scholarly journals Does Downward Social Mobility Make People More Hostile Towards Immigrants?

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marii Paskov ◽  
Patrick Präg ◽  
Lindsay Richards

This study explores the relationships between intergenerational social class mobility and attitudes towards immigration. We interpret a failure to keep up with parental social class (i.e. downward mobility) as an indicator that individual’s status achievements lag behind expectations and contribute to subjective feelings of loss and decline. An innovative feature of this paper is that we investigate both whether individual’s mobility experience -- micro level -- and also whether opportunity structures -- mobility on a macro level -- are linked with attitudes towards immigration. In contexts with high downward-mobility, opportunities for moving up are limited and hence perceived economic decline and loss might lead to more hostility towards immigrants. By contrast, high upward mobility expands opportunities for all and as such might promote positive attitudes towards immigrants. We use the European Social Survey data (2002-10) and conduct analyses on 30 countries using diagonal reference models that allow the effects of individual mobility trajectory to be disentangled from origin status and destination status. Our results show that the working classes hold stronger anti-immigration attitudes and parental class continues to exert an effect on attitudes in adulthood even after accounting for individual’s own social class position. Being downwardly mobile from parental class does not appear to be associated with more hostility towards immigrants, except in a few European countries like Italy, Poland, and Greece. Our random-effects meta-regression models show, however, that people living in contexts of high downward mobility are more hostile towards immigrants compared to people in contexts with high upward mobility.

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Caspar Kaiser ◽  
Nhat An Trinh

In this study, we analyse the effects of social class on life satisfaction and develop a theoretical framework that shows how social class affects life satisfaction through five pathways. Informed by this framework, we estimate the direct effects of class destination and class origin, the effect of own intergenerational class mobility as well as the effects of others’ class position and mobility (so-called reference effects). To do so, we utilize European Social Survey (ESS) waves 1 to 5 (2002-2010). We obtain information on life satisfaction as well as destination and origin class for about 100,000 respondents in 32 European countries. Our mobility analyses are performed with diagonal reference models, which allow for the consistent estimation of mobility effects. We find: (1) Class destination consistently and strongly structures life satisfaction across Europe. (2) Own class mobility positively impacts life satisfaction, particularly in Eastern Europe. (3) Other’s class mobility has a strong negative effect on life satisfaction. Especially the latter finding points to the hitherto neglected importance of reference effects when considering the impact of social class onlife satisfaction.


2020 ◽  
pp. 003232172092277 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lauren McLaren ◽  
Anja Neundorf ◽  
Ian Paterson

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.


2020 ◽  
Vol 22 (12) ◽  
pp. 2188-2195
Author(s):  
Xiaozhao Yousef Yang

Abstract Introduction There is growing attention to social mobility’s impact on tobacco use, but few studies have differentiated the two conceptually distinct mechanisms through which changes in social class can affect tobacco smoking: the class status effect and the mobility effect. Aims and Methods I applied Diagonal Reference Modeling to smoking and heavy smoking among respondents of the 1991 China Health and Nutrition Survey who were revisited two decades later in 2011 (n = 3841, 49% male, baseline mean age was 38 years). I divided the sample into six social classes (non-employment, self-employed, owners, workers, farmers, and retirees) and measured social mobility by changes in income and occupational prestige. Results About 61.7% of men were smokers and those from the classes of workers, owners, and self-employees consumed more cigarettes compared to the unemployed, but women smokers (3.7%) tend to be from the lower classes (unemployed and farmers). Controlling for social class, each 1000 Yuan increase in annual income led to smoking 0.03 more cigarettes (p < .05) and 1% increase (p < .05) in the likelihood of heavy smoking among men, but the income effect is null for women. Upwardly mobile men (a 10-points surge in occupational prestige) smoked like their destination class (weight = 78%), whereas men with downward mobility were more similar to peers in the original class (weight = 60%). Conclusions Contrary to the social gradient in smoking in other industrial countries, higher class status and upward mobility are each associated with more smoking among Chinese men, but not among women. Implications Tobacco control policies should prioritize male smoking at workplaces and the instrumental purposes of using tobacco as gifts and social lubricant. Taxation may counter the surge in smoking brought by individuals’ income increase after upward mobility. Caution should be paid to women joining the similar social gradient in smoking as they gain foothold in the labor market.


