Conceptions of National Identity and Ambivalence towards Immigration

Abstract

National identities are often conceived of as factors that lend structure and stability to citizens’ political opinions on issues such as immigration. While citizens who define national membership in ethno-cultural terms are less likely to support immigration, those with a civic conception are more likely to do so. The authors propose that defining national identity along both ethno-cultural and civic lines may give rise to conflicting considerations, leading people to experience ambivalence, implying that national identities may serve less as a stabilizing force than suggested by previous research. Findings from heterogeneous choice models and a unique survey experiment show that German citizens with mixed conceptions of national identity had more variable and more malleable opinions than individuals with ideal-type conceptions during the 2015/2016 European refugee crisis. The findings point to an identity-based source of ambivalence and extend current understandings of how people form attitudes towards immigration.

Conceptions of national identity, turnout and party preference: Evidence from Germany

“…Following Lindstam, Mader, and Schoen (2019), measures of the ethnocultural and civic dimensions were derived by estimating a two-dimensional exploratory structural equation model (ESEM) on the basis of the nine identity items. 6 ESEMs can be used to identify latent dimensions of thought as reflected in responses to survey items, uniting features of exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis (EFA/CFA).…”

Nationalism, Patriotism, and Support for the European Union

“…The two concepts are tightly aligned, underscoring the origins of national chauvinism in the perceived superiority of the nation's ethnic and religious majority. Empirically, ethnonationalism and traditional measures of national chauvinism have very similar effects reinforcing their conceptual overlap (Citrin, Reingold, et al, 1990; Citrin, Wong, et al, 2001; Hochman, Rajimna, & Schmidt, 2016; Lindstam, Matthias, & Harald, 2021; Schildkraut, 2011; Wong, 2010).…”

Tracing the development of nationalist attitudes in the EU

“…However, despite the forbidding portrait of national identity as a barrier to European integration, scholars have noted that some forms of national identifications may be compatible with accepting some levels of European integration. For example, a civic-based conceptualization of nationhood defines "group membership as a function of accepting certain political values and institutions" (Lindstam et al, 2021). This form of "constitutional patriotism" focuses on the "norms, the values and, more indirectly, the procedures of a liberal democratic constitution" (Mu¨ller, 2016: 1).…”

“…These range from the influence of political elites and the media coverage of events (Bruter, 2009;de Vreese and Boomgaarden, 2006;de Vries, 2018;Marks et al, 2006;Whitefield, 2016, 2019) and individuals' conceptions of civic and cultural identities (Bonikowski et al, 2019;McLaren, 2002). Analyses also point to the mobilizing influence of economic threats on identity (Fligstein et al, 2012;Foster and Frieden, 2017;Garry and Tilley, 2009) along with the galvanizing consequences of contemporary issues like the migration in 2015 (Downes and Loveless, 2018;Lindstam et al, 2021). From these perspectives, the ebb and flow of national identity results from issue dynamics that in the pre-Maastricht era favored economic themes but in the post-Maastricht years increasingly helped populist parties to frame European integration in ways that resonate with the national identities of European publics.…”