in immigration rates, however, lead to significantly more dismissive attitudes when immigrants originate from the Global South as opposed to when they enter from EU countries. These insights suggest that it is less economic or cultural threat perceptions, but ethnic prejudice that plays a key role for natives to oppose immigration. Overall, findings suggest that it is not either cohort or period effects driving large-scale attitude changes, but rather we observe an interplay of both.
Scholarship, including seminal research on prejudice, identifies adolescence as a critical period for the development of attitudes. Yet most sociological research on prejudice, especially in the form of
anti-immigrant sentiment, focuses on the relationship between contemporaneous social conditions and attitudes towards out-groups while neglecting the demographic context during one’s impressionable years. Therefore, we design research to investigate the relationship among temporally distal and temporally proximal sub-national contexts and native-born attitudes towards immigration and immigrants. To do this, we merge geocoded data from the General Social Survey (1994–2016) with a unique US state-level dataset (1900–2015). Results from multilevel models reveal that immigrant presence during adolescence is a more consistent predictor of attitudes towards immigration and immigrants in adulthood. Thus, while the majority of sociological research on anti-immigrant sentiment asks if societal conditions matter, our results suggest that a more important question is when the
context matters.
This book examines VOX, the first major and electorally successful populist radical right-wing party to emerge in Spain since the death of General Franco, and the restoration of parliamentary democracy in the late 1970s.
In December 2018, VOX, a new party on the populist radical right, entered the Andalusian regional parliament, and played the role of kingmaker in the ensuing government formation discussions. Since then, under the leadership of Santiago Abascal, VOX has earned political representation in numerous local, regional and national elections. The party attracted more than 3.6 million votes in the November 2019 general election, making VOX the third largest party in the Spanish Congress. In two years, the party has become a key political challenger and an important player in Spanish politics. This book explains the origins of the party, its ideology and relationship with democracy, its appeal with voters, and its similarities with (and differences from) other populist radical right parties in Europe. It draws upon a rich source of domestic as well as cross-national survey data and a systematic analysis of party manifestos which provide a detailed account of the rise of VOX and what its emergence means for Spanish politics.
This volume will be of interest to scholars of comparative politics, political parties, voters and elections, Spanish politics, the populist radical right and populism in general.
In this Policy Brief we present a global overview of long-term trends
and current attitudes to immigration across the world to highlight:
• Concerns about immigration in Western European and American
countries have followed a different pattern than in Asia and Central
and Eastern Europe over the last 40 years.
• Social and cultural concerns about immigration are relatively more
salient than economic concerns in the Western world and more
developed countries, while the opposite is true of developing countries
in South America, Africa, and Asia.
• Asia and Africa are the continents most concerned with economic
risks associated with immigration such as unemployment.
• Differences in attitudes to immigration by socio-demographic
characteristics such as age, education, or gender vary greatly across
continents and countries.
• Western European countries, the United States, New Zealand and
Australia become increasingly favourable to immigrants as the
share of immigrant population increases. In contrast, no such pattern
is observable in other parts of the world.
Firms in the USA rely on highly skilled immigrants, particularly in the science and engineering sectors. Yet, the recent politics of immigration marks a substantial change to US immigration policy. We implement a conjoint experiment that isolates the causal effect of nativist, anti-immigrant, pronouncements on where skilled potential-migrants choose to immigrate to. While these policies have a significantly negative effect on the destination choices of Chilean and UK student subjects, they have little effect on the choices of Indian and Chinese student subjects. These results are confirmed through an unobtrusive test of subjects’ general immigration destination preferences. Moreover, there is some evidence that the negative effect of these nativist policies are particularly salient for those who self-identify with the Left.
It has been argued that supporting a restrictive view on the inclusion of immigrants finds its origin in a localized feeling of group identity. We test this hypothesis with a household survey in the Belgian city of Ghent (n = 3735). The results show that local and national identities are salient, but also that regional, European, and cosmopolitan identities are supported simultaneously. Especially the regional, Flemish identity is strongly associated with a restrictive, ethnic attitude toward new groups in society. A European identity was not significantly associated with this restrictive attitude. Our conclusion is that not just the geographical scale of group identity is important in explaining anti-immigrant sentiments. The specific historical connotations of every geographical level should be considered. A comparison between generations, i.e. parents and their late adolescent children, suggests that this association between specific group identities and ethnic citizenship norms is equally present among younger cohorts.
Based on ESS-7 data, this paper focuses on two attitudinal dimensions about public policies related to immigration: how many can come and who can come. In this context, the hypothesis concerning the bi-dimensionality of racism was supported and, as predicted, biological racism is more anti-normative than cultural racism. Both biological and cultural racism predict opposition to immigration and adhesion to ethnicist criteria on the selection of immigrants. As hypothesised, the relationship between racism and opposition to immigration and adhesion to ethnicist criteria is mediated by threat perceptions. Specifically, symbolic and realistic threats mediate the effect of biological and cultural racism on opposition to immigration and on ethnicist criteria. The hypothesis that the mediation effects are moderated by the country’s quality of democracy was supported, indicating that the mediation effects are stronger in countries with a higher quality of democracy. Results are discussed within the context of racism theories as a bi-dimensional concept and in the framework of the role of legitimation processes in social discrimination.
