w2 anti immigrant prejudice in europe

Anti-Immigrant Prejudice in Europe / 909

© The University of North Carolina Press Social Forces, March 2003, 81(3):909-936

Anti-Immigrant Prejudice in Europe:Contact, Threat Perception, and Preferencesfor the Exclusion of Migrants*

LAUREN M. MCLAREN, University of Oxford

Abstract

This article introduces the theoretical approaches of contact, group conflict, andsymbolic prejudice to explain levels of exclusionary feelings toward a relatively newminority in the West European context, the immigrant. The findings indicate thateven after controls for perceived threat are included in the model, intimate contactwith members of minority groups in the form of friendships can reduce levels ofwillingness to expel legal immigrants from the country. A contextual variable, levelof immigration to the country, is also introduced into the model because it is likelythat this variable affects both threat perception and exclusionary feelings. Whilecontext does not seem to directly affect levels of willingness to expel or includeimmigrants in the society, it does have a rather powerful impact on perceived threat.Perhaps even more importantly, the findings suggest that contact mediates the effectof the environment, helping to produce lower levels of threat perception in contextsof high immigration.

In the 1950s and 1960s, many West European countries experiencedextraordinary economic growth. At the same time, however, these countrieswere also experiencing labor shortages. To remedy the labor shortages, therapidly developing countries recruited individuals from countries with anabundance of labor. At first these foreign laborers mostly came from withinEurope, especially from Spain, Portugal, Italy, and Greece (Hammar 1985). Afterdecolonization, many of these same countries began recruiting labor from

* This article was originally presented at the Annual Meeting of the Midwest Political ScienceAssociation, 27–30 April 2000, Chicago, IL. The author wishes to thank Ahmet Icduygu as wellas two anonymous reviewers for their very helpful comments on this paper. Any errors are, ofcourse, the sole responsibility of the author. Direct correspondence to Lauren M. McLaren,Department of Politics and International Relations, University of Oxford, 3 George Street Mews,OX1 2AA, United Kingdom. E-mail: [email protected].

910 / Social Forces 81:3, March 2003

former colonies. In countries with no colonial experience, recruitment wasdirected at less developed countries with an abundance of labor (Beyer 1979;Entzinger 1985; Ogden 1991; Safran 1985; Verbunt 1985).1 Shortly after theswitch in recruitment practice from within Europe to outside of Europe, theworld fell into a recession, and these new foreign workers were often blamedfor the economic and social problems of the host country (Entzinger 1985;Ogden 1991; Safran 1985; Silverman 1991; Verbunt 1985).

As the economies of the more economically developed countries began toslow down, attempts were made by the governments in most of the countriesto reduce the numbers of migrants coming into the country (Hammar 1985;Ogden 1991). Electoral successes of extreme right-wing parties and waves ofviolence against foreign-born populations made it clear to governments that alarge portion of the mass public wanted something to be done about theimmigration problem (Entzinger 1985; Hargreaves 1991; Ogden 1985). Mostof these efforts failed because at the same time that the governments reducedthe number of new workers that could be admitted into the country, they alsoallowed for family reunification. In addition, expulsions have been quite rare.Family reunification and lack of expulsion meant that the actual number offoreigners entering most countries remained fairly constant, or even increased,after restrictions were imposed (Esser & Korte 1985; Ornbrant & Peura 1993).Therefore, despite a great deal of public support for keeping foreigners out andgovernment policies that tried to do just that, foreigners have continued toenter these countries in large numbers, resulting in social problems such as raceriots and antiforeigner violence.

The less developed southern European countries (Italy, Spain, Greece, andPortugal), which had been countries of emigration in the late 1950s and 1960s,also started to become popular destinations for migrants during the 1970s(Lianos 1993; Rosoli 1993; Rocha-Trinidade 1993). This shift to becomingcountries of immigration rather than emigration occurred for two mainreasons. First, migrants who were trying to reach other European countries,especially from North Africa, found it easier to slip into southern Europe; manystayed in their country of entry. Second, southern Europe began to experienceeconomic growth, which attracted foreign workers (see Hollifield 1997).Although the social problems found in the higher-immigration countries havebeen seen far less in the newer countries of immigration, the latter have alsobegun to see antiforeigner violence, rioting, and the rise of extreme right anti-immigration parties.

As the above overview indicates, “few issues have had a greater impact onthe politics and society of contemporary Western Europe than immigration”(Hollifield 1997:30). It could even be argued that post–World War II WesternEurope is currently facing problems in social relations between ethnicminorities and native populations similar to those that the United States has


faced between its white and African American populations for most of itshistory. While much of the research on immigration in Western Europe hasfocused on government policy making and migration trends (but see Hoskin1991; Quillian 1995; Pettigrew 1998), the focus here is primarily on individualcitizens’ perceptions of immigrants, with an emphasis on the factors that arelikely to produce variation in individual-level attitudes toward howimmigrants should be treated.

