Reconciling Context and Contact Effects on Racial Attitudes

Abstract

The inter-group contact hypothesis states that intera ctions between individuals belonging to different groups will influence the attitudes and behavior between members of these different groups. The two dominant measures of inter-group contact are context (i.e., size of a minority group within a specified geographic area) and individual behavior (i.e., personal contact between members of the majority and minority groups). The contextual and behavioral measures of contact produce divergent finings. The contextual contact literature finds that whites residing in areas with high concentrations of minority populations have significantly more negative attitudes toward minorities and minority-based public policies than whites residing in areas with low concentrations of minority poplations. The behavioral contact literature finds that inter-group contacing among majority and minority populations significantly reduces preudicial attitudes and opinions about minorities and minority-based policies. In this article we examine both contextual and behavioral meaures of the contact hypothesis as they influence white attitudes toward immigrant populations (i.e., Hispanics) and white policy positions toward immigration policies. We offer and test an explanation for the lierature's divergent findings.

What determines attitudes to immigration in European countries? An analysis at the regional level

“…As already mentioned, conflict theory predicts anti-immigration attitudes to increase with immigrant group size, while contact theory expects diversity to promote familiarity and tolerance (Stein et al 2000;Schlueter and Scheepers 2010). We test these theories by including in the models the percentage of immigrants over the whole population; and the percentages of immigrants born within and outside the EU to account for regional diversity in inter-group contact.…”

“…According to both theories, two basic aggregate sources of threat should be included in the model: the economic circumstances of the area and the size of the minority group relative to the native population (Stein et al 2000). While intergroup contact theory predicts that higher concentrations of immigrants and exposure to an ethnically diverse environment will foster more positive feelings between the two groups (Marschall and Stolle 2004), intergroup conflict theory predicts the opposite effect.…”

“…The type of neighbourhood, area, city, region or country where an individual lives determine how many and what kind of immigrants or ethnic minorities he or she meets every day: the environment around the individual creates a filter which may condition the perceptions of the minority groups (Middleton 1976;Studlar 1977;Stein et al 2000). Borjas (1999) has found that the perceived impact of immigration on the labour market depends on the health of the economy in the host country as well as on how the native workforce compares with the immigrants in terms of skills and the size of the groups.…”

Race and the City: Neighborhood Context and the Development of Generalized Trust

“…For example, Bledsoe et al (1995) found that African Americans who lived in more racially diverse neighborhoods developed lower levels of group solidarity and stronger attachments to whites and other groups in society. Other work has found that whites who live in closer proximity to African Americans and other minority groups experience increasing racial hostility and prejudice (Fosset and Kielcolt, 1989;Giles, 1977;Giles and Hertz, 1994;Glaser, 1994;Key, 1949;Stein et al, 2000;Taylor, 1998;Wright, 1997). However, as Oliver and Mendelberg (2000, p. 575) point out, the impact of racial threat on whites' racial attitudes has typically been demonstrated with bivariate analyses so that the effects of other salient contextual features are infrequently controlled.…”

“…Indeed, there is a well-established link between neighborhood social organization, including neighborhood racial composition, and a broad range of psychological orientations such as alienation, anxiety, fear, suspicion of out-groups, and mistrust (see e.g., Oliver and Mendelberg, 2000). However, this work tends to focus on either the relationship between racial context and racial attitudes (Bledsoe et al, 1995;Ellison and Powers, 1994;Sigelman and Welch, 1993;Stein et al, 2000) or neighborhood social organization and more general attitudes like trust (Massey, 1996;Ross et al, 2001)-but not both. Moreover, very rarely have researchers measured the extent or nature of social interactions occurring within neighborhoods or considered the possibility that social interaction might counter the negative effects of living in racially or socio-economically heterogeneous places.…”