Anti-EU Backlash from Below or Above? Public Opinion in Central and Eastern Europe Prior to the 2015 Migration Crisis

Relations between Brussels and Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) worsened during and after the 2015 migration crisis. In order to see to what extent CEE citizens contributed to and/or resonated with this new state of affairs, this paper investigates public opinion before the migration crisis in seven CEE EU Member States. We inquire whether the main issues of the rift (CEE political elites’ opposition to following EU decisions and immigration and their emphasis on sovereignism, nationalism, Christian Europe and historical traumas) could also be traced to public stances towards these issues before the migration crisis. We used the ISSP National Identity module conducted in 2013 and 2014 in the Czech Republic, Estonia, Croatia, Hungary, Lithuania, Latvia and Slovenia. The results show that opposition to EU supranationalism was not linked to ethnic nationalism and religious identity (except in Hungary). Contrary to political elites, who emphasised the cultural threat posed by migration, public opinion was more concerned with the economic threat. Moreover, the perception of cultural threat was not linked to opposing EU supranationalism in any of the countries. However, particularly support for sovereignism (in almost all the countries), but also pride in national history (in some countries) correlated negatively with support for EU supranationalism. The results suggest that political elites can bypass public opinion to construct an anti-EU climate, however not out of thin air. The conditions for such a process were present in Hungary with its emerging transnational cleavage, which shows the importance of cleavages in studying Euroscepticism.

United or divided in diversity? The heterogeneous effects of ethnic diversity on European and national identities

In this article, we argue that the size and cultural proximity of immigrant populations in people's residential surroundings shape national and European identities. This means that the type of migrant population activates cultural threat perceptions and opportunities for contact to varying degrees. Geocoded survey data from the Netherlands suggests that large non-Western immigrant shares are associated with more exclusive national identities, while mixed contexts with Western and non-Western populations show more inclusive identities. These results suggest that highly diverse areas with mixed immigrant populations hold a potential for more tolerance. In contrast, exclusive national identities become strongly pronounced under the presence of sizeable culturally distant immigrant groups.

Can community involvement policies mitigate NIMBYism and local opposition to asylum seeker centres?

Local governments have to take authoritative decisions about the placement of controversial but necessary facilities such as Asylum Seeker Centres (ASCs). Opposition from local residents against such facilities is often considered to be an expression of NIMBYism. This article explores whether a policy of community involvement addressing the underlying reasons for local opposition can mitigate such opposition towards an ASC. It uses a mixed methods approach combining survey data and semi-structured interviews among neighbourhood residents about an ASC in Utrecht. Local opposition is associated with experiences of economic competition and cultural threat. The policy strategy did not moderate these effects. Those who became involved were a selective group of locals who were largely already accepting of the centre and its inhabitants and involvement was often incidental. However, contact between asylum seekers and neighbours developing within and beyond the ASC mediated the effect of cultural threat – confirming Allport’s contact hypothesis.

Transpacific Maladies

This article centers on cultures of anxiety and threat across the Pacific. Threat is an especially useful category for writing about a “rising” China, which is often imagined both as a site of localized environmental ruination that prefigures imminent global collapse and as a source of contamination that easily crosses national borders. Particularly in the global North, China has become a focal point for ecoanxieties that are shadowed by longer histories of perceived racial and cultural threat. This article confronts the idea of China as threat by investigating representational cultures across the Pacific. It focuses on a series of recent events mediated through textual and visual forms that unfold as a contemporary ethical drama between species—the human and the pig: the 2009 swine flu pandemic, a 2013 episode in which thousands of pig carcasses were found floating in Shanghai’s Huangpu River, and the 2013 purchase of Smithfield Foods, one of America’s biggest pork producers, by the Chinese conglomerate Shuanghui. To understand the movement between the representation of threat and the violent responses that flare up in its wake, one must pay attention not only to quantifiable risks but also to the cultural forms that characterize anxiety in the Anthropocene. Ultimately, what is at stake is not just geopolitical relations or public health but also the lives and deaths of the animals that are so often slaughtered to protect humans.

Immigrants, inclusion, and the role of hard work: Exploring anti-immigrant attitudes among young people in Britain

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.

The Contest on Mount Carmel (1 Kings 18:19–40) as a Reflection of a Religious-Cultural Threat

The article suggests that the story of the contest on Mount Carmel (1 Kgs 18:19–40) is a complete literary unit that was written by a single author in the early Persian period and inserted into the deuteronomistic story-cycle of Elijah. The story is entirely legendary and reflects the polemic of a devotee of YHWH against the contemporaneous spread of the Phoenician cult and culture. The attachment of the story to Mount Carmel may reflect the occasion of the establishment of a Tyrian/Sidonian temple on one of the mountain’s peaks, but this hypothesis cannot be verified. The story conveys a clear religious message of the absolute power of YHWH and the worthlessness of all other gods – in particular the Phoenician God Ba‘al – and of the fallacy of the belief in his divine power.

In Response to Cultural Threat: Cultural Self-Awareness on Collective Movement Participation

This study investigated the role of cultural self-awareness, an individual’s awareness of culture’s influence on the self, on collective movement participation. We posited that individuals who were highly aware of their culture’s influence on them would more likely perceive self-relevance of cultural circumstances. In the context of a cultural threat, such perception of self-relevance would lead to psychological and behavioral reactions that affirm one’s collective identity. We tested our predictions during a collective political movement in Hong Kong. Results showed that among Hong Kong university students, the higher the cultural self-awareness, the more they participated in the collective movement. The relationship was mediated by increased pride in Hong Kong and a more exclusive Hong Kong identity. The findings highlighted the importance of metacognitive reflection of the self in collective processes.

Language Policy and Girls’ Education in Francophone West and Central Africa

Across Africa, weak states, poverty, high fertility, and early marriage pose barriers to girls’ schooling. Francophone West and Central Africa registers the continent’s lowest female literacy rates, in part because it inherited a weak educational infrastructure at independence, and is home to Muslim communities that initially rejected schools of Christian origin. Policies insisting on exclusively French-medium instruction have also been an obstacle to girls’ schooling. Such schooling was perceived as preparation for state employment not expected of females. Moreover, French-medium schools were perceived as a cultural threat even as girls were central to communities’ efforts to resist assimilation.