Multiculturalist policies in an age of immigration: Do multiculturalist policies influence negative immigrant attitudes toward homosexuality?

Abstract

In this article, we provide an empirical analysis of the relationship between multiculturalist policies and immigrant attitudes toward homosexuality. Normative discourses implicate multiculturalism as a key obstacle to the sociocultural integration between immigrants and natives within affluent democracies. At the core of this controversial debate are differences over the extent to which multiculturalism impedes or promotes the adoption of sexual norms from host societies to immigrants. However, a dearth of empirical studies has allowed political actors to levy broad, but largely speculative, claims that multiculturalist policies aggravate cultural conflicts between incoming immigrants and the values of host societies. We begin to address this issue by examining whether immigrants’ attitudes toward homosexuality vary in any direction across multicultural contexts. We find no evidence that multicultural policies exacerbate negative attitudes toward homosexuality, or facilitate the greater acceptance of sociocultural norms surrounding homosexuality for immigrants and Muslim immigrants. The findings are consistent across alternative measures of multiculturalism and two large cross-national samples: The European Social Survey and the World Values Survey. Interestingly, we find some support that multiculturalist policies may be correlated with greater acceptance of homosexuality among natives rather than immigrant respondents. However, further research is necessary to develop and unpack this potential relationship.

Migrant Allies and Sexual Remittances: How International Students Change the Sexual Attitudes of Those Who Remain Behind

“…By studying heterosexual international students, this research marks one of the first attempts at delineating how studying abroad alters one's attitudes toward homosexuality and same-sex rights. In a recent study exploring the intersections of immigration and sexual attitudes, Ronald Kwon and Elizabeth Hughes (2018) argue that national multicultural contexts and policies play a minimal role in ameliorating negative immigrant attitudes toward homosexuality. As they note in their paper, focusing on national-level environments might be too diffuse, and that honing in on localized settings and institutions could produce a more nuanced take on the attitudinal shifts that might occur.…”

Muslim religious accommodations in Western Europe: Do multicultural policies impact religiosity levels among Muslims, Catholics and Protestants?

“…The rise of populist movements across Europe has fuelled backlash against accommodations and legislative efforts for equitable religious inclusion for Muslim minorities. The culturalization of religion has become a larger part of an evolving identity project that seeks to associate national identities as nominally Christian and strong supporters of gender and gay egalitarianism (Triadafilopoulos, 2011; Brubaker, 2017; Kwon and Hughes, 2018).…”

“…We find similar null results when examining religiosity measures in 2006 and 2008. Ultimately, the endogeneity problem cannot be addressed with the measures available the data set used Future research may benefit from finding a sufficient instrument to test causal claims laid out by a burgeoning empirical body of studies on multiculturalism (Wright and Bloemraad, 2012; Kwon et al, 2017; Kwon and Hughes, 2018; Mathieu, 2018).…”

Exclusionary attitudes toward immigrants: Globalization and configurations of ascribed and achieved status across 14 European countries

“…First, immigration brings rising ethno-religious diversity that can dramatically alter the population of host countries, shape new cultural norms and values, and require additional accommodations for new religious groups (Kwon and Hughes, 2018; Vertovec, 2007). For natives, the arrival of culturally different outgroups presents a threat to collective identities that were once rooted in relatively homogeneous ascribed boundaries of race, ethnicity, or religion (Brubaker, 2001).…”

“…For instance, scholars of illiberal liberalism and homonationalism have identified how liberal views on gender and sexuality are often used to justify illiberal anti-immigration policies, particularly against Muslim migration, based on the belief that immigrants hold values inconsistent with the ideals of gender equality, sexual tolerance, and democracy (Eskelinen and Verkuyten, 2020; Kwon and Hughes, 2018; Kwon et al, 2017; Moffitt, 2017; Puar, 2018). Rather than viewing ascribed and achieved criteria as independent, these perspectives highlight the way that socio-cultural achieved criteria are emphasized in the service of exclusion based on religious identity.…”