What factors explain majority members’ anti-Muslim prejudice? This is an increasingly important question to ask, but to date only relatively few studies have sought to provide answers from a cross-national comparative perspective. This study aims to help fill this gap. Using data from the seventh round of the European Social Survey (ESS) linked with country-level characteristics, our results indicate that (a) a larger Muslim population size, (b) more liberal immigrant integration policies and (c) greater state support of religion are all associated with lower levels of majority members’ negative attitudes towards Muslim immigration – our indicator of anti-Muslim prejudice. Such attitudes, however, prove to be unrelated to (d) cross-national differences in the frequency of negative immigration-related news reports as measured by the ESS media claims data. Collectively, these findings bring us one important step closer towards a better understanding of interethnic relations between majority members and Muslim immigrants in European host societies.
Research on the impact of the macro economy on individual-level preferences for redistribution has produced varying results. This paper presents a new theory on the presence of an expansive welfare state during one's formative years as a source of heterogeneity in the effect that macroeconomic conditions have on individuals' preferences for redistributive policy. We test this theory using cohort analysis via the British Social Attitudes surveys (1983-2010), with generations coming of age between the end of World War I and today. Findings confirm that cohorts that were socialized before and after the introduction of the welfare state react differently to economic crises: the former become less supportive of redistribution, while the latter become more supportive. Our research sheds light on the long-term shifts of support for the welfare state due to generational replacement.
This paper examines the bases of opposition to immigrant minorities in Western Europe, focusing on The Netherlands. The specific aim of this study is to test the validity of predictions derived from two theories - realistic conflict, which emphasizes considerations of economic well-being, and social identity, which emphasizes considerations of identity based on group membership. The larger aim of this study is to investigate the interplay of predisposing factors and situational triggers in evoking political responses. The analysis is based on a series of three experiments embedded in a public opinion survey carried out in The Netherlands (n = 2007) in 1997-98. The experiments, combined with parallel individual-level measures, allow measurement of the comparative impact of both dispositionally based and situationally triggered threats to economic well-being and to national identity at work. The results show, first, that considerations of national identity dominate those of economic advantage in evoking exclusionary reactions to immigrant minorities and, second, that the effect of situational triggers is to mobilize support for exclusionary policies above and beyond the core constituency already predisposed to support them.
This study attempts to further our understanding of the contextual sources of anti-immigrant sentiments by simultaneously examining the impact of immigrant group size, negative immigration-related news reports and their interaction on natives' perceived group threat. We test our theoretical assumptions using repeated cross-sectional survey data from Spain during the time period 1996-2007, enriched with regional statistics on immigrant group size and information from a longitudinal content analysis of newspaper reports. Drawing on multilevel regression models, our findings show that a greater number of negative immigration-related news reports increases perceived group threat over and above the influence of immigrant group size. Additionally, our findings indicate that the impact of negative immigration-related news reports on perceived group threat is amplified (weakened) in regions with a smaller (larger) immigrant group size. Collectively, these results testify to the importance of immigrant group size and negative immigration-related news reports as key contextual sources of natives' perceived group threat.
The victory of a Christian coalition over Ottoman forces besieging Vienna in
1683 marked the beginning of the end of the Ottoman presence in Central
and Eastern Europe and the simultaneous rise of the Habsburg Empire in
this region. Memories of these events still circulate in present-day Vienna
and provide an emotional reservoir for anti-Turkish sentiments. Current tendencies
to fictionalise politics support the dissemination of such anti-Turkish
narratives in rather unconventional and hybrid genres such as comic-style
booklets. In this article, the authors investigate the interplay of collective
memories and this hybrid genre within the social context of the fictionalisation
of politics through the test case of the Austrian Freedom Party (FPÖ),
one of the most successful European right-wing populist parties. By combining
multimodal analysis with the discourse–historical approach in critical
discourse analysis, they illustrate the ways in which visuals enable the conveying
of contradictory meanings through a discursive strategy of calculated
ambivalence by blurring past and present, fiction and reality.
The study examines change over time in sentiments toward out-group populations in European societies. For this purpose data were compiled from four waves of the Eurobarometer surveys for 12 countries that provided detailed and comparable information on attitudes toward foreigners between 1988 and 2000. A series of multilevel hierarchical linear models were estimated to examine change in the effects of individual- and country-level sources of threat on anti-foreigner sentiment. The analysis shows a substantial rise in anti-foreigner sentiment between 1988 and 2000 in all 12 countries. The rise in anti-foreigner sentiment was steep in the early period (between 1988 and 1994), then leveled off after that. Although anti-foreigner sentiment tends to be more pronounced in places with a large proportion of foreign populations and where economic conditions are less prosperous, the effects of both factors on anti-foreigner sentiment have not changed over time. The analysis also shows that anti-foreigner sentiment is more pronounced in places with greater support for right-wing extreme parties. The impact of individual-level socioeconomic characteristics such as education has remained stable over the years, but the effect of political ideology has increased. The meaning and significance of the findings are discussed within the context of European societies.
