Does mentoring make immigrants more desirable? A conjoint analysis

Abstract

High levels of immigration to Germany have led to increased interests in integration programs. Yet, it is unclear to what extent immigrant participation in integration programs affects attitudes toward immigrants among the host population. This article measures which immigrant attributes German respondents find desirable, and how these features interact with participation in a mentoring program with a local mentor. Mentoring is often employed to aid immigrant integration and typically focuses on psychosocial, social capital, and employment-related goals. Our results show that Germans prefer traits conducive to gainful employment. While migrant ethnicity had no significant effect, migrant religion was salient. Muslim immigrants were preferred less than immigrants of other religions, and this effect was stronger among respondents living in areas with higher support for far-right politics. Participation in a mentoring program increased migrant desirability both directly and indirectly by mitigating the negative effects of having lower levels of education, little work experience, not speaking German and being Muslim.

Attitudes to Climate Migrants: Results from a Conjoint Survey Experiment in Denmark

“…In the literature, this has been interpreted as respondents thinking in sociotropic terms, meaning about what migrants are more likely to contribute to society. This seems to be the case almost regardless of own position in society (Hainmueller & Hopkins 2015; Reeskens & van der Meer 2019; Weiss & Tulin 2019). We can also see that gender does not matter, but being a Muslim or Hindu migrant carries a penalty to the chance of being granted permanent residency, compared to a Christian candidate.…”

“…For instance, Hainmueller and Hopkins (2015) find that in the United States, there is a consensus around the idea that compared to a migrant seeking to be reunited with his or her family, a job‐seeking migrant is less welcome, while a migrant escaping persecution is more welcome. In the German context, Weiss and Tulin (2019) have shown that compared to a migrant seeking a better job, family reunion and humanitarian migrants are more welcome, while economic migrants are perceived no differently. Similarly, Reeskens and van der Meer (2019) show that in the Netherlands, political refugees are more welcome, while economic migrants are less welcome.…”

“…The survey experiment is of the conjoint variant, which is becoming more popular (e.g., Hainmueller & Hopkins 2014; Hainmueller et al 2015; Reeskens & van der Meer 2019; Weiss & Tulin 2019). This type of experiment differs from the standard factorial or split‐sample design (like Helbling 2020), as it allows more categories to vary.…”

“…The aim was to construct immigrants: (1) who largely mirror the variations in the kind of immigrants that Denmark has experienced within the last decades, (2) who provide variations relevant for the theoretical literature and (3) whose attributes are not mutually exclusive. The selected attributes therefore also have a great deal of overlap with the attributes used on other studies of the same kind (Hainmueller & Hopkins 2015; Reeskens & van der Meer 2019; Weiss & Tulin 2019). The fictitious immigrant presented to the respondents was given a gender, an age, an education, a connection to the Danish labour market, language skills, religious background and a reason for leaving the country of origin.…”

Mentoring Migrants for Labor Market Integration: Policy Insights from a Survey of Mentoring Theory and Practice

“…Based on a quasi-experimental design testing diversified mentoring relationships between primarily white management-student mentors and newly resettled refugees in the United States, they find that even short-duration mentoring may be powerful in increasing the cultural intelligence and empathy of mentors. A recent study by Weiss and Tulin (2019) also showed that immigrant participation in a mentoring program can improve the attitudes towards them among the host population. They conducted an experiment in which German respondents are presented with two immigrant profiles, and they need to decide which they would prefer to come to live in their municipality.…”