Domestic Support for Foreign Fighting: Attitudes Towards the Use of Violence Abroad

Abstract

This study explores the phenomenon of foreign fighting through survey data gathered amongst Norwegian youths in 2015. Looking at two overarching explanatory models the article tests how grievances, criminality and more sectarian and religious factors affect more radical attitudes towards foreign fighting in Syria. Through this the article tests some central individual level factors to see how they impact support for foreign fighting in Syria, while also running alternative methodological approaches to test both the robustness of the initial findings and do some exploratory testing of non-responsive respondents in the multinomial models. The findings find support for factors such as past criminal behaviour and perceived deprivation in the form of self-reported socio-economic position, both of which are significant across the main models and in most of the alternative models. More abstract grievance measures, such as alienation and disillusionment more generally, provide more mixed findings. Hypotheses about a connection between religious identities and religiosity also finds support, with some indications that the sectarian nature of the Syrian civil war has a significant impact on attitudes amongst religious groups across the board. There is also a clearer sectarian dimension when studying those with higher levels of support for foreign fighting in Syria.