More specifically, the purpose of this research is to revisit an old hypoth-esis that has been studied extensively in the United States and somewhat lessextensively in a few European countries, usually with very ambiguous results.This hypothesis, first formally proposed by Williams (1947), is that contact withpotentially disliked groups can lead to reduced prejudice toward those groups.Allport (1954) and many others have revised this hypothesis, adding condi-tions designed to help explain why contact may have positive effects in somecircumstances, negative effects in other circumstances, and no effect at all inmany circumstances.2 Ultimately researchers in this field still contend that,under the right circumstances, contact can and does have a significant impacton the reduction of prejudice. In this study I explore the question of whethercontact has an effect on reducing hostility toward a new minority group inEurope, the immigrant.

Expressions of prejudice can come in many different forms. The one thatis the main focus of this study is perhaps one of the harshest, the willingnessto expel members of a minority group from society. In addition, in order tobetter establish that the direction of causality between contact and extremeanti-immigrant hostility goes from the former to the latter, the concept ofperceived threat (also “borrowed” from U.S.-based research) is introduced —both in terms of group resources and more symbolic or cultural threatperceptions. In the absence of panel data, this concept should serve as a goodproxy for initial levels of prejudice toward minorities.

The findings of this study indicate that even after including extensivecontrols for perceived threat, having friendships with members of minoritygroups does produce lower levels of exclusionary preferences. Context is alsointroduced as an independent variable on the grounds that that a morethreatening environment (in terms of higher levels of immigration) could serveas an independent predictor of extreme forms of anti-immigrant hostility, suchas the desire for expulsion. In fact, this analysis proves that such contextualeffects are statistically insignificant explanations of this hostility, but they aresignificant predictors of perceived threat. Even more interestingly, it indicatesthat the level of contact can serve to mediate the effects of a threateningenvironment.


The Contact Hypothesis

Allport defines prejudice as “an antipathy based on a faulty and inflexiblegeneralization” (1954:9). Ashmore (1970) provides a similar definition butseparates the notion of antipathy or hostility from Allport’s notion ofgeneralization or stereotyping,3 defining prejudice as “a negative attitudetoward a socially defined group and toward any person perceived to be amember of that group” (1970:253).4 The contact hypothesis itself wasdeveloped mostly in the context of explaining this hostility, or prejudice, towardAfrican Americans; it was also used to explain how prejudice could be reduced,thereby producing less contentious social relations in the U.S.

Williams (1947) appears to be the first to formally propose the contacthypothesis, but as Sherif and Sherif (1953) later argue, “We must specify: Whatkind of contact? Contact in what capacity?” (221). Allport (1954) attemptedto specify some of the conditions that affect the relationship between contactand prejudice, arguing that intergroup contact will only have positive effectson reducing prejudice if (1) there is equal group status; (2) there are commongoals being pursued by group members; (3) there is intergroup cooperation;and (4) there is support from authorities, law, norms, customs, etc. (Amir 1969,1976 and Pettigrew 1971, 1998 provide overviews of studies that test for thesignificance of these conditions). Additional conditions mentioned by otherresearchers include the opportunity to disconfirm negative stereotypes (seeAmir & Ben-Ari 1986; Brewer & Miller 1984; Watson 1950) or develop positiveperceptions of the other group as a result of the contact (Amir 1976); contactbetween members of a majority group and higher status members of a minoritygroup; and contact that is pleasant or rewarding (Amir 1976).

As Pettigrew (1998) later argues, however, Allport and others have deviseda long laundry list of conditions without specifying which are necessary andwhich merely facilitating conditions. While it has been shown that when all ofthese conditions are met, contact often has a positive effect on attitudes to-ward, and interaction with, out-group members (see Cook 1984), accordingto Pettigrew (1998), the above-named conditions should be seen mostly as fa-cilitating, not necessary, conditions. His reasoning is based on the fact that thereare a multitude of studies in which, despite the fact that these conditions arenot met, contact does reduce prejudice (see Pettigrew 1998:68 for a list of vari-ous studies and research settings). Furthermore, in a study that attempted totest for the effects of all four of Allport’s conditions on the contact-prejudicerelationship, it was determined that sometimes the conditions affect the rela-tionship, but often they have very little effect (Smith 1994).

Pettigrew claims that the primary necessary condition is that contact withthe minority group members produces friendship or, in Cook’s (1962)terminology, “acquaintance potential.” Based on survey research in WesternEurope, Pettigrew concludes, “These . . . results suggest that ‘friendship


potential’ is an essential, not merely facilitating, condition for positiveintergroup contact effects that generalize” (1998:76). Wagner, Hewstone, andMachleit (1989) similarly argue that neighborhood and school contact cannotbe expected to reduce prejudice because of the nature of that type of contact,whereas leisure contact—presumably with friends—can be expected to reduceprejudice. Wagner and Zick (1995) also find that having minorities as friendsis associated with less prejudice in Western Europe. The importance of intimatecontact is supported by Amir (1976) and Brewer and Miller (1984) as well. Inaddition, Jackman and Crane (1986) find that having an African Americanfriend or acquaintance tends to increase positive views of African Americansas a group. Other national-level survey data from the United States reveal thatinterracial friendships are also a strong predictor of African Americans’ racialattitudes (Ellison & Powers 1994; Powers & Ellison 1995).

