All time references are in CEST
Studying attitudes toward immigrants |
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| Session Organisers | Professor Eldad Davidov (University of Cologne) Dr Marcus Eisentraut (University of Cologne) Professor Anastasia Gorodzeisky (Tel Aviv University) Professor Dina Maskileyson (Université du Luxembourg) Ms Leona Przechomski (University of Cologne) Professor Peter Schmidt (University of Giessen) |
| Time | Tuesday 18 July, 09:00 - 10:30 |
| Room | |
Studying attitudes toward immigrants
Session organizers in alphabetical order:
Eldad Davidov, Marcus Eisentraut, Anastasia Gorodzeisky, Dina Maskileyson, Leona Przechomski, Peter Schmidt and Moshe Semyonov
Europe has been experiencing large flows of immigration either from outside or within the EU. People come to Europe for work and study, but also escape wars, political instabilities, repression, or poverty. The Syrian refugee crisis of 2015/6, poverty and political instability in Africa, and the Russian war against Ukraine have pushed people to flee from their countries and try to seek safety and better life in Europe. These flows have brought attitudes towards migration to the forefront of public debates and resulted in political polarization in Europe. Europeans are divided not only in their attitudes toward immigrants and refugees but also in how they believe their country should deal with these immigration flows. This division is evident in the rise of support for and popularity of extreme right-wing parties in different European countries. The session is going to cover ongoing studies that utilize different methods of survey data collection and analysis to explain variation across individuals and societies in attitudes toward newcomers into Europe. Scholars are encouraged to submit studies which use survey data including comparative and longitudinal data and employ variable-oriented or typological approaches to explain attitudes toward immigrants and refugees in Europe.
Keywords: Attitudes toward immigrants and refugees, cross-country comparisons, longitudinal analysis
Dr Alice Ramos (Instituto de Ciências Sociais - Universidade de Lisboa) - Presenting Author
Professor Jorge Vala (Instituto de Ciências Sociais - Universidade de Lisboa)
The last two decades marked important and deep changes in the social and economic panorama in Europe. Using data from the 11 rounds of the European Social Survey, we discuss how attitudes towards immigration have been changing and what correlates may help us to understand the different trends that can be observed in different countries.
Previous literature relating the social context and attitudes towards immigrants deliver a complex variety of findings: a strong correlation between perceptions of threat associated to immigrants and opposition towards their presence in the country (e.g. Vala, Pereira & Ramos 2006); the impact of country economic climate on economic threat perceptions (e.g. Isaksen 2019); no impact of GDP or immigrant fluxes on opposition to immigration (e.g. Sides & Citrin 2007). Based on these results, we want to go a step further and test two hypotheses. The first one states that social disaffection at the individual level and economic climate at the contextual level are associated with openness/opposition to immigration. The second hypothesis states that these associations are mediated by threat perceptions, that serve as justifications for peoples’ negative attitudes (e.g. Pereira, Vala & Lopes 2010). Economic climate is measured by the GDP fluctuation between 2002 and 2024, and social disaffection represents an articulated set of perceptions and feelings (e.g. dissatisfaction with life, perception of lack of control, distrust in nuclear institutions of the social system) that are transversal to different sectors of society and encompass the functioning of society (Katz et al., 1977).
