ANTI-IMMIGRANT ATTITUDES IN A CHANGING EUROPE
Introduction
In recent decades, European societies have experienced unprecedented social change. In
particular, declining birth rates, aging populations, and increasing international migration
have altered the demographic composition of countries. Political and institutional
developments, such as EU enlargement and the increasing electoral success of extreme right
parties across Europe, have impacted the political landscape both in terms of new decisionmaking structures and shifts in policy focus. Also, the global recession and Euro zone crisis
have put considerable strain on European economies, with unemployment, debt, and
increasing labor market uncertainty directly impacting people’s lives. Although previous
research suggests that events such as these should affect attitudes towards immigrants, a
comprehensive analysis of this dynamic process does not exist. Indeed, changes in attitudes
towards immigrants have attracted limited attention in empirical research and therefore little
is known about the consequences of these developments for anti-immigrant attitudes in
Europe. Thus, in this novel project, we adopt a comparative and dynamic approach not only to
explain how anti-immigrant attitudes change over time given specific circumstances, but also
to gain a more comprehensive understanding of anti-immigrant sentiment and the nature of
prejudice.
Our aim is to study and explain general and group-specific trends in anti-immigrant attitudes
by analyzing the effects of economic, demographic and political developments within as well
as across European countries. Due to recent improvements in data availability and innovation
in multilevel statistical models, we can employ the cross-time and cross-country approach
required to examine how anti-immigrant attitudes develop over time given specific
circumstances. Given our project will be the first to take a such broad and comprehensive
approach to explaining attitudinal trends, our results will allow us to reconsider dominant
explanations of anti-immigrant sentiment. Ultimately, we aspire to contribute to social theory
by developing a sociological explanation of prejudice that is both dynamic and takes into
account the unique features of immigration and social relations between foreign- and nativeborn. We take the leading theory in the field, group threat theory, and its limited discussion on
attitudinal change, as our point of departure. Testing the theory dynamically, in another
context than it was originally developed, will allow us to either refine the theory or develop
new theoretical propositions that will greatly improve our understanding of anti-immigrant
attitudes. Moreover, a better theory has predictive power; thus, policy makers may use our
findings to improve conditions in their respective countries.
Theoretical background
The expectation that contextual circumstances may influence how anti-immigrant attitudes
evolve over time is based on group threat theory (Blumer 1958). According to this theory,
prejudice is a response to a perceived threat from an out-group, due to intergroup competition
for scarce resources like political power, jobs, or welfare benefits. In contrast with earlier
theories of prejudice, where attitudes are thought to originate from innate dispositions,
personality types, and individual experiences, group threat theory sees prejudice as a social
phenomenon, dependent on the nature of social relations between different groups. Thus,
when members of the majority group perceive a threat to their collective, dominant social
position, feelings of fear and anger manifest as prejudice towards the minority. In previous
research, the relative size of the minority population has been the most consistent measure of
group threat (Quillian 2006). More recently, research shows that other contextual factors
increase or mitigate feelings of threat and thereby either add to or reduce prejudicial attitudes
(Meuleman et al. 2009). However, the impact of contextual circumstances is not necessarily
equal across the majority population as the level of threat or perceived competition
experienced by individuals depends on their location in the social structure (Blalock 1967).
Group threat theory is the dominant if not undisputed theoretical framework for explaining
prejudice. The theory is consistently used to explain prejudicial attitudes in cross-sectional
research, and empirical analyses based on this theory have yielded a number of important
findings concerning the effect of context on attitudes (e.g. Quillian 1995; Semyonov et al.
2006; Scheepers et al. 2002). Nevertheless, there has been limited development of the theory
since it was first proposed 60 years ago. This is especially problematic given it is currently
used to explain a phenomenon that is dynamic, while the theory in its original formulation is
not a dynamic theory. Indeed, group threat theory gives little indication of what happens to
prejudicial attitudes over time—and why. For example, the theory provides an account of
when prejudice should arise, but it is unclear if these attitudes are born from competition
between groups or merely made manifest due to perceived threat. More importantly, it is
unclear what happens if the perceived competition between groups decreases. Do attitudes
change—as in become qualitatively different—or is prejudice more likely to persist regardless
of social relations between groups?
While it is unfortunate that the dominant theoretical framework does not adequately account
for change, it is not that surprising given the circumstances surrounding its development.