2011 ◽  
Vol 16 (3) ◽  
pp. 28-41 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yaojun Li ◽  
Fiona Devine

This paper contributes to the ongoing debate on social mobility in contemporary Britain among economists and sociologists. Using the 1991 British Household Panel Survey and the 2005 General Household Survey, we focus on the mobility trajectories of male and female respondents aged 25-59. In terms of absolute mobility, we find somewhat unfavourable trends in upward mobility for men although long-term mobility from the working class into salariat positions is still in evidence. An increase in downward mobility is clearly evident. In relation to women, we find favourable trends in upward mobility and unchanging downward mobility over the fourteen-year time period. With regard to relative mobility, we find signs of greater fluidity in the overall pattern and declining advantages of the higher salariat origin for both men and women. We consider these findings in relation to the public debate on social mobility and the academic response and we note the different preoccupations of participants in the debate. We conclude by suggesting that the interdisciplinary debate between economists and sociologists has been fruitful although a recognition of similarities, and not simply differences in position, pushes knowledge and understanding forward.


2019 ◽  
Vol 26 (1) ◽  
pp. 107-120
Author(s):  
Carsten Strøby Jensen

How far does social class position influence the likelihood that employees will be members of a trade union? I use European Social Survey data to compare trade union membership of ‘working-class’ and ‘middle- and upper class’ employees in different European countries. Although the former dominate the trade unions in absolute numbers in most (but not all) countries, the likelihood that the latter will be members of a trade union is higher in most of the countries analysed.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nhat An Trinh ◽  
Erzsebet Bukodi

This study examines over-time trends in intergenerational class mobility based on cohorts of labour market entrants in Germany and the UK since the 1950s. We calculate absolute and relative mobility rates, separately for men and women, using the German Socio-Economic Panel (1984-2016), the UK Household Longitudinal Study (2009-2016), and the UK Labour Force Survey (2014-2017). Regarding absolute mobility, we find marked country differences in upward and downward rates. In Germany, downward mobility decreased, while upward mobility rose. In the UK, downward mobility increased, while upward mobility declined. We provide evidence that these differences can be linked to contrasting changes in the distribution of origin and destination classes. Regarding relative mobility, striking country similarities appear. For both countries, we observe increases in social fluidity for respondents entering the labour market during the 1950s and 1960s that cease to continue for cohorts thereafter. Comparisons between adjacent cohorts do not provide evidence that social fluidity follows cyclical developments of the economy or shorter-term volatilities in the labour market.


Uneven Odds ◽  
2018 ◽  
pp. 171-206
Author(s):  
Divya Vaid

This chapter brings out the influence of caste on social class mobility and analyses in detail the association between caste and social class in India. While theories of social change posit a decline in the impact of caste on social mobility over time, this chapter questions whether we see evidence of this at the national level. More crucially has the association between caste and class declined? And, has the relative importance of caste on achieveing a specific occupation, and hence social mobility, also declined overtime? In light of debates on affirmative action, this chapter asks whether certain castes find it harder to take advantage of upward class mobility chances, and conversely whether some castes are cushioned from downward mobility chances.


2018 ◽  
Vol 63 (7) ◽  
pp. 955-970
Author(s):  
Cristina Del Castillo ◽  
Alicia Blanco-González ◽  
Encarnación González-Vázquez

The current article studies the influence of attitudes toward immigration on state legitimacy. We analyzed the European Union countries that received the greatest immigrant inflows in 2014: Germany, France, Spain, and the United Kingdom, through data from the latest edition of the European Social Survey. Our results show that citizens with negative attitudes toward immigration consider their states to be less legitimate. Conversely, positive attitudes toward immigration are not associated with increased state legitimacy (except in Spain). Based on these findings, there is a clear need for communication strategies that provide information on the actual effects of immigration. In their absence, the political discourse on this matter will continue to be co-opted by power-grabbing actors.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ignacio Lago ◽  
Carlos Lago-Peñas

Abstract While there is a great deal of anecdotal evidence on the impact of soccer wins on attitudes toward immigrants and immigration, there is relatively little hard empirical evidence. It is expected that soccer stimulates more positive attitudes towards immigrants when it highlights immigration benefits rather than costs and increases exposure to famous members of an out-group. Individual-level data from the eight rounds of the European Social Survey (2002–16) in Spain and aggregate data from the Spanish professional soccer league, La Liga, were used to test the hypothesis that the more foreign players in the team of the club winning the corresponding season of Spain’s La Liga, the more favourable the views of immigrants in the club’s region in that year. The empirical evidence from linear and ordinal regression using different measures of opinions on immigration shows that soccer can affect attitudes toward immigrants and immigration.


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