The importance of the relationship between friendship with minorities andprejudice may be partly based on the notion that prejudice results fromperceived differences in belief systems between an individual and members ofanother group (Rokeach, Smith, & Evans 1960). This is also related to the notionof symbolic threats (Kinder & Sears 1981; Sears 1988), whereby peopleperceive that an out-group has different morals, values, beliefs, and attitudesthan their own group. Thus, if a contact situation provides an opportunity tosee that beliefs are actually similar, prejudice should be reduced.5 The primarytype of contact that should provide this opportunity is intimate contact, suchas friendship. Therefore, this is the type of contact that will be examined inthe current study.

As many researchers point out (Amir 1969; Pettigrew 1998; Wagner,Hewstone & Machleit 1989), however, one fundamental problem with tryingto test for the effects of intimate contact on prejudice is the issue of thedirection of causality. Are those who pursue intimate contact less prejudicedto begin with, or does the contact itself actually serve to reduce prejudice?Below are depictions of the two alternative models:

Prejudice � ContactContact � Prejudice

In other words, perhaps those who are prejudiced are likely to avoidintimate contact to begin with, but those who already have low levels ofprejudice are open to such contact. The main problem is that cross-sectionalstudies usually cannot sort out the issue of direction of causality, nor canexperimental studies force intimate contact to occur. Pettigrew (1998), usingnonrecursive structural equation modeling on survey data in Western Europe,manages to address this problem, and determines that while prejudice itselfdoes indeed influence intimate contact with out-groups (in the form offriendships), having friends from various out-groups still has an independent


effect on reducing prejudice. Wilson (1996), using survey research from theUnited States, also finds that a general propensity to avoid various groupsreduces the amount of contact, but that contact still has an independent,positive effect on the reduction of prejudice. The current study attempts toaddress this particular problem by including several measures of perceivedcultural and economic threat in order to control for an individual’s initialunwillingness to have friendships with minorities.

As the above review indicates, much of the research on the contacthypothesis comes from the U.S., and it provides rather conflicting results.Analyses based on nonrandom samples of students in both the Netherlandsand Germany, however, indicate that in those countries, contact with Turkishindividuals reduces prejudice toward Turks (Masson & Verkuyten 1993;Wagner, Hewstone, & Machleit 1989; Wagner & Machleit 1986); pooledanalyses from several European samples also indicate that contact has someeffect on the reduction of prejudice (Pettigrew 1998). I hope to expand uponthese findings by (1) using more recent data which include all European Unionmember states, providing a wider range of potentially threatening environmentsthan was possible, for instance, in the Pettigrew (1998) analysis;6 (2) specifyingthe relationship between threat perception, contact, and preferences for theexclusion of immigrants which, in the absence of data that includes measuresof all of these concepts, has not been tested in the European context; and(3) analyzing the mediating effect of contact on a threatening environment.

Perceived Threat

Although the definitions of prejudice provided above may appear to be fairlyclear, prejudice is, in fact, a rather messy concept. The ultimate focus of thispaper relates to policy preferences in the realm of the treatment of legalimmigrants, which may be thought of as one form of expression of prejudice.For example, the willingness to exclude members or potential members fromthe community is an expression of a high level of prejudice, whereas thewillingness to embrace such members indicates a lack of prejudice.

Thus, the preference for the inclusion or removal of this socially definedgroup — immigrants — is the main dependent variable of interest here.Contact with members of minority groups is the primary independent variableunder investigation, the hypothesis being that such contact will reduce the levelof willingness to expel members of that group. As indicated above, however,the willingness to be inclusive may be the factor that leads some individuals tohave contact with immigrants in the first place. In order to control for thispotential problem, two types of perceived threat — realistic group threat andsymbolic threat — are introduced into the model. Although these two types


of threat may fit conceptually within the general notion of prejudice, it is likelythat they are somewhat distinct from the willingness to expel members of agroup., Feeling threatened by a group may not automatically translate into adesire to completely remove the group from society. Whether such a threatdoes create exclusionary desires is, in fact, an empirical question. In the analysisbelow, measures of threat perception are included in order to control for thelevel of willingness to have contact with immigrants in the first place, but alsoto put the perceived threat-expulsion relationship to an empirical test. We nowturn to a discussion of the two types of threat that seem relevant to thewillingness to expel immigrants.

REALISTIC GROUP CONFLICT

Early propositions regarding relationships between dominant majority groupsand minority groups in American society revolved around notions of groupconflict (Blumer 1958). The central contention of this approach is thatmembers of the dominant group may come to feel that certain resources belongto them, and when those resources are threatened by a minority group,members of the dominant group are likely to react with hostility. Similarly,realistic group conflict proposes the notion that people become hostile towardan out-group because they perceive a real threat from that group. Unlike groupconflict theory, this approach has as its central contention that real competitionover resources must exist, and that individuals in the threatened group mustperceive a collective and individual threat (Bobo 1983, Levine & Campbell1972; Citrin, Reingold & Green 1990; Citrin et al. 1997).

There are two main levels at which perception of competition can occur,however: one at the individual level and the other at the group level. In otherwords, the fear of competition over resources may be conceptualized asresulting from a worry that the individual will lose income, governmentresources, and so on as a result of competition from minority groups.Alternatively, there is a great deal of empirical support for the notion thatindividuals are not necessarily rational and self-seeking but often are concernedabout the greater good of society (see Funk 2000 for a review). In the case ofextreme anti-immigrant prejudice in the form of preference for expulsion,such prejudice might stem, then, from concerns about resources being takenfrom the in-group, rather than just from the individual.