This article examines three hypotheses about the relation between age and the stability of sociopolitical attitudes. The hypotheses are (1) the impressionable-year hypothesis, which states that the youngest adults have the least stable attitudes; (2) the aging-stability hypothesis, that attitude stability increases with age; and (3) the hypothesis that symbolic attitudes are more likely to show distinctive life-cycle patterns of attitude stability than less symbolic ones. The hypotheses are tested using nationally representative panel data from the National Election Study (NES). When results are aggregated over 50 different measures of attitudes, they reveal that in general the youngest adults have the lowest levels of attitude stability, although the difference is not significant. Beyond this, the aggregated data show very few systematic age-related differences, and very few life-span differences in attitude stability are related to the nature of the attitude object; that is, symbolic attitudes do not se...
Yang and Land (2006) and Yang (forthcoming-b) developed a mixed (fixed and random) effects model for the age-period-cohort (APC) analysis of micro data sets in the form of a series of repeated cross-section sample surveys that are increasingly available to demographers. The authors compare the fixed-versus random-effects model specifications for APC analysis. They use data on verbal test scores from 15 cross sections of the General Social Survey (GSS), 1974 to 2000, for substantive illustrations. Strengths and weaknesses are identified for both the random- and fixed-effects formulations. However, under each of the two data conditions studied, the random-effects hierarchical APC model is the most appropriate specification. While additional analyses and comparisons of random- and fixed-effects APC models using other data sets are necessary before generalizations can be drawn, this finding is consistent with results from other methodological studies with unbalanced data designs.
We test the thesis that a materialism-postmaterialism value dimension underlies the twelve-item materialism-postmaterialism index used in the World Values Survey WVS. Extending previous research on the logic of the four-item materialism-postmaterialism index which revealed fundamentally random response patterns in the United States, we focus on the logical and empirical relationships between the three four-item indexes that comprise the twelve-item index. If a single value dimension underlies three four-item indexes, we should find moderate to high correlations between the three four-item indexes. Further, a finding of low inter-index correlations does not mean that individuals are responding randomly or insincerely; they may be answering in contextually interpretable ways that are nonetheless not consistent with a materialism-postmaterialism dimension. We apply three main methods: 1 a priori analysis of the internal logic of the materialism-postmaterialism indexes; 2 empirical analysis of the inter-index correlations, and confirmatory factor analysis, for all WVS respondents and within forty-two WVS societies in the 1990-93 WVS; and 3 logistic regression testing whether the priority that people give to materialist value items reflects the levels of material and physical security in their society. We find that the correlations between the three four-item indexes are nearly random, and in three-fourths of the countries the indexes fail to satisfy minimum criteria of dimensionality. 'Postmaterialism' as measured by these indexes is not a value dimension in most WVS countries. Nonetheless, the priority given to particular material value items e.g., maintaining order or fighting rising prices is congruent with the prevailing social and economic conditions in given societies. But the usefulness of the data for as indicators of material conditions has been obscured in previous research by the imposition of the materialism-postmaterialism classification scheme.
Our article addressed the question to what extent the legacy of a “class-less society” in post-Communist countries is reflected by the absence of class structures and class appeal in the radical right’s electoral performance. The still visible fluidity of the party systems as a whole, the legacies of the previous regimes (among other: weak party-voter loyalties or welfare states with universal, yet low level of benefits) as well as region-specific cleavage constellations led us to expect limited effects of social stratification. Congruent with some finding in the literature (such as Norris 2005), the longitudinal data on the class composition of these electorates in countries where these parties have entered parliaments (Poland, Hungary and Slovakia) show no clear pattern. Nonetheless, one of the most important observations is the Hungarian case, with a clear shift from lower educated, older blue-collar and self-employed strata supporting MIÉP to higher educated, young, white-collar and intellectual professionals voting for Jobbik.
Socio-economic class divisions are often being parallelized or bridged with cultural, axiological and counter-modernization agenda. In other words, appeals for social protection are equated with the need to protect “national economic interests” against “traitors” and groups not adhering to the traditional values and the radicalized vision of “the Nation”. In so doing, the radical right, in its effort to exploit some legacies of the socialist past, prolongs them into the present.