Although its theoretical propositions refer to groups in the abstract, group threat theory was
originally developed in order to explain race relations between the white majority and black
minority in the United States. These particular circumstances differ from contemporary
immigration to Europe and therefore limit its ability to explain reactions to immigration.
African-Americans share the same language, religion, and national culture as the white
majority in the US (Pettigrew 1998), and their citizenship is undisputed (Landes 1955). Thus,
African-Americans do not constitute a distinct “other” in the same sense as immigrants, an
ethnically diverse population, whose belongingness is contested and legal status varies.
Moreover, there was never the expectation that the relative size of the African-American
population would grow. Instead, internal migration fuels changes in the relative size of the
white and black populations in neighborhoods, cities, and states, which differs fundamentally
from the phenomenon of immigration, where theoretically, the number of potential
immigrants is always increasing. Indeed, immigration itself is a dynamic phenomenon.
Therefore, we contend that group threat theory must be developed in order to explain both
attitudes towards immigrants and attitudinal change. Although the theory’s scope conditions
were never made explicit, the time and place of its formulation may limit its explanatory
power to attitudes based on social relations between a majority population and a historic,
national minority. Further, empirical evidence lends support to our claim; empirical research
on attitudes towards immigrants produces inconsistent findings in regards to the theory’s
dominant prediction—that the relative size of the minority population is related to levels of
prejudice among the majority population (Blalock 1967). A recent review of cross-national
research on anti-immigrant sentiment suggests a weak relationship between the size of an
immigrant out-group and attitudes (Ceobanu and Escandell 2010:322).
This project’s focus on change in attitudes, over time and within and between countries,
provides unique opportunities to test group threat theory in a more comprehensive and
dynamic way. We will build on previous research to develop new theoretical propositions and
empirical analyses to describe changes in anti-immigrant attitudes and, most importantly, to
explain these changes. Through this process, we expect to refine group threat theory or
develop a new sociological theory of prejudice, thereby advancing an alternative explanation
of anti-immigrant sentiment and attitudinal change.
Explaining attitudinal change
In this project, we focus our empirical analyses on attitudinal change. While previous
research has explored individual (Hello et al. 2002; Kunovich, 2004) and contextual (Hjerm
2009; Quillian 1995) determinants of anti-immigrant attitudes, attitudinal change has received
significantly less attention. Thus, previous studies on anti-immigrant attitudes are limited in
their ability to account for change in three main ways: First, cross-national research has either
focused on one time period (Schneider 2008) or analyzed attitudes in different time periods
(Semyonov et al. 2006), which is not the same thing as explaining change in the level of antiimmigrant attitudes.
Second, the few recent studies that do attempt to explain changes in attitudes towards
immigrants lack a comparative perspective as they focus on attitudinal change within one
country (e.g. Coenders & Scheepers 2008; Schwadel and Garneau 2014; Wilkes & CorrigallBrown 2011). Considering that Meuleman et al. (2009) find that changes in prejudice vary
across European countries (2002-2007), results from single country analyses may not be
generalizable (Results from our preliminary analyses also imply this.). Nevertheless, the vast
majority of previous research on prejudice comes from analyses of American attitudes, with a
focus on white Americans’ attitudes (Bobo & Kluegel 1993; Quillian 2006). As previously
mentioned, the findings from these studies may not be generalizable to attitudes towards
immigrants in the European context given the unique historical circumstances surrounding
black-white relations in the United States.
Third, previous research has ignored that societal change, such as economic recessions or
demographic shifts, may actually impact social groups differently. Indeed, within-country
variation in attitudinal change may effectively cancel each other out when measured only at
the aggregate level. Both theoretical understandings (Blalock 1967; Blumer 1958) as well
empirical evidence (e.g. Hjerm & Nagayoshi 2010) have taught us that the same threat (e.g., a
large recession or anti-immigrant political rhetoric) have different consequences for different
groups of people depending on their vulnerability and location in the social structure.
Nonetheless, previous studies of change in anti-immigrant attitudes have failed to account for
the possibility that change in such attitudes due to contextual circumstances may vary across
social groups within the same country.