Thus, measures of elements that have been hypothesized by others to beindicators of perceived individual threat, such as risk of losing one’s job andincome level, are included here (see Burns & Gimpel 2000). However, personalthreats are likely to be based on more than just economic conditions and mayresult from other sources of distress or unhappiness. To this end, controls forlife satisfaction and perceptions of whether personal conditions have improved


or become worse and whether they will improve or become worse in the futureare also included in the analysis.

In keeping with the realistic aspect of realistic group conflict, it is alsoexpected that fear of competition over resources is only likely in certainthreatening contexts. Namely, if there are not many immigrants with whom tocompete, it is less likely that citizens will be threatened by them, and thuswilling to expel them. A considerable body of literature has developed relatingattitudes toward out-groups to the context in which survey respondents live,again, particularly in studies of prejudice in the U.S. For instance, the “power-threat” hypothesis contends that “racial animosity increases with the percentof blacks in an environment” (Oliver & Mendelberg 2000: 574).7 Numerousscholars have investigated this hypothesis, with findings generally indicatingthat negative racial attitudes on the part of whites in the United States are tosome degree a function of the level of concentration of African Americans(Bobo 1988; Giles & Hertz 1994; Taylor 1998). In addition, research on anti-immigrant prejudice in Europe confirms that higher concentrations ofimmigrants are positively related to such prejudice (Quillian 1995). We addto this the idea that contact might interact with the environment to producevarying levels of anti-immigrant hostility and threat perception. In other words,individuals who live in a context of high immigration but have no contact withthese immigrants are likely to be far more threatened than individuals wholive in the same context but have established minority friendships. Early studiesfrom the U.S., for instance, found rather conflicting results in terms of the effectsof high concentrations of African Americans in a white individual’sneighborhood on that individual’s level of prejudice toward African Americans(see the review essay by Amir 1969). Such conflicting findings are likely to bea result of contact occurring in some neighborhoods and not in others; ifindividuals live in contexts of high minority residence and have no intimatecontact with these minorities, then threat is likely to be far higher than if theindividual does have such intimate contact. This possibility is explored atgreater length below.

SYMBOLIC PREJUDICE

Still another approach contends that it is not so much self-interest orcompetition for resources that drive individual attitudes, but concern forprotecting certain cultural symbols of the dominant group. Drawing again onthe U.S. literature on prejudice toward African Americans, such symbolicprejudice is conceptualized in the following terms: “Symbolic racism representsa form of resistance to change in the racial status quo based on moral feelingsthat blacks violate such traditional American values as individualism and self-reliance, the work ethic, obedience, and discipline” (Kinder & Sears 1981:416;see also Sears, Hensler & Spear 1979). Huddy and Sears (1995) extend this idea


to the study of attitudes toward immigrants in the U.S. Thus, symbolic threatsare also likely to be at play in explaining extreme anti-immigrant hostility inEurope.

As indicated in the introduction, early immigrants to countries like Franceand Germany were from other European countries, and Hammar (1985)contends that such individuals integrated fairly easily into the cultures of theirnew countries of residence. In contrast, migrants to Europe today are oftenperceived as culturally different from the dominant nationality, bringing withthem religions, such as Islam, Buddhism, and Hinduism, that are new to mostof Western Europe. Many of these differences are quite visible in terms of attire,with fairly large groups of immigrants in many countries clearly indicatingreligious affiliation and cultural ties through their clothing. While Europeansociety itself (outside of Ireland) is not especially religious, it is likely that fairlyunfamiliar religions such as those mentioned above pose a threat either to theChristian foundation on which Europe has been built or to the increasinglysecular nature of European society. Such threats, then, are not necessarilyidentical to resource-based threats, although the two are likely to be stronglyrelated.

Operationalization of Variables

The data set used to test the above hypotheses is the Eurobarometer (EB) surveyfrom spring 1997 (EB 47.1),8 obtained from the Inter-University Consortiumfor Political and Social Research at the University of Michigan. Eurobarometersurveys are conducted semiannually in all European Union countries, usingprobability sampling techniques. For this reason, they provide the possibilityfor generalizability to a large number of individuals from a wide range ofdifferent cultural contexts. Before moving to the analysis of this survey, I discussbriefly the measures of the concepts mentioned above.

ANTI-IMMIGRANT HOSTILITY

If anti-immigrant prejudice is conceptualized as antipathy or hostility towardimmigrants, or in Ashmore’s terminology, as “a negative attitude toward asocially defined group and toward any person perceived to be a member ofthat group” (1970:253), one way to measure this is by gauging citizens’ viewson how immigrants should be treated. Perhaps the ultimate negative attitudetoward a socially defined group is a willingness to expel members of the groupfrom society; the opposite of this, of course, is a willingness to embrace membersof the group as part of society. Thus, as discussed above, the focus here is onthe most extreme form of anti-immigrant hostility or prejudice, namely,expulsion.The scale of this measure, ranges from very positive attitudes toward


the treatment of legal immigrants9 (they should be able to naturalize easily andthey should be able to bring their families with them) to very negative attitudestoward the treatment of these individuals (they should all be sent back to theircountries of origin).10