We introduce a cross-national survey experimental design which combines three different sources of potential variation in migration attitudes – migrant characteristics, native respondent characteristics and national context. Our survey experiment tests the impact of randomly assigned cues for migrant skills (professional or unskilled) and origins (European or non-European) in twenty-one national contexts. In order to make the origins cue both contextually relevant while retaining comparability across contexts, we use the largest poorer European and non-European source countries for migrants in each country as our origins cue. We find that the ‘skills premium’ observed in previous research is universal – in all of our contexts native respondents are more willing to accept skilled professional migrants than unskilled migrants, but with considerable variation in effect size between countries. We find that a significant preference for European over non-European migrants exists in the majority of our countries, but varies a great deal between contexts, and is insignificant in several countries, suggesting that this ‘European premium’ is more contingent than the ‘skills premium’. The two treatment effects are unrelated at the national level, and show only a modest interaction at the individual level, suggesting preferences for high skills and European origins are largely independent of each other. We find no evidence that treatment effects are related to views about the overall impact of immigration at the national level or the individual level. However, some individual attitudes – in particular racial prejudice, social distance and support for anti-discrimination legislation – predict variation in responses to the experimental cues.
Explaining negative attitudes towards immigration in general and threat due to immigration, in particular, has been a major topic of study in recent decades. While intergroup contact has received considerable attention in explaining ethnic threat, group relative deprivation (GRD), that is, feelings that one’s group is unfairly deprived of desirable goods in comparison to relevant out-groups, has been largely ignored in cross-national research. Nevertheless, various smaller-scale studies have demonstrated that GRD can have a decisive impact on prejudice. In the current study, we examine the association between GRD and ethnic threat systematically across 20 European countries, thereby controlling for intergroup contact and value priorities. The 7th round of the European Social Survey (ESS) includes questions assessing respondents’ feelings of group deprivation compared to immigrants and offers for the first time an opportunity to contextualise the threat-inducing effect of GRD across Europe. A multilevel structural equation model (MLSEM) demonstrates a considerable association between GRD and ethnic threat both on the individual and country levels. The results indicate that GRD is not only an important mediating factor between social structural positions and perceived threat, but also fully mediates the relation between contextual economic indicators and ethnic threat.
The paper explores differences in attitudes towards immigration both between and within countries. We draw on new questions, included in the ESS for the first time in 2014, about willingness to accept culturally distinct groups of migrants such as Muslims. These new measures yield additional insights about the nature of symbolic boundaries since they directly tap one of the most salient boundaries in contemporary migration discourse. The paper makes use of Multilevel Latent Class Analysis, a method enabling one to disentangle group-level from individual-level differences. The findings distinguish three classes of individual attitudes, labelled ‘restrictive’, ‘selective’ and ‘open’. The proportions of individuals belonging to these classes varies across European countries, which fit into three more or less distinct sets (labelled the Czech model, the Norway model and the Ireland model). These three sets display differing levels of internal homogeneity, with the Czech model being the most homogeneous and the Norway model the most heterogeneous. This pattern is also reflected in the degree of socio-economic polarisation. In effect, the nature of the symbolic boundaries are more contested within the Ireland and Norway models, different groups having very different ideas of where the boundaries lie and how rigid they should be.
The present paper contributes to the literature on the formation of attitudes and public views toward out-group populations by focusing on the relations between actual versus perceived and misperceived size of immigrant population (as indicators of competitive threat) and attitudes toward immigration. The analysis is conducted in the context of 17 European societies. The data for the analysis were obtained from the 2014 European Social Survey (ESS). The main findings lead to the conclusion that misperceptions of the size of immigrant population play a more important role than factual reality in shaping public views and attitudes toward immigration. Although perceived size is not totally detached from actual size, the discrepancy between actual and perceived size is found to be a more powerful predictor of opposition to immigration than actual size. The more inflated is the misperception the more pronounced is opposition to immigration. The impact of misperceptions, when measured as a discrepancy or a ratio, on anti-immigrant attitudes is more pronounced in countries with, proportionally, a large foreign-born population. The meaning of the findings and the relevance of misperceptions and cognitive maps in shaping public views are discussed.
There is ample evidence of the beneficial effects of intergroup contact in reducing negative attitudes towards immigrants. Although the valuable role of institutional support, one of the initial optimal conditions for contact, has been demonstrated, the impact of actual immigration integration policies, as a manifestation of institutional support, remains unknown. In the current study, we examine how country-level migrant integration policies, assessed by the MIPEX indicator, shape the relationship between everyday contact and threat perceptions associated to immigration. Multilevel regression analyses were conducted with European Social Survey Round 7 data from 20 European countries (N = 32,093 citizens). Everyday contact was related to less symbolic and realistic threat perceptions. Moreover, on the country level, tolerant policies (a high MIPEX score) were related to higher everyday contact and lower symbolic threat perceptions. Confirming that institutional support facilitates the effects of contact, a cross-level interaction revealed that the link between everyday contact and symbolic threat was stronger in high rather than low MIPEX countries. The pattern of results was partially replicated when contact quality and cross-group friendships were assessed, though integration policies did not moderate the effects of these intergroup contact measures. These findings extend the body of multilevel contact research and are crucial for application as they show that integration policies have the potential to guide national majority members’ perceptions regarding immigrants.