Project description
We will analyze both attitudes regarding immigration (i.e., opinions about whether or not
immigration is good or bad for a country) and, importantly, opinions about immigrants
themselves. The latter is often seen as more indicative of prejudice, yet both types of
questions have been validated in previous research. Analyzing the impact of societal change
on change in these attitudes enables us to not only contribute to scientific knowledge about
the phenomenon but also allows us to develop further a theory to explain it. As a point of
departure, we rely on insights from group threat theory and previous empirical research on
contextual factors’ impact on anti-immigrant attitudes to derive hypotheses about the effects
of social forces that are economic, political, and demographic. If changing conditions in
Europe, which theoretically should contribute to competition between native and foreign
populations, are not systematically related to increases or decreases in levels of antiimmigrant sentiment within countries or between countries, then group threat theory must be
refined or reconsidered altogether. In the following sections we summarize the broad types of
contexts that should theoretically affect attitudes. For each, we provide examples of the types
of hypotheses we will test, although this list is not exhaustive due to the complexity of the
project.
Economic conditions: In theory, a poor economy intensifies competition between groups over
scarce resources, thereby increasing native resentment of immigrants (Semyonov et al. 2006).
Focusing on economic changes gives us a unique opportunity to study the effects of the recent
economic crisis. We ask, for example, how trends in anti-immigrant attitudes relate to changes
in unemployment, GDP, and inequality. Moreover, we expect the impact of economic
conditions on attitudes to vary across social strata. For example, given that natives in lower
socio-economic positions tend to occupy more vulnerable positions in the labor market, where
they, to a larger extent than natives with higher socio-economic status, compete with
immigrants for jobs, we hypothesize that changing unemployment levels will be particularly
decisive for their attitudes. More specifically, we expect natives in lower socio-economic
positions to express more anti-immigrant sentiment in times of economic recession than high
SES natives with secure labor market positions. Given that the global crisis has not affected
all European countries equally, our analyses will also permit us to assess whether such
patterns are consistent across countries. If not, can these differences be explained by other
features of countries, such as variation in the skill-level of the immigrant population?
Political context: Previous research suggests that a negative political climate should increase
anti-immigrant sentiment (Bohman 2011; Hopkins 2010) as political rhetoric makes the
presence of foreigners salient and activates feelings of economic, political, and/or cultural
threat. We ask, therefore, if recent political developments, such as the rise of the extreme right
or the broader politicization of immigration, have impacted native Europeans’ views of
immigrants. Similar to our hypotheses about the impact of economic change on attitudes, we
posit that changes in the political climate hold greater consequence for particular social
groups. Therefore, we ask whether different levels of educational attainment or various
ideological orientations make one more or less susceptible to changes in the political context.
We also test hypotheses about the effects of changes in national immigration and integration
policies on anti-immigrant sentiment. Variation in the exclusivity or inclusivity of policies
may merely reflect national levels of anti-immigrant sentiment or it may mitigate the threat
that immigrants pose to native interests. For example, do policies that exclude immigrants
from welfare state benefits increase or decrease negative attitudes towards foreigners?
Previous research shows that expanding political opportunities for minorities give rise to
prejudice (Olzak 1992) but institutional discrimination may also legitimize negative attitudes
and beliefs (Sidanius & Pratto 1999).
Demographic composition: To the extent that a large minority population implies higher
levels of competition, group threat theory further expects a strong relationship between the
size of the immigrant population and individuals’ attitudes (Blalock 1967). However,
inconsistent findings in the European context (Hello et al. 2002; Hjerm 2007; Schlueter &
Wagner 2008) suggest that other demographic features might be more important in regard to
the level of threat. Thus, we assess the impact of immigration rates as well as changes in the
labor market participation rates and ethnic composition of the foreign-born born population
on anti-immigrant attitudes. As with economic changes we know that certain vulnerable
groups (i.e., the unemployed) are more likely to be threatened by the immigrant population.
Thus, we assess whether the effect of demographic change on anti-immigrant sentiment varies
by socioeconomic status.
Moreover, we expect that different economic, political and demographic conditions interact in
generating certain attitudes, and that within-country changes vary depending on these
contextual circumstances. For instance, we hypothesize that an increase in unemployment in a
country with relatively low unemployment should trigger group threat and anti-immigrant
attitudes, while an increase in the unemployment rate in a country with chronically high
unemployment may not.
