Value Shift: Immigration Attitudes and the Sociocultural Divide

Author(s):  
Caroline Marie Lancaster

Abstract The sociocultural divide in Western Europe is increasingly focused on issues of national identity, namely immigration. It is commonly assumed that opponents of immigration also exhibit conservatism on other sociocultural issues. Yet recent research suggests that general social conservatism is declining in the region. Do immigration attitudes fit squarely into the sociocultural dimension? Using survey data from eleven West European countries, as well as a Dutch household panel from 2007–2019, this study finds that gender attitudes, a key sociocultural issue, are subject to change through both cohort and life cycle effects, while immigration attitudes are stable over the course of the panel and exhibit little variation across cohorts. Immigration attitudes also appear to be immune to period effects resulting from the 2015 refugee crisis. Further, those born during and after the ‘post-materialist revolution’ have weakened associations between these two attitudes, while older individuals' attitudes are strongly correlated. The combination of gender egalitarianism and anti-immigrant sentiment may become increasingly common as acceptance of the former spreads, while immigration remains a hotly contested issue.

2018 ◽  
Vol 113 (1) ◽  
pp. 254-263 ◽  
Author(s):  
CHARLOTTE CAVAILLE ◽  
JOHN MARSHALL

Low levels of education are a powerful predictor of anti-immigration sentiment. However, there is little consensus on the interpretation of this correlation: is it causal or is it an artifact of selection bias? We address this question by exploiting six major compulsory schooling reforms in five Western European countries—Denmark, France, Great Britain, the Netherlands, and Sweden—that have recently experienced politically influential anti-immigration movements. On average, we find that compelling students to remain in secondary school for at least an additional year decreases anti-immigration attitudes later in life. Instrumental variable estimates demonstrate that, among such compliers, an additional year of secondary schooling substantially reduces the probability of opposing immigration, believing that immigration erodes a country’s quality of life, and feeling close to far-right anti-immigration parties. These results suggest that rising post-war educational attainment has mitigated the rise of anti-immigration movements. We discuss the mechanisms and implications for future research examining anti-immigration sentiment.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter Turchin ◽  
Andrey Korotayev

This article revisits the prediction, made in 2010, that the 2010–2020 decade would likely be a period of growing instability in the United States and Western Europe (Turchin 2010). This prediction was based on a computational model that quantified in the USA such structural-demographic forces for instability as popular immiseration, intraelite competition, and state weakness prior to 2010. Using these trends as inputs, the model calculated and projected forward in time the Political Stress Index, which in the past was strongly correlated with socio-political instability. Ortmans et al. (2017) conducted a similar structural-demographic study for the United Kingdom and obtained similar results. Here we use the Cross-National Time-Series Data Archive for the US, UK, and Western European countries to assess these structural-demographic predictions. We find that such measures of socio-political instability as anti-government demonstrations and riots increased dramatically during the 2010–2020 decade in all of these countries.


Author(s):  
Bojana Kocijan ◽  
Marko Kukec

AbstractThis article calls for greater attention to immigration attitudes of members of national parliaments (MPs) who absent harmonized immigration policy at the EU level remain the chief decision-makers and are thus responsible for swift government reaction to large influx of immigrants as witnessed in summer 2015 and spring 2020. Against this background, attitudes of MPs toward non-EU immigrants can be highly informative for understanding the foundation and direction of future immigration policy reforms. Although knowledge of MPs immigration attitudes is seemingly important, studies interested in this topic remain scarce. To test the relative importance of identity and economic aspects of MPs' immigration attitudes, this study adopts few well-established theoretical approaches from citizen-level research. Our data come from an MP survey that was administered in 11 Western and Eastern European countries in late 2014 as part of the European National Elites and the Crisis project. Our results suggest that social identity (religiosity) along with political ideology rather than economic concerns drive MPs' immigration attitudes. In addition, we find that in Eastern Europe immigration is only a light force behind political competition unlike in Western Europe, while economic left in Eastern Europe is more anti-immigrant than in Western Europe.


1995 ◽  
Vol 23 (2) ◽  
pp. 137-154 ◽  
Author(s):  
M. Verkuyten ◽  
K. Masson

In Western Europe the concept of ‘new racism’ has emerged. The idea of the incompatibility of different cultures is central to this concept, and this idea leads to the abnormalization and exclusion of ethnic minority groups. This paper studies this form of ethnic prejudice and several of its correlates among ethnic majority and minority youth. The results show, first, that majority youth were more prejudiced than minority youth. Second, that among majority youth prejudice correlated positively with personal self-esteem as well as with self-esteem as an ethnic group member, whereas among minority youth a negative association was found. Third, among majority youth positive ingroup evaluation in combination with prejudice was found, whereas among minority youth a more positive ingroup evaluation was associated with less prejudice. Fourth, among majority youth prejudice was very strongly correlated with a measure of social distance, with rate of voluntary inter-ethnic contacts, and with level of outgroup formation. Among minority youth these associations were much weaker.