Mixed-effects multilevel models are often used to investigate cross-level interactions, a specific type of context effect that may be understood as an upper-level variable moderating the association between a lower-level predictor and the outcome. We argue that multilevel models involving cross-level interactions should always include random slopes on the lower-level components of those interactions. Failure to do so will usually result in severely anti-conservative statistical inference. We illustrate the problem with extensive Monte Carlo simulations and examine its practical relevance by studying 30 prototypical cross-level interactions with European Social Survey data for 28 countries. In these empirical applications, introducing a random slope term reduces the absolute t-ratio of the cross-level interaction term by 31 per cent or more in three quarters of cases, with an average reduction of 42 per cent. Many practitioners seem to be unaware of these issues. Roughly half of the cross-level interaction estimates published in the European Sociological Review between 2011 and 2016 are based on models that omit the crucial random slope term. Detailed analysis of the associated test statistics suggests that many of the estimates would not reach conventional thresholds for statistical significance in correctly specified models that include the random slope. This raises the question how much robust evidence of cross-level interactions sociology has actually produced over the past decades.
This study investigates the causes of fluctuations in public concern about immigration and contends that issues emphasized in media coverage explain these fluctuations. Drawing on agenda-setting research and theories about issue attributes, it is argued that media emphasis on aspects of immigration that are likely to be unobtrusive but with potentially concrete consequences for the public is likely to raise concern about immigration far more than unobtrusive but abstract issues. The analysis, based on public opinion data and newspaper articles on the topic of immigration to the U.K., shows that press emphasis on two unobtrusive but concrete issues within the theme of immigration - the economy and education - appears to increase concern about immigration; emphasis on more abstract issues evokes little reaction from the British public.
To date, scholarship has neglected the role of elite cues in shaping immigration attitudes. When included, attention has been limited to political elites and parties. Yet, other societal actors have the potential to shape attitudes. This article employs mixed methods to analyse the discourse of the Church of England and attempts to uncover whether this discourse impacts the immigration attitudes of ‘their’ audience in the United Kingdom during 2005–2015. The discourse analysis finds that non-threatening migration frames dominate. Using European Social Survey (ESS) data (Rounds 4–7), regression analysis indicates that greater exposure to elite cues, via attendance at religious services, is consistently related to more positive immigration attitudes. Thus, for those most exposed, elite cues may be acting as a partial bulwark against the ubiquitous security-threat discourse of political elites. Overall, findings imply that despite their previous neglect, religious elite actors have the capacity to shape immigration attitudes and therefore de/construct issues of security.
The study focuses on over-time change in anti-immigrant attitudes across European societies and on the role played by cohorts in producing the change in attitudes. We assembled data from four waves of the European Social Surveys for 14 countries between 2002 and 2014. The data analysis is conducted within the framework of a hierarchical age-period-cohort model (HAPC) to estimate the dynamic relations between anti-immigrant sentiment and country's social and economic conditions, while taking into consideration variations across individuals and birth-cohorts. The analysis lends support to expectations derived from the ‘competitive threat’ theoretical model. The findings show that a higher share of non-European ethnic minorities in the country's population is associated with a higher level of ant-immigrant attitudes. Anti-immigrant sentiment was found to be more pronounced in the ‘old immigration countries’ than in the ‘new immigration countries.’ The impact of economic conditions on anti-immigrant sentiment becomes evident through the effect of cohort in the ‘new immigration countries’: cohorts that entered the labor market when the unemployment rate was high are likely to hold more negative attitudes toward immigrants.
Social change and multicultural society in Western Europe against diversity - new right ideology in the new Europe individualism and xenophobia - radical right-wing populism in a comparative perspective the social basis of radical right-wing populism political conflict in the postmodern age.
The article examines the role of prejudice toward racial and ethnic minorities in shaping attitudes toward immigrants across 19 European countries. Previous studies established that fear of competition (i.e., competitive threat) is likely to increase negative attitudes toward immigrants. Using data from the 2010 European Social Survey, we find that not only competitive threat but also racial prejudice toward non-European/non-White minority population is likely to increase negative attitudes toward all immigrants in Europe. Moreover, racial prejudice does not mediate the effect of competitive threat on anti-immigrant attitudes, but exert an independent additive effect. The impact of racial prejudice on attitudes toward immigrants tends to increase with the relative size of the non-European racial minority population in the country.
Many surveys of respondents from multiple countries or subnational regions have now been fielded on multiple occasions. Social
scientists are regularly using multilevel models to analyse the data generated by such surveys, investigating variation across
both space and time. We show, however, that such models are usually specified erroneously. They typically omit one or more
relevant random effects, thereby ignoring important clustering in the data, which leads to downward biases in the standard
errors. These biases occur even if the fixed effects are specified correctly; if the fixed effects are incorrect, erroneous
specification of the random effects worsens biases in the coefficients. We illustrate these problems using Monte Carlo simulations
and two empirical examples. Our recommendation to researchers fitting multilevel models to comparative longitudinal survey
data is to include random effects at all potentially relevant levels, thereby avoiding any mismatch between the random and
fixed parts of their models.