CONTACT

Based on past research on the conditions affecting the relationship betweencontact and prejudice, it was expected that the most meaningful type of contactwould be the intimate contact of friendship. Thus, the question used todetermine the level of contact with members of minority groups was: Do youhave many friends, some friends or no friends at all among people from theseminority groups? “These” refers to an earlier question in which the respondentsis asked whether they feel that they belong to a minority group in terms ofrace, religion, and culture. (Individuals who answered this question in theaffirmative — less than 5% of the national samples — were excluded from theanalysis.) Of course, a far superior research design would test for the effects ofvarious types of contact rather than assuming friendship to be the mostmeaningful. Unfortunately, questions related to other forms of contact aresimply unavailable in this or other European surveys.11

THREAT

As discussed above, perceptions of threat can occur at several different levels.First, individuals may feel that immigrants threaten their own personal lifecircumstances. Alternatively, the feeling of threat may relate to the resourcesof the group as a whole. In other words, instead of — or in addition to —worrying about his or her own circumstances, the respondent may worry aboutthe economic conditions of the rest of society (excluding the immigrants, ofcourse). The concern may also revolve around the possible denigration of theculture of the society. Finally, the context in which the individual lives is likelyto create varying levels of threatening conditions; individuals living inconditions of high immigration tend to be more hostile toward immigrants,perhaps even to the point of wishing to expel them from society.

Threats to the Individual

Potential personal economic threats are gauged by measuring perceptions ofthe risk of losing one’s job and level of income.12 Individuals who have low levelsof income and who fear that they might lose their jobs are predicted to be themost threatened by immigrants, who may have a reputation for taking low-paying jobs that “belong to” citizens. Additionally, noneconomic questionsregarding life satisfaction can be taken as indirect measures of perceived threat


to the individual him- or herself.13 Individuals who are unhappy with theircurrent life situations or worry about their own futures are hypothesized to bemore likely to blame an out-group such as immigrants and to believe thatmembers of this out-group are contributing to negative personal conditions.

In addition, based on the above conceptualizations distinguishing betweenresource-based group-level threats and more symbolic or cultural threats, Iattempt to measure both here.

Economic/Status-Based Threats

· In schools where there are too many children from these minoritygroups, the quality of education suffers.

· People from these minority groups abuse the system of social services.

· The presence of people from these minority groups increasesunemployment in [Country].

Cultural/Symbolic Threats

· People from these minority groups are enriching the cultural life of[Country]. (Those who disagree with this question are considered tobe more threatened.)

· The religious practices of people from these minority groups threatenour way of life.14

While the measure of the dependent variable clearly refers to immigrants, theabove items refer equally to “minority groups.” These two references are, in fact,likely to be the same in the European context. As indicated above, the itemsrelated to minorities follow from a survey question asking the respondentswhether they feel themselves to belong to a minority group in terms of race,religion, and culture. In a previous Eurobarometer survey (EB 30, fall 1988),exploratory work was conducted regarding the question of whom respondentshave in mind when they think of people from different races, people fromdifferent religions, and people from different cultures. Especially when the cueprovided is “race,” an overwhelming number of respondents referred to groupsthat had recently migrated to their countries: “Blacks,” the “Yellow Race,”Indians and Pakistanis in the case of British survey respondents, Arabs or Turksin the case of French respondents, or Turks in the case of German respondents.Similar patterns can be found in all of the European Union countries. Thus, ifrespondents are asked to think about people from minority groups in termsof race, religion, and culture, they generally imagine Muslims from Pakistan,Turkey, or North Africa; Chinese Buddhists; or Hindus from India (see McLaren2002). The powerful relationship between these survey items and the measure


of anti-immigrant hostility (see below) provides some degree of constructvalidity for the survey’s method of defining those who are considered “minoritygroups” in the view of European citizens.

The survey items were separated into the two groupings of economic/status-based threat perceptions and more symbolic threat perceptions basedon face validity. The first group of items clearly refers to resources that mightbe thought to belong to the dominant nationality: social services, good-qualityeducation, and jobs. The second group appears to relate more to cultural is-sues than to resources. Although the two indices are highly correlated(Pearson’s r = 0.45), as will be seen below, they each make independent contri-butions to explaining level of willingness to expel or embrace immigrants.15

Context

In addition, it was postulated that certain environments were likely to be morethreatening to individuals than others. Specifically, living in a context in whichthere are fairly large numbers of immigrants may independently affect thereaction of citizens to questions about their treatment. In other words, if thereare already fairly large numbers of immigrants, citizens are likely to prefer morerestrictive policies.

