Does Islam play a role in anti-immigrant sentiment? An experimental approach

Race, Wealth and the Masking of Opposition to Immigrants in the Netherlands

“…Although speculative, it could be that racially different immigrants are associated with refugee immigration, which is plausibly more sympathetically perceived relative to racially similar immigrants who are associated with labour market competition. This work complements, to an extent, work in the US that has considered variation in attitudes towards Muslim and Christian immigrants (Creighton and Jamal, ). Specifically, religiously similar immigrants (i.e., Christians) were only identified as more tolerated when anonymity was not afforded.…”

“…Closely related to the topic of interest in this work, a social desirability bias has been revealed in the US for attitudes towards immigration policy/reform (Knoll, 2013a), nativism (Knoll, 2013b) and generally expressed anti‐immigrant sentiment (Janus, ; Creighton et al. ; Creighton and Jamal ). Beside normative expectations, researchers have also considered more general perspectives, e.g., reasoned action approach (Gordoni and Schmidt, ).…”

“…Research has noted a tendency to over‐report tolerance towards immigrants when expressing sentiment via a standard survey (Creighton and Jamal, ; Janus, ). One mechanism is attributable to a respondent's perception of what is expected in terms of a response.…”

“…For example, 65 per cent of residents in the Netherlands consider immigration to contribute to tolerance. One of the groups that has been shown in other contexts to benefit little from social desirability bias, Muslims (Creighton and Jamal, ) are viewed negatively by only 35 per cent of the Netherlands compared to 65, 66, 69 and 72 per cent in Greece, Italy, Poland and Hungary, respectively (Wike et al., ). This normative context of tolerance is further reflected in the recent conviction of the head of the PVV, Geert Wilders, for hate speech.…”

“…This is but one strand in a large literature on reporting bias (Phillips and Clancy, ; Arnold and Feldman, ; Presser and Stinson, ; Davis and Silver, ; Kuran and McCaffery, ; Heerwegh, ). Research on nativism (Knoll, 2013a) religion (Creighton and Jamal, ), race (Kuppens and Spears, ), anti‐immigrant sentiment (Janus, ; Malhotra et al., ; Creighton, Jamal and Malancu, 2015) and immigration policy preferences (Knoll, 2013b) find that intolerance is under‐reported.…”