Across Europe, right-wing populist parties use advertisements that depict symbolic and economic threats posed by immigrants. Yet research on the effects of such advertisements is scarce, especially when it comes to young voters. We theorise that the attitudinal effects of threatening advertisements depend on young voters' education level. In an experiment, a total of N = 162 pupils were randomly assigned to three conditions, a symbolic threat advertisement, an economic threat advertisement or a control condition. Exposure to the symbolic and economic threat advertisements led to a significant increase in negative attitudes towards immigrants. However, the economic threat advertisement was only effective for pupils with lower compared to higher educational degrees. The effects did not depend on party predisposition.
In the Netherlands, support for ethnic discrimination, that is, support for a disadvantageous treatment of ethnic minorities in the housing and labour market, had decreased in the late 1970s and early 1980s, but has increased since the mid-1980s up to the early 1990s. In this article, we examine the effects of contextual characteristics (period and cohort characteristics) and individual characteristics on support for ethnic discrimination. Hypotheses, derived from Ethnic Conflict Theory, are tested by means of logistic regression analysis, using individual-level pooled data over the period 1979-1993 (N=20,156) as well as national-level time-series data, presumably indicative of period and cohort characteristics. Regarding period characteristics, the results show that support for ethnic discrimination is more widespread in times of high and increasing levels of ethnic immigration, as well as in times of growing unemployment. However, the level of unemployment as such has a negative effect on support for ethnic discrimination. Regarding cohort characteristics, the results show that the higher the level of ethnic immigration and unemployment during the formative years, the more widespread support for ethnic discrimination is. In addition, we found a positive effect of age. Regarding other individual characteristics, support for ethnic discrimination is particularly more widespread among less educated people.
During the past two decades a four-item battery administered in biannual Euro-Barometer surveys has been used to measure changing value priorities in Western European countries. We provide evidence that the measure is seriously flawed. Pooled cross-sectional time series analyses for the 1976-86 period reveal that the Euro-Barometer postmaterialist-materialist value index and two of its components are very sensitive to short-term changes in economic conditions, and that the failure to include a statement about unemployment in the four-item values battery accounts for much of the apparent growth of postmaterialist values in several countries after 1980. The aggregate-level findings are buttressed by analyses of panel data from three countries.
What is the structure of policy reasoning among citizens at large, and particularly, how does this structure vary with the level of education? To answer this question, we examine the nature of policy reasoning on the issue of racial equality. Our analysis helps explain why the highly educated show greater support for the principle of racial equality than do the less educated but not appreciably greater support for government efforts to promote it. Highly educated citizens, we argue, have more fully integrated and differentiated belief systems, and thus they take a wider range of factors into account when evaluating government policy.
Social scientists have recognized the importance of age-period-cohort (APC) models for half a century, but have spent much of this time mired in debates about the feasibility of APC methods. Recently, a new class of APC methods based on modern statistical knowledge has emerged, offering potential solutions. In 2009, Reither, Hauser and Yang used one of these new methods – hierarchical APC (HAPC) modeling – to study how birth cohorts may have contributed to the U.S. obesity epidemic. They found that recent birth cohorts experience higher odds of obesity than their predecessors, but that ubiquitous period-based changes are primarily responsible for the rising prevalence of obesity. Although these findings have been replicated elsewhere, recent commentaries by Bell and Jones call them into question – along with the new class of APC methods. Specifically, Bell and Jones claim that new APC methods do not adequately address model identification and suggest that “solid theory” is often sufficient to remove one of the three temporal dimensions from empirical consideration. They also present a series of simulation models that purportedly show how the HAPC models estimated by Reither et al. (2009) could have produced misleading results. However, these simulation models rest on assumptions that there were no period effects, and associations between period and cohort variables and the outcome were perfectly linear. Those are conditions under which APC models should never be used. Under more tenable assumptions, our own simulations show that HAPC methods perform well, both in recovering the main findings presented by Reither et al. (2009) and the results reported by Bell and Jones. We also respond to critiques about model identification and theoretically-imposed constraints, finding little pragmatic support for such arguments. We conclude by encouraging social scientists to move beyond the debates of the 1970s and toward a deeper appreciation for modern APC methodologies.
This contribution aims, first, to determine whether support for the far right is based on perceptions of cultural or economic threats posed by immigrants in 11 European countries. Second, it seeks to reanalyze the question of whether class is an important explanation for support for the far right using new measures of class and, related to this, to determine the extent to which class interacts with perceived threat to explain support for far-right parties. The study reveals that perceived cultural ethnic threats are a stronger predictor of far-right preferences than are perceived economic ethnic threats. This cultural versus economic distinction is also depicted in social class differences in far-right preference. These are particularly evident between sociocultural specialists and technocrats, as anticipated by the new social class scheme. Sociocultural specialists particularly perceive fewer cultural ethnic threats compared to technocrats and consequently have a smaller likelihood to prefer the far right. On the contextual level, the authors find that higher levels of GDP in a country result in greater far-right preference, whereas higher levels of GDP do result in lower levels of ethnic threats. The effect of proportion of Muslims on far-right preference is nonsignificant. The study shows that the choice of countries in cross-national research can heavily influence the results.