TABLE 1: Percent Foreign Population in European Democracies

PercentCountry Foreign

Belgium 9.1Denmark 3.6West Germany 8.5Greece 1.4Italy 1.1Spain 1.1France 6.3Ireland 2.2Northern Ireland NALuxembourg 31.8Netherlands 5.1Portugal 1.6Great Britain 3.5East Germany NAFinland 1.1Sweden 5.8Austria 8.8

Note: From Eurostat’s Migration Statistics, 1996


In terms of measurement, the only context for which data exist is at thecountry level. Since immigration tends to be seen as a national “problem” inEuropean countries, this makes sense. On the other hand, the fact that thesestatistics are computed by national governments that use different definitionsof the concept “foreign” is problematic. Government figures (see Table 1)roughly correspond to the more qualitative accounts of immigration to Europediscussed in the introduction, although it might be contended that the figuresfor Britain and France seem particularly low due to the fact that these twocountries have traditionally allowed immigrants to obtain citizenship far moreeasily than countries such as Germany. On the other hand, criterion validity isindicated by the strong correlation between this aggregate variable and thepercentage in each country that has friends from minority groups.

TABLE 2: Difference of Means Test, with Level of Preference for Expulsionas the Dependent Variable and Friends from Minority Groups asthe Independent Variable

No Friends Some Friends Many FriendsMean N Prct Mean N Prct Mean N Prct g

Belgium 3.93 (.99) 501 58 3.20(1.06)*** 333 38 2.75(1.18)*** 36 4 –.53***

Denmark 3.44 (.96) 619 68 3.04 (.82)*** 269 30 2.80 (.77)** 20 2 –.39***

West Germany 3.93 (.98) 528 59 3.47(1.01)*** 332 37 3.20(1.04)*** 40 4 –.37***

Greece 3.49 (1.12) 659 72 3.42(1.19) 236 26 3.20(1.15) 25 3 –.05

Italy 3.62 (1.03) 630 69 3.41(1.08)** 265 29 3.80 (.94) 15 2 –.13*

Spain 2.98 (1.27) 556 62 2.53(1.29)*** 327 36 2.43(1.33)* 21 2 –.25***

France 3.88 (1.03) 324 38 3.00(1.21)*** 465 54 2.57(1.43)*** 74 9 –.50***

Ireland 3.05 (1.04) 604 76 2.82(1.15)** 175 22 3.08 (.95) 13 2 –.14*

Northern Ireland 3.22 (1.14) 86 44 2.84(1.05)* 92 47 2.83(1.47) 18 9 –.21*

Luxembourg 3.64 (.96) 160 32 3.34 (.97)*** 267 53 3.01(1.20)*** 74 15 –.30***

Netherlands 3.16 (.98) 403 49 2.89(1.10)*** 350 43 2.89(1.07)* 62 8 –.18***

Portugal 3.64 (1.05) 476 55 3.38(1.08)*** 333 39 3.44(1.02) 52 6 –.16***

Great Britain 3.43 (1.01) 366 42 3.12(1.15)*** 446 52 3.15(1.13)* 53 6 –.18***

East Germany 3.76 (1.00) 774 84 3.25(1.06)*** 135 16 2.55(1.51)* 11 1 –.40***

Finland 3.17 (.96) 557 61 2.89 (.96)*** 312 34 2.79 (.84)** 38 4 –.27***

Sweden 3.27 (.80) 372 41 3.02 (.78)*** 476 53 2.98 (.87)** 53 6 –.26***

Austria 3.80 (.96) 509 57 3.40(1.00)*** 347 39 3.09(1.36)** 35 4 –.31***

Note: Standard deviations are in parentheses. The difference of means test was conducted comparing the cat-egory of having no minority friends with the category of having some minority friends and with the categoryof having many minority friends. Thus, the significance tests refer to the difference between each of these twolatter categories and the “no friends” category.The gamma figures in the final column are based on the ordi-nal version of the contact survey item, and the significance levels are the same as for the differences of meanstests.

* p < .05 ** p < .01 *** p < .001 (one-tailed)


Bivariate Analyses

Before proceeding to the multivariate analyses, the relationships between twoof the independent variables of interest — contact with minorities and threatperception — and the level of exclusionary feelings are examined first. Table 2presents the results of a t-test that compares average hostility level, using the5-point scale discussed in footnote 10, of those who have no friends fromminority groups, on the one hand, with those who have many or some friendsfrom minority groups, on the other hand, as well as the gamma coefficients forthe ordinal version of contact.

The first point to be made about these results is that in every country exceptGreece, having some or many friends from minority groups is significantlyrelated to lower levels of hostility toward immigrants, and the gammacoefficients in the last column confirm the strength of this relationship. Theother main point to make about the results concerns the wide range ofpercentages of people in these countries who have friends from minoritygroups. In most countries, only a tiny percentage of respondents claims to havemany friends from minority groups,16 with Luxembourg, Northern Ireland, andFrance being exceptions.17 On the other hand, a fairly large portion of citizensin almost every country has at least some friends from minority groups. Indeed,

TABLE 3: Correlations between Realistic and Symbolic Threat and Level ofPreference for Expulsion

Economic SymbolicThreat Threat N

Belgium .43 .45 870Denmark .34 .40 908W. Germany .37 .41 900Greece .16 .16 920Italy .35 .29 910Spain .36 .32 904France .59 .53 863Ireland .26 .26 792N. Ireland .39 .37 196Luxembourg .36 .32 501Netherlands .43 .40 815Portugal .19 .19 861Great Britain .42 .41 865E. Germany .31 .35 921Finland .37 .34 907Sweden .36 .38 901Austria .31 .37 891

Note: Entries are Pearson’s correlation coefficients, with all coefficients significant at the .001 level.


in France, Luxembourg, Britain, and Sweden, a majority of the respondentsclaims to have some friends from a different ethnic/racial group. Only in theformer East Germany do we find that fewer than 20% of individuals have someminorities as friends. The basic pattern among the countries in this study mostlyseems to reflect the pattern of immigration to each country (see Table 1): thesmallest percentage of people with minority friends are to be found amongthose countries that have not experienced a great deal of immigration sinceWorld War II (that is, Greece, Spain, Italy, Ireland, the former East Germany,and Finland). Indeed, the correlation between the percentage of foreigners inthe country and the percent of citizens who have some or many minority friendsis 0.42, indicating that experience with immigration plays a very large role indetermining the opportunity that citizens have for contact with minorities.