Data and method
Compared to previous research that explores the context-attitude relationship synchronously,
our approach allows for a more thorough examination of the dynamics involved and will
provide better empirical grounds for theoretical development. We use multi-level models
(Hox 2010), which are appropriate for analyzing the relationship between individuals and
society, and are often used to test contextual explanations of exclusionary attitudes towards
out-groups. For the purpose of our project, we will fit three-level models to the data where
individuals (level-1 units) are nested within years (level-2 units) that are nested within
countries (level-3 units). To separate the effect of societal changes from any cross-sectional
associations, we will center independent variables on group means and subtract values from
the raw scores. As demonstrated by Fairbrother (2012), this procedure generates two
variables, which included together in the analysis, enables the study of “between” and
“within” effects respectively. As previous research has focused either on general country
trends (Coenders, et al. 2008; Wilkes & Corrigall-Brown 2011) or group differences at a
particular point in time (Scheepers et al. 2002; Hjerm & Nagayoshi 2011), our approach will
make a significant contribution to the study of anti-immigrant attitudes.
This project relies on multiple sources of data. For our measures of anti-immigrant sentiment
and other individual level variables, we utilize high quality survey indicators that are
comparable across countries and across time. While the previous lack of such data represents
a major reason why anti-immigrant attitudes seldom are studied in a longitudinal or crossnational perspective, recent improvements in data availability allow us to expand both the
time frame and increase the number of countries included in our analyses. We will primarily
use the European Social Survey (ESS), a comprehensive, biennial multi-country survey that
started 2002 and that covers over 30 European countries. Each round includes a set of
variables measuring individuals’ attitudes towards immigrants as well as other attitudinal,
behavioral, and demographic information. At the start of the project, we will have access to 6
rounds of ESS: 2002, 2004, 2006, 2008, 2010, and 2012. Additionally, survey data for 2014
will be available in September 2015. Combining these data sets will allow us to examine
attitudinal change over a twelve-year period. Moreover, ESS 2002 and ESS 2014 contain a
specific module on immigration, which further enhances our ability to analyze attitudinal
change over time. For example, it provides us with the possibility to compare more complex
casual models (using structural equation modeling) between time periods, like the changes in
the effect of contact with immigrants on prejudice given different contextual settings. To
further expand the time frame, we will also use data from the International Social Survey
Programme (ISSP), a comprehensive survey administrated annually in approximately 40
countries—the majority of which is European. The “National Identity Module,” which
captures attitudes towards immigrants, is available for 1995, 2003 and 2013. Individual data is
non-identifiable and available for public use.
In order to explain general and group specific trends in anti-immigrant attitudes, we need high
quality contextual data that captures the economic, political, and demographic make-up of
countries. While previous research has focused primarily on the size of the non-Western
population (Schneider 2008) or non-EU population (Semyonov et al. 2006), we intend to use
more detailed indicators of the foreign-born population, gathered from the Organization for
Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), Eurostat, and countries’ national census
bureaus. For instance, we plan to create a measure that captures the size of largest immigrant
group in each country, as anti-immigrant rhetoric often focuses on populations from a
particular country of origin. Moreover, attitudes towards immigrants may also depend on the
size of the second-generation; thus we will also incorporate far more comprehensive measures
in to our analysis. Economic indicators, such as GDP per capita and employment rates for
native- and foreign-born, will also come from OECD, Eurostat, and national censes. To
capture the political climate of a country, we will use data from two sources. Data from the
Comparative Manifesto Project (Klingemann et al. 2006) will allow us to measure political
parties’ stances on immigration, and we rely on the European Election Database (EED) to
measure the electoral success of anti-immigrant political parties. To control for other
potentially important country-level variables, like religion (e.g. Bohman and Hjerm 2013) and
redistribution, we rely on data from additional sources such as the Quality of Government
Institute (Theorell et al. 2011) and the Religion and State Project (Fox 2004).
Organization, time frame, and previous contribution to the field
The project will be led by Professor Mikael Hjerm in cooperation with PhD Maureen Eger
and soon-to-be PhD Andrea Bohman (dissertation defense date May 23, 2014) at the
Department of Sociology, Umeå University. All three applicants are very familiar with the
datasets described in this proposal and publish extensively within this research area. Hjerm
has been the National Coordinator for ESS since the start in 2002 and has also been involved
as an expert in creating the ISSP modules in 2003 and 2013 that will be used in the project.