Why does public opinion change over time? Much debate on this question centers on whether it is caused by the replacement of people or by individuals changing how they think. Theoretical approaches to this question have emphasized the importance of birth cohort succession, generational differences, and changing macro-economic conditions. In this article, we consider the extent to which these processes can account for changing attitudes towards immigration and immigrants. We use a new approach to the study of time trends in public opinion to analyze over 20 years of data on attitudes in Canada. This approach uses multi-level analysis to split attitudinal change into its cohort and period components. We find that most attitude change is the result of changing macro-economic conditions. In contrast, birth cohort succession has little effect. While there is modest evidence of generational differences in attitudes, these differences do not comprise a major part of the overall trend.
Over the past 30 years, the hitherto rather homogeneous welfare states in Europe have been experiencing a dramatic influx of immigrants, making them much more diverse. The central purpose of the early development of the welfare state was twofold: to bridge class divisions and to mollify ethnic divisions in the vast multiethnic empires of 19th-century Germany and Austria. This research examines the impact of the programmatic and expenditure dimensions of the welfare state on attitudes of natives across modern publics, theorizing that nativist resentment and welfare chauvinism should be reduced in more comprehensive welfare systems. Individual, aggregate, and multilevel analyses reveal that the more comprehensive the welfare state is, the more tolerant natives are of immigrants, indicating that contemporary welfare states have a similar capacity to bridge ethnic divisions as their 19th-century incarnations.
This study conducts a systematic age, period, and cohort analysis that provides new evidence of the dynamics of, and heterogeneity in, subjective well-being across the life course and over time in the United States. I use recently developed methodologies of hierarchical age-period-cohort models, and the longest available population data series on happiness from the General Social Survey, 1972 to 2004. I find distinct life-course patterns, time trends, and birth cohort changes in happiness. The age effects are strong and indicate increases in happiness over the life course. Period effects show first decreasing and then increasing trends in happiness. Baby-boomer cohorts report lower levels of happiness, suggesting the influence of early life conditions and formative experiences. I also find substantial life-course and period variations in social disparities in happiness. The results show convergences in sex, race, and educational gaps in happiness with age, which can largely be attributed to differential exposure to various social conditions important to happiness, such as marital status and health. Sex and race inequalities in happiness declined in the long term over the past 30 years. During the most recent decade, however, the net sex difference disappeared while the racial gap in happiness remained substantial.
The notion that aging beyond adolescence and young adulthood leads to conservatism is part of the conventional wisdom, and there are theoretical reasons to believe that certain dimensions of biological, social and psychological aging contribute to some kinds of conser vatism. For instance, with the assumption of family respon sibilities, a diffuse liberalism-humanitarianism is likely to be overshadowed by concern for specific others. Or, aging persons may become more conservative in the sense that their attitudes and values become more resistant to change, because each subsequent experience is a smaller proportion of the total background of experiences. Empirical evidence on the topic is not definitive; moreover, in view of intransigent methodological problems which plague the study of aging effects, the evidence may never be definitive. However, cohort analysis of United States survey sample data reveals that in recent years persons aging beyond young adulthood and beyond middle age have tended to become more liberal in many respects, in conformity with general societal trends. However, these people have tended to become more conservative in a relative sense since their liberalization has not kept pace with changes in the total adult population. Although the evidence suggests that attitudes probably become somewhat less susceptible to change as people grow older, there is scant evidence for any other contribution of aging to conservatism.
Samuel A. Stouffer's 1954 survey is compared with replication data in the National Opinion Research Center's 1972-73 General Social Surveys to check his Predictions regarding the effects of generation, age, and education on toleranceof Communists and atheists. A flow graph model for difference equations involving categorical variables is used to organize the findings. Major conclusions are these: (1) there has been an average increase of about 23% in tolerant responses; (2) about 4% of this increase is due to cohort effects on educational attainment, as Stouffer predicted; (3) about 5% is due to cohort repalcement per se; (4) about 13% is due to increasing tolerance among all cohort and education groups, the opposite of what Stouffer predicted; and (5) about 1% is due to increased college attainment not accounted for by cohort.
In this article we take advantage of a two-wave panel study of two biologically-linked generations in order to examine some prevalent conceptions about the persistence of political orientations. The nature of the study design, outlined below, is particularly suited to addressing questions about individual-level continuities as they are affected by life-cycle, generational and historical processes. Our present discussion is geared to the individual level rather than to the aggregate level of continuity and change. Although many of the terms used are the same, and although it is difficult to discuss the one level without recourse to the other, the purposes and the approaches are fundamentally different. Aggregate analysis concerns itself with net movements and with the directionality of these movements. Individual analysis, as used here, concerns itself with the magnitudes of individual-level movements and has only a secondary interest in the direction of these movements.
