The dynamic relations between economic conditions and anti-immigrant sentiment: A natural experiment in times of the European economic crisis

Kuntz, Anabel; Davidov, Eldad; Semyonov, Moshe

doi:10.1177/0020715217690434

Cited by 97 publications

(79 citation statements)

References 55 publications

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“…Indeed, in times of economic hardship, soaring unemployment rates and decreasing budgets for social protection, minority groups may be vulnerable and under the risk of becoming scapegoats (Kuntz, Davidov, and Semyonov 2017). This is often illustrated by electoral successes of populist radical right parties in different European countries (Funke, Schularick, and Trebesch 2016).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Economic conditions, group relative deprivation and ethnic threat perceptions: a cross-national perspective

Meuleman

Abts

Schmidt

et al. 2019

Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies

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Explaining negative attitudes towards immigration in general and threat due to immigration, in particular, has been a major topic of study in recent decades. While intergroup contact has received considerable attention in explaining ethnic threat, group relative deprivation (GRD), that is, feelings that one's group is unfairly deprived of desirable goods in comparison to relevant out-groups, has been largely ignored in cross-national research. Nevertheless, various smaller-scale studies have demonstrated that GRD can have a decisive impact on prejudice. In the current study, we examine the association between GRD and ethnic threat systematically across 20 European countries, thereby controlling for intergroup contact and value priorities. The 7th round of the European Social Survey (ESS) includes questions assessing respondents' feelings of group deprivation compared to immigrants and offers for the first time an opportunity to contextualise the threat-inducing effect of GRD across Europe. A multilevel structural equation model (MLSEM) demonstrates a considerable association between GRD and ethnic threat both on the individual and country levels. The results indicate that GRD is not only an important mediating factor between social structural positions and perceived threat, but also fully mediates the relation between contextual economic indicators and ethnic threat. This is an electronic version of an article published online in Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies on 22-Feb-2019. This journal is available online at: www.tandfonline.com. AbstractExplaining negative attitudes towards immigration in general and threat due to immigration in particular has been a major topic of study in recent decades. While intergroup contact has received considerable attention in explaining ethnic threat, group relative deprivation (GRD), that is, feelings that one's group is unfairly deprived of desirable goods in comparison to relevant out-groups, has been largely ignored in cross-national research. Nevertheless, various smaller-scale studies have demonstrated that GRD can have a decisive impact on prejudice. In the current study we examine the association between GRD and ethnic threat systematically across 20 European countries, thereby controlling for intergroup contact and value priorities.The 7 th round of the European Social Survey (ESS) includes questions assessing respondents' feelings of group deprivation compared to immigrants and offers for the first time an opportunity to contextualise the threat-inducing effect of GRD across Europe. A multilevel structural equation model (MLSEM) demonstrates a considerable association between GRD and ethnic threat both on the individual and country level. The results indicate that GRD is not only an important mediating factor between social structural positions and perceived threat, but also fully mediates the relation between contextual economic indicators and ethnic threat.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Economic conditions, group relative deprivation and ethnic threat perceptions: a cross-national perspective

Meuleman

Abts

Schmidt

et al. 2019

Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

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“…Some studies provide evidence that economic decline increases anti-immigrant sentiment [12,13], whereas others find no significant relationship [14][15][16][17][18][19]. A few studies have focused more specifically on the connection between the Great Recession and anti-immigrant attitudes, but their findings have also been mixed [4,20]. We have attempted to address these ambiguous results by examining a series of multilevel analyses and employing a multidimensional measure of the Great Recession that captures four distinct but interrelated aspects of the economic crisis: the housing crash, the financial crisis, economic decline, and employment loss.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The research has tested competitive threat theory using either unemployment rates or changes in GDP, but their results have not provided a clear-cut picture of country-level economic factors that affect public attitudes toward immigrants. Some research shows that countries with higher unemployment rates or lower GDPs have more pronounced anti-immigrant sentiments [4,12,13], but other studies regarding the effects of the economic conditions on anti-immigrant attitudes are inconclusive [14][15][16][17][18][19][20]. Some of these studies find that one or both of the measures of economic conditions have no relationship with attitudes toward immigrants, despite being consistently in the expected direction.…”

Section: The Great Recession and Perceived Immigrant Threatmentioning

confidence: 99%

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The Impact of the Great Recession on Perceived Immigrant Threat: A Cross-National Study of 22 Countries

Kwak

Wallace

2018

Societies

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Abstract:In an increasingly globalized world, anti-immigrant sentiment has become more prevalent. Competitive threat theory suggests that anti-immigrant attitudes increase when adverse economic circumstances intensify competition with immigrants for scarce resources, but past studies using this approach are inconclusive. In this study, we investigate the impact of the Great Recession on perceived immigrant threat-an index of seven items measuring attitudes toward immigrants-using the 2013 International Social Survey Program survey. Using multilevel models, we analyze responses from 18,433 respondents nested within 22 countries. We create a country-level measure of the Great Recession Index comprised of four dimensions-the housing crash, the financial crisis, economic decline, and employment loss-and assess its impact on perceived immigrant threat. After controlling for a variety of individual-level and country-level covariates, we find that the Great Recession is positively associated with perceived immigrant threat. We also identify important interaction effects between the Great Recession Index and change in government expenditures, age, educational levels, citizenship, and urbanization. The study contributes to competitive threat theory by showing the effect of the Great Recession in exacerbating anti-immigrant sentiment.

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“…Attitudes towards migrants and refugees have become a major topic both in the political discourse in the Netherlands (Sniderman et al., ; Sniderman and Hagendoorn, ), Europe more broadly (Lahav, ; McLaren et al., ) and in an increasing number of comparative and single‐country contexts (Semyonov et al., ; Hainmueller and Hiscox, ; Sides and Citrin, ; Ceobanu and Escandell, ; Malhotra et al., ; Hainmueller and Hopkins, ; Heath et al., ; Davidov et al., ; Kuntz et al., ). The Netherlands, reflected in the notable success of the Party for Freedom / Partij voor de Vrijheid (PVV), which is an overtly anti‐immigrant party headed by Geert Wilders, underlines the prominent (and contentious) role played by sentiment about immigration/immigrants.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Race, Wealth and the Masking of Opposition to Immigrants in the Netherlands

Creighton

Schmidt

Zavala-Rojas

2018

International Migration

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This work uses a list experiment to directly test for differences in attitudes towards poor, racially different and racially similar immigrants to the Netherlands in terms of (1) overt support and (2) covert support and (3) the difference between the two (i.e., social desirability bias). Results show that the expression of opposition to immigrants is significantly masked, suggesting that anonymous acts (e.g., voting) could capture greater opposition. Racially similar immigrants are subject to greater opposition relative to racially different or poorer immigrants, but only when anonymity is offered to respondents. The implication is that overt estimates (i.e., openly expressed) are misleading as levels of support appear consistent across immigrant groups. Going forward, we suggest the utility of the list experiment to better account for observable downward bias in estimates at least on the aggregate level or in contexts with clear normative pressure to appear tolerant.

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The dynamic relations between economic conditions and anti-immigrant sentiment: A natural experiment in times of the European economic crisis

Cited by 97 publications

References 55 publications

Economic conditions, group relative deprivation and ethnic threat perceptions: a cross-national perspective

Economic conditions, group relative deprivation and ethnic threat perceptions: a cross-national perspective

The Impact of the Great Recession on Perceived Immigrant Threat: A Cross-National Study of 22 Countries

Race, Wealth and the Masking of Opposition to Immigrants in the Netherlands

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