With regard to perceived realistic and symbolic threats, there is also aconsistently strong relationship between these and extreme anti-immigranthostility (see Table 3). Once again, the relationship is not very strong in Greece,and is also rather weak in Portugal. Otherwise, higher levels of perceived threatseem to be related to a preference for harsher treatment of immigrants.

Multivariate Analyses

The primary question to be answered in this section is whether, after controllingfor other potential causes of exclusionary preferences, contact with minoritiesstill reduces hostility or whether perceived threat is simply too strong to allowcontact to have any effect. A related question to be answered is whether thecontext, in terms of percentage of foreigners, mediates the relationship betweenthese two independent variables and the willingness to expel immigrants. Thefull model that will be analyzed is the following:

Level of desire a + b1 (Contact) + b2 (group-level economic/status-basedfor exclusion or = threat) + b3 (cultural/symbolic threat) + b4 (Individual-inclusion of level economic/status-based threat) +b5 (% Foreign) + b6immigrants (% Foreign* Contact) + b7 (% Foreign* Group-level

economic/status-based threat) + b8 (% Foreign* Cultural/symbolic threat) + b9 * Control variables + e

Note that b4 and b9 represent vectors of regression coefficients for multiplevariables that measure these concepts.

Since this is a multilevel analysis, with one independent variable measuredat the country level, it is necessary to pool the respondents across countries,which creates the potential for heteroskedasticity and artificially deflates thesize of standard errors for the aggregate-level variable. To correct for these


TABLE 4: Multilevel Model of Level of Preference for Expulsion

Model 1 Model 2 Model 3 Model 4B Robust B Robust B Robust B Robust

S.E. S.E. S.E. S.E.

Minority friends –.12*** .03 –.03 .05 –.12** 0.03 –.12** .03

Economic threat .12*** .01 .12*** .01 .11*** 0.02 .12*** .01

Symbolic threat .17*** .01 .17*** .01 .17*** 0.01 .14*** .03

Risk of losing job Low –.08* .03 –.09* .03 –.09* .03 –.09* .03 Medium .00 .02 –.00 .03 –.00 .03 –.00 .03 High –.06 .07 –.06 .07 –.06 .07 –.06 .07 Definite –.05 .08 –.05 .09 –.05 .09 –.05 .09 Don’t know .03 .05 .03 .05 .03 .05 .03 .05 No answer –.04 .03 -.04 .03 –.04 .03 –.04 .03

Income Lowest .02 .05 .03 .05 –.04 .03 –.04 .03 Second lowest .03 .04 .03 .04 .03 .04 .03 .04 Next highest .04 .03 .04 .03 .04 .03 .04 .03 No answer .00 .06 .00 .06 .00 .06 .00 .06

Life satisfaction General .06*** .01 .07*** .01 .06*** .01 .06*** .01 Compared to .00 .01 .00 .01 .00 .01 .00 .01 Next 5 years .03 .02 .03 .02 .03 .02 .03 .02

5 years ago

Left-rightself-placement .03*** .01 .03*** .01 .03*** .01 .03*** .01

Education –.02*** .00 –.02*** .00 -.02*** .00 –.02*** .00

Gender .01 .02 .01 .02 .01 .02 .01 .02

Age .00 .00 .00 .00 .00 .00 .00 .00

Percent foreign .02 .02 .06** .02 -.00 .05 –.00 .03

Percent foreign* Minority friends — –.02 .01 — —

Percent foreign* Economic threat— — .00 .01 —

Percent foreign* Symbolic threat — .01 .01

Constant 1.96*** .17 1.84*** .17 2.07*** .29 2.08*** .26R2 .21 .21 .21 .21MSE .98 .98 .98 .98N 12,297 12,297 12,297 12,297

Note: Omitted categories are: Risk of losing job, none; Income, highest; Gender, male.

* p < .05 ** p < .01 *** p < .001 (one-tailed)


potential problems, we calculate robust standard errors for the regressioncoefficients below (see Bryk & Raudenbush 1992).18

Table 4 (model 1) indicates that perceptions of economic and culturalthreats to the nation are both quite important in predicting levels of willingnessto expel immigrants in Europe; merely feeling group threat to resources or tonational symbols does, in fact, translate into a willingness to expel the sociallydefined group, immigrants. On the other hand, potential personal threats —the threat of losing one’s job, being in a lower income bracket, and dissatisfactionwith one’s life — tend to be fairly weak or insignificant predictors ofexclusionary feelings in most countries. Thus, in terms of the measures of threat,the preference for the expulsion of immigrants is mostly driven by perceptionsof cultural and religious threats and threats to the economic well-being of theother citizens, and not so much by concerns for one’s own well-being. Theseresults mirror those found in studies of public opinion and immigration in theUnited States (Citrin et al. 1997) and in voting behavior studies, which tendto find little direct effect of self-interest on vote choice, but a large effect ofconcern for the country/society as a whole (for seminal research on this subjectsee Fiorina 1981; Lewis-Beck 1990; and a review by Funk 2000). Additionally,living in a context that is more threatening — in terms of the percentage offoreigners in the country — does not increase exclusionary feelings above andbeyond levels of perceived cultural and economic or resource-based threats.

