National and regional proportion of immigrants and perceived threat of immigration: A three-level analysis in Western Europe

Abstract

Immigration is of growing significance to the demographic makeup of Western Europe. A long-standing and highly disputed question is whether a larger number of immigrants are associated with more negative attitudes toward immigration or whether the reverse is true. Previous studies yielded contradictory results on various levels of analysis (national, regional, local). These inconsistencies may partly be linked to what is known as the 'modifiable areal unit problem' in spatial analysis. This article seeks to address this issue by analyzing the relationship between the percentage foreign-born and perceived group threat in 15 Western European countries on the national as well as on three differing regional levels (N = 70, 207, and 624 regions, respectively), together with survey data from the European Values Study's fourth wave. I expect threat effects to operate through national communication systems while contact and habituation to immigrants to work on the regional level. Consistent with theoretical expectations, the results show a positive correlation between the national proportion of immigrants and perceived threat, while the coefficients are negative on the regional level. More immigration might thus lead to a more negative evaluation of the presence of immigrants in European countries, but apparently not within the regions where most of the newcomers reside. Two recent examples illustrate this seemingly paradoxical relationship. As a methodological result, effect size and statistical significance vary with the delimitation of the regional units of analysis (Nomenclature des Unités Territoriales Statistiques (NUTS)-1, -2, or -3). This suggests that research in this field should pay more attention to how and why spatial units are defined.

The complex relationship between immigrants’ concentration, socioeconomic environment and attitudes towards immigrants in Europe

“…Our study contributes to the European literature on the role of local contexts on attitudes towards immigration in different ways. First, the large majority of studies focuses on the effect of immigrant concentration on attitudes solely (Semyonov and Glikman 2009;Weber 2015;Markaki and Longhi 2013). We improve these analyses by exploring how such effect might vary according to the socioeconomic characteristics of areas.…”

Xenophobic attitudes, behaviors and coping strategies among Lebanese people toward immigrants and refugees

“…They perceive immigrants as unwelcome alterations to the traditional ethnic culture and language . In addition, a perceived threat can be directly related to the size of the immigrants that would increase the fear, worry, unrest, and dissatisfaction that individuals experience as a result of the growing influx of foreigners into their hometown . Native persons will also complain about the increased crime rate and an overall deterioration in their quality of life…”

“…33 In addition, a perceived threat can be directly related to the size of the immigrants that would increase the fear, worry, unrest, and dissatisfaction that individuals experience as a result of the growing influx of foreigners into their hometown. 34 Native persons will also complain about the increased crime rate and an overall deterioration in their quality of life. 35 Concerning the association between xenophobia and emotionfocused engagement, previous studies have shown that individuals with a higher degree of social fear are more likely to express anti-immigrant attitudes.…”

Welcome to Norway!

“…Forskning på årsakssammenhenger mellom holdninger og økt mangfold er nokså sprikende i sine konklusjoner; noen viser en tydelig økning i restriktive holdninger også på lokalt nivå (Enos 2015;, mens andre viser at negative evalueringer ikke øker i regionene eller nabolagene hvor innvandrerne faktisk bosetter seg (Biggs og Knaus 2012;Hooghe og de Vroome 2015;Weber 2015). De sistnevnte funnene fra komparasjoner på regionsnivå sammenfaller med psykologiske studier på individnivå som viser at kontakt mellom ulike grupper fører til mindre fordommer og mindre frykt for medlemmene av den andre gruppa (for gode oversikter, se Pettigrew 1998;Pettigrew, Tropp, Wagner og Christ 2011;Pettigrew og Tropp 2008).…”