Dr Tatiana Karabchuk (UAEU) - Presenting Author
Dr Maha Bashri (UAEU)
Professor Branislav Radeljic (UAEU)
This study is focused on the impact of Internet usage and attitudes to immigrants in Europe. The movement of people across borders has been a defining feature of the 21st century, with Europe emerging as a primary destination for migrants and refugees from various parts of the world. This influx of people has sparked intense debates about the social, economic, and political implications of migration, with media playing a crucial role in shaping public perceptions and policy responses. As Europe grapples with the challenges posed by migration, it is essential to examine the complex interplay between media representations, public attitudes, and policy decisions. Using ESS data (2002-2022) this research applies structural equation multilevel modeling to evaluate the moderation effect of such country-level indicators as Press Freedom Index and Policy on Migration Index on the relationship between Usage of Internet and media and attitudes to Immigrants in European countries. We measure the attitudes towards immigrants via a set of questions from the ESS survey module as well as the individual level variables on media and Internet usage. By examining the multifaceted role of media in the migration debate in Europe, this paper aims to contribute to a more nuanced understanding of how media representations both reflect and shape societal responses to this complex issue. We argue that addressing the challenges posed by media representations of migration requires a concerted effort from media organizations, policymakers, and the public to promote accuracy, diversity, and inclusion in the media landscape. Only by fostering a more balanced and informed dialogue on migration can Europe hope to develop a more equitable and sustainable approach to this pressing issue
Dr Radka Hanzlová (Institute of Sociology of the Czech Academy of Sciences) - Presenting Author
Dr Aleš Kudrnáč (Institute of Sociology of the Czech Academy of Sciences)
This study examines the effects of school belonging and well-being on minority adolescents’ attitudes toward the majority population (Czechs) in the Czech Republic. Research suggests a link between well-being and attitudes toward outgroups, while a strong sense of belonging is tied to psychological well-being and social adaptation. These factors are particularly important for ethnic minorities, who often face prejudice and challenges in schools and broader society. This study explores whether school belonging and well-being are positively associated with attitudes toward the majority and whether sense of school belonging can compensate for poor wellbeing in predicting these attitudes. Using data from the minority subsample of the Czech Education Panel Survey (CZEPS), this study analyzes responses from over 2,000 high school freshmen (mean age 16; 51% female) from 232 schools who identified with one or more ethnic minority groups. The participants filled online questionnaires during regular school hours in autumn 2023. Multilevel regression models assessed the relationships between school belonging, well-being, and attitudes toward the majority. Both higher well-being and a stronger sense of school belonging are associated with more positive attitudes toward the majority. Moreover, school belonging moderates the relationship between well-being and these attitudes, suggesting that school belonging plays an important role in shaping minority adolescents’ perceptions of the majority group. These findings reveal the importance of supportive school environments in fostering positive intergroup attitudes among minority students. A strong sense of school belonging may mitigate the negative effects of poor well-being on attitudes toward the majority.
Professor Frank van Tubergen (NIDI-KNAW & Utrecht University) - Presenting Author
Dr Stefano Cellini (NIDI-KNAW)
Dr Christian Czymara (NIDI-KNAW)
Research on interethnic attitudes has predominantly focused on the ethnic majority, often simplifying multi-ethnic societies into binary frameworks of an ethnic majority and a single ethnic minority. This majority-centric perspective overlooks the diversity within minority groups and neglects how ethnic minorities perceive other groups. Consequently, our understanding of intergroup relations remains limited, particularly regarding the dynamics underlying ethnic minorities’ attitudes toward multiple ethnic groups, including their in-group.
To address this gap, this study examines ethnic minority attitudes toward multiple out-groups and their own ethnic in-group, shedding light on ‘minority-minority’ relations. We develop a conceptual framework that captures the varying levels of sympathy or animosity ethnic minorities may hold for multiple groups, drawing on theories of assimilation, education, and religious boundaries. In doing so, we move beyond the two-group model and contribute to a richer understanding of intergroup dynamics in diverse societies.
Our analysis uses five large-scale, probability surveys conducted in the Netherlands between 2004 and 2015, encompassing over 15,000 first- and second-generation immigrants from ten ethnic groups, including Turkey, Morocco, Suriname, Dutch Antilles, Poland, Somalia, Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran, and China. These surveys included thermometer questions to measure feelings toward in- and out-groups on a 0–100 scale. By harmonizing and pooling the data, we ensure robust analyses of minority attitudes in a multi-group context.