Hjerm is employed as professor and Eger currently as a postdoctoral researcher. The project
will be set within CORS (Comparative Research Center Sweden), a newly founded
framework for comparative survey research based at the Department of Sociology and the
Department of Cultural Geography at Umeå University. CORS is co-directed by Professor
Mikael Hjerm, Associate Professor Mikael Stattin, and Professor Gunnar Malmberg and aims
to strengthen comparative research primarily based on SHARE (lead by Malmberg and
Stattin), ESS (lead by Hjerm) and ISSP (lead by Professor Jonas Edlund). Beyond the
aforementioned setting, we also cooperate with key researchers in the field in the Netherlands
and the USA.
Although this project, with its emphasis on change, is original and innovative, we build on
insights from previous research in this area—including our own. Findings from our previous
work are consistent with our expectations that contextual circumstances, which are influenced
by contemporary trends in European societies, are important determinants of anti-immigrant
attitudes. In previous studies, we have examined the relative importance of the size of the
migrant population (Hjerm, 2007; 2009) the role of anti-immigrant rhetoric by political parties
(Bohman, 2013) as well as the effect of religious contexts (Bohman and Hjerm; 2013) on antiimmigrant attitudes. Moreover, in support of the expectation that groups in society respond
differently to contextual changes, we find evidence that social groups diverge in how they
react to variation in the composition of the immigrant population (Hjerm & Nagayoshi 2010).
In specifying our models of change, we draw on our extensive knowledge of multi-level
modeling techniques in combination with studies in other areas that utilize true longitudinal
data (e.g., Danell & Hjerm 2012, 2013).
In developing this project, we also make use of knowledge gleaned from our previous, related
research. For example, we have analyzed the emergence of nationalism in Europe (e.g. Hjerm
and Schnabel, 2010; 2014; Berg and Hjerm, 2010) and examined how the level of AntiSemitism varies across religious groups in Sweden (Hjerm et al. 2013, under review). We also
find evidence that reactions to immigration matter for other political attitudes and behavior,
such as voting for a radical right party (Eger & Valdez, under review) and support for the
national welfare state (Eger 2010; Eger, under review; Eger & Breznau, under review; Kulin,
Eger, & Hjerm, under review), which underscores the necessity of better understanding
changes in levels of anti-immigrant sentiment across European countries.
The proposed research is planned as a four-year project. The cost of the project is only related
to salaries except minor costs for conference participations, open access publications, etc. All
data, except the last wave of ESS, are available at the start of the project and all participants
have extensive experience within the field of research, both theoretically and
methodologically. Thus, we expect to start producing scientific texts (primarily peer-reviewed
journal articles) soon after start of the project. We will also disseminate our findings to the
public as we have done previously in popular science magazines (e.g., Bohman, Eger, &
Hjerm, 2013a; Bohman, Eger, & Hjerm, 2013b), public lectures (Eger; Hjerm), and media
interviews (Hjerm).
Significance
Our proposed research, which takes a comprehensive and uniquely dynamic perspective, will
increase our understanding of anti-immigrant attitudes under very specific conditions—
namely, the combination of economic recession with the rise of the radical right and
increasing ethnic heterogeneity within European countries. These are important empirical
questions in their own right. However, our approach also enables us to analyze and explain
anti-immigrant attitudes over time—something previous research has not done. Indeed,
previous data limitations meant we lacked the empirical basis to approach the question of
attitudinal change. With this project, we aim to fill this significant gap.
Analyzing the impact of societal change on change in these attitudes enables us to not only
contribute to scientific knowledge about the phenomenon but also allow us to develop further
a theory to explain it. This is critical as the dominant theoretical framework’s ability to
explain anti-immigrant sentiment and attitudinal change is limited. Developing a theory that
can account for the dynamic features of European societies is important, because a theory
with greater explanatory power also has increased predictive power. Given the timeliness and
relevance of this research, our findings should be of interest to policy makers across the
European Union and greater Europe.
Current rates of international migration suggest European countries will become increasingly
multiethnic; thus, research of this type is vital as anti-immigrant sentiment is directed at and
experienced by a growing part of the population. Besides a country’s immigration,
citizenship, and welfare state policies, anti-immigrant sentiment is arguably one of the most
important factors that makes or unmakes integration of newcomers into society. At the very
least, such attitudes undermine the interpersonal/intergroup trust that forms the basis of liberal
democracies. A better understanding of anti-immigrant attitudes will certainly enhance
possibilities for greater social and economic integration of foreign-born populations into
European societies.
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