Normative and social structural explanations for changes in tolerance are tested using racial attitude items from 11 surveys between 1958 and 1978. Over the 20 years, while there were changes in the overall levels of racial tolerance, there were also changes in the upper and lower ends of a tolerance spectrum which differentially depended on cohort and educational effects. Regardless of the position in the tolerance spectrum, most of the change in racial attitudes resulted from across-the-board changes in all cohort and educational groups. The most racially conservative end of the spectrum was slightly eroded by increased educational attainment in the population, while the most racially liberal position was somewhat advanced by cohort replacement. In the final analysis, the normative perspective demonstrated the greater potential for applications to other, more complex, configurations of tolerance.
Following the work of Blumer (1958), I extend and test a theory of prejudice based on perceived threats to dominant racial or national groups by subordinate groups. Perceived threat is hypothesized to be a function of economic conditions and of the size of the subordinate group relative to the dominant group. I test the group-threat theory using a multilevel model that combines population data with survey results on attitudes towards immigrants and racial minorities from Eurobarometer Survey 30. "Group threat" explains most of the variation in average prejudice scores across the 12 countries in the sample and has a small but statistically significant effect on the influence of certain individual-level variables on prejudice. These results demonstrate the importance of perceived intergroup threat in the formation of prejudicial attitudes and suggest a re-interpretation of past findings on the relations between individual characteristics and expressions of prejudice.
Using data from the World Values Survey, this article examines a series of strongly held values and beliefs concerning the political and wider social world, on a cross-nationally comparative basis. Orientations such as political outlook, attitudes toward religion, political participation, social movements, women's roles, and satisfaction with life are examined. Tentative groupings of young people by country are attempted, revealing a commonality of values among the old and young in certain clusters of societies. Within these clusters, the relative magnitude of gender and age differences in attitudinal positioning are analyzed, to show how nationality and youth interact differently when examining different attitudes. It is found that young people do have common values cross-nationally, but only within certain supranational limits.
This article introduces the theoretical approaches of contact, group conflict, and symbolic prejudice to explain levels of
exclusionary feelings toward a relatively new minority in the West European context, the immigrant. The findings indicate
that even after controls for perceived threat are included in the model, intimate contact with members of minority groups
in the form of friendships can reduce levels of willingness to expel legal immigrants from the country. A contextual variable,
level of immigration to the country, is also introduced into the model because it is likely that this variable affects both
threat perception and exclusionary feelings. While context does not seem to directly affect levels of willingness to expel
or include immigrants in the society, it does have a rather powerful impact on perceived threat. Perhaps even more importantly,
the findings suggest that contact mediates the effect of the environment, helping to produce lower levels of threat perception
in contexts of high immigration.
The research examines the extent to which attitudes toward foreigners vary across European countries. Using data from the European Social Survey for 21 countries the analysis reveals that foreigners' impact on society is viewed in most countries in negative rather in positive terms. The negative views are most pronounced with regard to foreigners' impact on crime and least pronounced with regard to foreigners' impact on culture. Multi-level regression analysis demonstrates that the negative views tend to be more pronounced among individuals who are socially and economically vulnerable and among individuals who hold conservative political ideologies. The analysis also reveals that negative attitudes toward foreigners tend to be more pronounced in countries characterized by large proportions of foreigners, where economic conditions are less prosperous, and where support for right-wing political parties is more prevalent. The analysis shows that inflated perception of the size of the foreign population is likely to increase negative views toward foreigners and to mediate the relations between actual size and attitudes toward foreigners' impact on society. The findings are presented and discussed in light of sociological theories on individuals and structural sources of public attitudes toward out-group populations and on the role of perceptions in shaping such attitudes.
Comparative European research has established that public opposition to immigration is widespread and politically important. However, most existing research has suffered from a serious methodological shortcoming: it employs aggregate measures of attitudes to immigrants, which do not distinguish between different migrant groups. This paper corrects this shortcoming by examining disaggregated British attitudes to migration from seven different regions. I find evidence for a consistent hierarchy of preferences between immigrant groups, with white and culturally more proximate immigrant groups less opposed than non-white and culturally more distinct immigrants. The differences in attitudes to the various migrant groups are very large, calling into question the reliability of analyses which employ aggregate measures of attitudes to immigration. Both total opposition to migration and discrimination between migrant groups decline during the period examined. This is the result of large generational differences in attitudes to immigrants, which are in turn the consequence of cohort differences in education levels, ethnic diversity and, in particular, value orientations. Younger Britons, who are on average less authoritarian and ethnocentric, oppose immigration less and regard different immigrant groups more equally.
Donald P. Green is assistant professor of political science, Yale University, New Haven CT 06520-3532.