Our findings show that immigrant generation, educational attainment, and religious boundaries significantly shape ethnic minorities’ attitudes toward in-groups and out-groups. These factors underscore the complexity of intergroup relations in multi-ethnic societies.
Dr Christian Czymara (Goethe University Frankfurt) - Presenting Author
In recent years, several major terror attacks linked to political Islam have shaken Europe. Beyond their immediate devastating consequences, these events also affect intergroup relations. This study integrates terror management theory and group threat theory to examine responses to terrorism on social media. Using Keyword-Assisted Topic Modeling, it analyzes over 100,000 time-stamped and geo-coded Tweets on immigration and related topics across four languages in the week following eleven major terrorist attacks in nine European cities posted by users located in the city of the attack. Unlike traditional topic modeling approaches, keyATM incorporates pre-specified keywords, enhancing both the precision and interpretability of results while mitigating the impact of researcher subjectivity. The findings reveal that theoretically expected topics such as nationalism and prejudice, as well as counter-bigotry activism and prosocial narratives, appear across all languages. Notably, inclusive and empathetic topics predominate over group threat-related themes in all language datasets. Temporal analyses indicate that nationalism spikes statistically significantly in the first two days post-attack across all cases, while prejudice shows mixed temporal patterns across cases. In contrast, counter-bigotry and prosocial topics gain prominence later, aligning with theoretical expectations. These results underscore the dynamic nature of public discourse on social media following terrorist attacks.
Dr Knize Veronika (Institute for Employment Research (IAB))
Professor Frank van Tubergen (NIDI-KNAW (univ. Groningen) and Utrecht University)
Professor Marita Jacob (University of Cologne)
Dr Bernhard Christoph (Institute for Employment Research (IAB)) - Presenting Author
In recent years, in Germany – as in most of Europe – there were two waves of refugees that made up for a major part of overall immigration: Syrians, which fled the civil war in their home country and which mainly arrived in 2015 and the following years as well as refugees that fled from Ukraine following the Russian invasion in 2022.
Both groups of migrants varied substantially regarding their demographic characteristics, with Syrian migrants having a higher likelihood to be male, single, and holding the Islamic faith and Ukrainian migrants being more likely to be female, living with kids and being Christians. To disentangle the degree to which these dimensions are connected to respondents' perceptions of these refugee groups, we use a vignette-based design asking respondents to evaluate different refugee characteristics.
Our vignette study is part of a larger survey the IAB-OPAL panel study. Our module was included in waves 3 and 5. Overall, the data cover around 8.000 respondents who judged around 24.000 vignettes.
While previous research has mainly focused on the connection between refugee characteristics and formal acceptance criteria, as e.g. the right of residence or the right to work, we ask respondents to evaluate the vignettes answering to four items representing different degrees of social distance. Moreover, we also analyze how judgments of those sharing certain traits with the refugees (e.g. religion or being migrants themselves) might differ from those of other respondents. In addition, as we have panel data, we might not merely analyze how respondents’ individual living conditions (as e.g. income, employment/unemployment etc.) affect their attitudes towards refugees but might, moreover, analyze how changes in these living conditions might change their attitudes.
Mr Jakob Eicheler (Universität Duisburg-Essen) - Presenting Author
The impact of the 2015 peak in refugee applications in Europe on immigration attitudes and far right voting is widely studied. However, little is known on how local exposure to refugees affected welfare chauvinism, i.e. the support to exclude immigrants from welfare services. This is the first paper to provide causal evidence on this question. The paper tests preregistered hypotheses derived from intergroup contact and economic and cultural intergroup threat theory using original panel data from Germany (2015/2016/2017, N ≈ 1,500) and administrative data on the allocation of refugees to municipalities. A continuous difference-in-differences approach leveraging the exogenous allocation finds a larger refugee inflow to have an overall null effect on welfare chauvinism. However, further analysis reveals substantial treatment heterogeneity: At the individual level, those exposed to more economic threat through refugees and those more likely to perceive refugees as a cultural threat increase in welfare chauvinism if exposed to more refugees. At the municipal level, pre-existing ethnic diversity protects against increases in welfare chauvinism, whereas worse economic conditions and a more anti-immigrant political climate contribute to increased welfare chauvinism with larger refugee inflows. Taken together, the results suggest that in Germany, economic and cultural threat perceptions outweighed intergroup contact in certain municipalities. This raises concerns about the exclusion of immigrants from welfare services in the face of increasing ethnic diversity, and may have policy implications in determining the distribution of refugees.