2021 ◽  
pp. 146511652098890
Author(s):  
Wouter van der Brug ◽  
Eelco Harteveld

What was the impact of the 2014–2016 refugee crisis on immigration attitudes and national identification in Europe? Several studies show that radical right parties benefitted electorally from the refugee crisis, but research also shows that anti-immigration attitudes did not increase. We hypothesize that the refugee crisis affected right-wing citizens differently than left-wing citizens. We test this hypothesis by combining individual level survey data (from five Eurobarometer waves in the 2014–2016 period) with country level statistics on the asylum applications in 28 EU member states. In Western Europe, we find that increases in the number of asylum applications lead to a polarization of attitudes towards immigrants between left- and right-leaning citizens. In the Southern European ‘arrival countries’ and in Central-Eastern Europe we find no significant effects. Nationalistic attitudes are also not affected significantly.


2021 ◽  
pp. 000312242110335
Author(s):  
William J. Scarborough ◽  
Joanna R. Pepin ◽  
Danny L. Lambouths ◽  
Ronald Kwon ◽  
Ronaldo Monasterio

Intersectionality scholars have long identified dynamic configurations of race and gender ideologies. Yet, survey research on racial and gender attitudes tends to treat these components as independent. We apply latent class analysis to a set of racial and gender attitude items from the General Social Survey (1977 to 2018) to identify four configurations of individuals’ simultaneous views on race and gender. Two of these configurations hold unified progressive or regressive racial and gender attitudes. The other two formations have discordant racial and gender attitudes, where progressive views on one aspect combine with regressive views on the other. In the majority of survey years, the most commonly held configuration endorsed gender equality but espoused new racialist views that attributed racial disparities to cultural deficiencies. This perspective has become increasingly common since 1977 and is most prevalent among White women and White men, likely due to racial-group interest. Black women and Black men, in contrast, are more likely to embrace progressive racial and gender attitudes. We argue that White men’s gender egalitarianism may be rooted in self-interest, aimed at acquiring resources through intimate relationships. In contrast, Black men adopt progressive racial and gender attitudes to form a necessary coalition with Black women to challenge racism.


2021 ◽  
pp. 115-144
Author(s):  
Erik R. Tillman

This chapter examines the relationship between authoritarianism and the likelihood of voting for populist radical right parties in Western Europe. Radical right parties share an ideology based around nativism, authoritarianism, and populism. This ideology appeals to high authoritarians because it promises tough measures to preserve social cohesion, so high authoritarians are more likely to vote for radical right parties. This prediction is tested using national election study data from a range of West European countries. The results show that high authoritarians are more likely to vote for radical right parties, but even more so if they have weaker attachments to the political mainstream. The final set of analyses examines whether economic anxieties or anti-immigration attitudes moderate this relationship. While economic anxieties matter little to radical right party support, high authoritarians who oppose immigration are more likely to vote for a radical right party. These findings build on existing research by providing a stronger explanation of previous findings linking anti-immigration attitudes or cultural anxieties to radical right party support.


2013 ◽  
Vol 107 (4) ◽  
pp. 644-662 ◽  
Author(s):  
JANA MORGAN ◽  
MELISSA BUICE

This article outlines three theoretical arguments—socialization, status discontent, and elite cues—that generate competing predictions about the way context shapes gender attitudes. Using hierarchical analysis, we assess the power of these arguments in Latin America, a region that manifests considerable variation on our central explanatory variables and thus offers important theoretical leverage. We find men's gender attitudes to be highly contingent on elite cues and susceptible to backlash effects in response to women's economic advancement. Also, where women lack national representation, distrust of government promotes support for female leadership as an alternative to the discredited (male) establishment. The analysis supports existing individual-level explanations of gender attitudes and demonstrates a connection between diffuse democratic values and gender egalitarianism. The findings suggest that recent advances for female politicians in Latin America may be susceptible to reversal, and they illuminate strategies for strengthening women's equality in the region.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
William Scarborough ◽  
Joanna R. Pepin ◽  
Danny Lambouths ◽  
Ronald Kwon ◽  
Ronaldo Monasterio

Intersectionality scholars have long identified dynamic configurations of race and gender ideologies. Yet, survey research on racial and gender attitudes has tended to treat these components as independent. We apply latent class analysis to a set of racial and gender attitude items from the General Social Survey (1977 — 2018) to identify four configurations of individuals’ simultaneous views on race and gender. Two of these configurations hold unified progressive or regressive racial and gender attitudes. Two additional formations have discordant racial and gender attitudes where progressive views on one aspect combine with regressive views on the other. In the majority of survey years, the most commonly held configuration endorsed gender equality but espoused new racialist views that attributed racial disparities to cultural deficiencies. This perspective has become increasingly common since 1977 and is most prevalent among White women and White men, likely due to racial-group interest. Black women and Black men, in contrast, are more likely to embrace progressive racial and gender attitudes. We argue that White men’s gender egalitarianism may be rooted in self-interest, aimed to acquire resources through intimate relationships. Among Black men, progressive racial and gender attitudes form a necessary coalition with Black women to challenge racism.


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