Mr Joris Frese (European University Institute) - Presenting Author
Several existing studies have found that negative political framing of immigrants increases anti-immigrant public attitudes. I conduct two studies that reveal conditions under which the opposite dynamic unfolds. I argue that when refugees are framed as vulnerable, assimilable, and deserving of help, this should cause a reduction in anti-immigrant sentiment. Analyzing the case of the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan in 2021 and the resulting large-scale refugee movement, I demonstrate that such deservingness frames were frequently employed by journalists and politicians and that European citizens exposed to this framing became more supportive toward immigrants. Leveraging the active field phase of the European Social Survey during the Taliban takeover, I show with a quasi-experimental “Unexpected Event During Survey Design” that the positive framing of refugees during this highly salient event led to a significant immediate and long-term increase in pro-immigration attitudes across Europe. These findings suggest that it is possible for politicians and journalists to effectively reduce xenophobia during large-scale refugee arrivals by highlighting refugees' vulnerability and assimilability.
Dr Stefania Kalogeraki (University of Crete) - Presenting Author
Despite the numerous studies on migration, research hardly examines the key determinants that shape host populations’ attitudes towards different groups of migrants who have different motives for migration, such as refugees who are forced to flee their home country and economic immigrants who emigrate voluntarily. Yet it is important to distinguish between these two groups of migrants, as their motives for migrating may cause different concerns among the population of the host country and thus shape different attitudes towards them. In addition, most studies examine attitudes towards migrants in the general population of the host country, while studies focusing specifically on the young population are scarce. As young generations are shaping the landscape for the harmonious integration of newcomers, it is crucial to understand the key determinants that shape youth attitudes towards migrants. The presentation uses survey data from the EU-funded EURYKA project and analyses the attitudes of Greek young adults (18-34 years) towards refugees and economic immigrants, incorporating realistic group conflict theory as well as ideological and cultural-related explanations. The Greek case is particularly interesting for the rationale of the presentation as Greece has been challenged by the recent ‘refugee-migrant crisis’ while still suffering from the ongoing effects of the recent recession with devastating socio-economic consequences especially for young people. Moreover, the country witnessed the rise of far-right political parties propagating an extremely xenophobic, racist and authoritarian discourse, which was particularly popular among Greek youth. The results show that Greek young adults’ opposition towards refugees is more widespread than towards economic immigrants. Socio-economic factors are only weakly related to Greek young adults’ opposition towards refugees and economic immigrants, while ideological orientations and attachment to local values are decisive for these negative attitudes.
Dr Souad Osseiran (Boğaziçi University)
Dr Ceylan Engin (Boğaziçi University)
Ms Selin Ongan (Boğaziçi University)
Mr Rabia Önder (Boğaziçi University)
Ms Rümeysa Türkbey (Boğaziçi University)
Mr Giray Demirici (Boğaziçi University) - Presenting Author
While Turkey has been receiving refugees and migrants for several decades, the Syrian refugee presence since 2011 shot the issue of migration to the forefront of public debates. Since 2019, Turkey has been witnessing rising xenophobia and hate speech culminating in the publicization of anti-immigrant sentiments in different political party candidates’ presidential campaigns in 2023. This paper uses nationally representative data from the Turkish Social Values Survey (TSVS) undertaken in the last quarter of 2024 to analyse perceptions and attitudes towards migrant (and refugee) groups among other topics. The cross-sectional TSVS (n=1500) data was collected face-to-face, using the Computer Assisted Personal Interview (CAPI) method, in 260 geographical clusters (primary sampling units) selected from 26 NUTS-2 geographical subregions in Turkey. Regarding migration, TSVS evaluates the frequency of respondents’ contact with migrants, their attitudes towards different migrant groups and their perceptions of Turkey’s migration policies. In contrast to prior research undertaken in Turkey, TSVS examines respondents’ contact with different migrant groups thereby providing a more comprehensive perspective of attitudes. Following prior research on contact, this study hypothesizes that a higher frequency of contact with migrants will be associated with more positive attitudes. To test this hypothesis, this paper will apply ordinal regression to the TSVS contact related data while taking education level, social class, and level of religiosity as control variables. The results of this study may contribute to discussions on intergroup contact in an understudied context and help guide migration policy reforms.
Ms Leona Przechomski (University of Cologne)
Ms Marlene Hilgenstock (GESIS - Leibniz Institute for the social science) - Presenting Author
Professor Anastasia Gorodzeisky (Tel Aviv University)
Professor Eldad Davidov (University of Cologne)
In immigration countries, multiculturalism is broadly defined as the adaptation of national institutions to meet the needs of diverse immigrant groups, along with an expectation that immigrants will conform to certain key values of the receiving society. For many years, oftentimes European receiving societies had no formal means of clearly presenting these key societal values to immigrants. However, in recent decades, many European countries have introduced naturalization or citizenship tests. Such tests can be considered as an explicit way to communicate these key societal values, making them and the receiving society’s expectations to conform to them, transparent to immigrants.
This study aims to examine the impact of exposure to a receiving country’s core values and norms through naturalization tests on immigrants' attitudes towards gender equality and LGBTIQ+ rights—values commonly associated with contemporary European receiving societies. Employing event study and difference-in-differences designs on representative data from the German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP) and the German General Social Survey (ALLBUS), this research explores whether and how this formal introduction to key societal values through naturalization testing influences immigrants’ views on issues central to European identity. We expect that, among immigrants from countries with relatively low levels of gender equality and LGBTIQ+ rights, those who have been subjected to naturalization tests will display a greater adjustment in their attitudes toward gender equality and LGBTIQ+ rights compared to those who have not undergone such tests. By examining the impact of policy measures on social attitudes, this study provides valuable insights into the role of naturalization tests in fostering social cohesion within immigration countries.
Dr Piotr Cichocki (Adam Mickiewicz University) - Presenting Author
Professor Piotr Jabkowski (Adam Mickiewicz University)
Dr Marta Kolczynska (Polish Academy of Sciences)
Tracking surveys often include questions probing respondents' perceptions of the country's most pressing challenges to capture changes in the focus of public attention. The Eurobarometer has consistently fielded a 'most important problem' question separately for the national and the European level in the biannual Standard survey since 2013. Over time, the tracking questions allow for monitoring the major crises faced by the European Union and the member-states over the preceding decade. In the early 2010s, economic concerns predominated, followed by the 2015 migration crisis, propelling immigration and associated security concerns to the top of European concerns. Briefly, in 2018-2019, concerns over the environment and climate change slowly moved to the forefront of concerns; this brief rise was harshly curtailed by the shock of COVID-19 in 2020-21, elevating health to the principal concern; finally, the post-covid bout of inflation amplified by the repercussions of the full-scale war in Ukraine, brought back economic issues to the forefront of citizen concerns both at the national and European levels. Our analysis focuses not on the general trends but on the tension between the national and European issues of concern, i.e., instances when predominant respondent choices at the two levels do not overlap in the country-level surveys. Based on a multi-level longitudinal analysis of 20 waves of Standard Eurobarometer, our study will explore the factors underlying the tendency to frame issues concerning the EU rather than the country level.