Table 4 (model 1) also indicates that even after placing fairly strict controlsfor these potential threats into the equation, having minority friendships is stillsignificant in predicting feelings of inclusion and exclusion with regard toimmigrants. In other words, having such friendships appears to reduce hostilityeven further beyond the reduction that comes from a lower threat perception,making citizens somewhat less willing to expel immigrants and somewhat morewilling to incorporate them and their families into society. However, it shouldbe noted that the effect of such minority friendships is not nearly as powerfulas that of initial perceived threat. Although the size of the unstandardizedcoefficients is almost identical, we must bear in mind the metrics on whichthe two variables are measured. Minority friendships is a three-point scale,whereas economic perceived threat ranges from 3 to 9 and symbolic threatranges from 2 to 6. Thus, the total impact of moving from one end of each scaleto the other is quite different: the standardized coefficient for minorityfriendships is –0.06, for economic/status-based threats, .22, and for symbolicthreats, 0.21, providing a clearer indication of the size of each of these effects.In addition, although it seemed unlikely that an interaction between thepercentage of foreigners and contact or perceived threat would be significant(since the effect of percentage foreign is not significant on its own), theseinteractions are still tested in models 2, 3, and 4 of Table 4.19 These coefficientsare not statistically significant, however, nor do they contribute significantlyto explained variance.


Contact and Threat Perception

Although the effects of contact and threat perception on the willingness toexpel immigrants do not appear to be mediated by the level of immigrationto the country, it still seems quite likely that context has a direct impact onperceived threat which, as argued above, is an extremely powerful predictorof the level of exclusionary feelings. Thus, in Table 5 (model 1), the level ofperceived threat is predicted from the same variables that were conceived ashaving an effect on preferences for expulsion. For this analysis, the two types

TABLE 5: Multilevel Model of Perceived Threat

Model 1 Model 2

B Robust S.E. B Robust S.E.

Minority friends –.94*** .13 –.40** .11

Risk of losing job Low –.18 .11 –.18 .10 Medium .09 .14 .07 .14 High .46** .12 .45** .12 Definite .25 .25 .22 .27 No answer –.04 .06 –.05 .05

Income Lowest .13 .16 .14 .16 Second lowest .23* .10 .23* .10 Next highest .26* .11 .26* .11 No answer .15 .16 .16 .16

Life satisfaction General .11 .08 .12 .08 Compared to 5 years ago .21** .06 .21** .07 Next 5 years .34*** .05 .33*** .05

Left-right self-placement .20*** .03 .20*** .03

Education –.06** .02 –.07** .02

Gender –.24** .06 –.24*** .06

Age .00 .00 .00 .00

Percent foreign .20** .05 .37*** .01

Percent foreign * Minority friends — –.12*** .02

Constant 9.34*** .35 8.63*** .36

R2 .15 .16

MSE 2.60 2.59

N 13373 13373

Note: Omitted categories are: Risk of losing job, none; Income, highest; Gender, male.

* p < .05 ** p < .01 *** p < .001 (one-tailed)


of perceived threat (realistic and symbolic) have been combined into a singleindex for the sake of simplifying the interpretation. Note that the bivariatecorrelation between the two measures of threat is rather high (Pearson’s r = .45),and all of the items taken together have an acceptable Cronbach’s alpha(overall a= 0.60). The scale ranges from 3 to 15, with lower values representingless perceived threat.

As expected, the context of living among a larger number of foreigners isindeed significantly, positively related to levels of threat perception, as are someof the individual-based measures of perceived threat. In addition, havingfriendships among minority groups appears to reduce levels of perceived threatconsiderably. Moreover, the variables representing concerns for personal loss,while mostly insignificant when expulsion preferences were used as thedependent variable, are now fairly strong predictors of perceived threat.Specifically, a high perceived risk of losing one’s job is associated with a higherlevel of threat perception, while being in the second lowest and next-to-highestincome categories appears to make individuals slightly more threatened inrelation to the high income group. Also, those who feel that their currentsituation is worse than the past or that the next five years will be worse thanthe present tend to be rather more threatened by minorities living in thecountry.

Even more interesting, however, are the figures in Table 5, model 2, in whichan interaction between the level of threat presented by the environment andthe level of contact is posited to have an effect on threat perception. Specifically,it was expected that in environments of high threat, having minority friendshipsmight reduce the level of threat perceived by the individual. This is exactlywhat the interaction term in model 2 indicates. In order to illustrate the effectmore clearly, the predicted values of threat perception are graphed across high,medium, and low levels of foreigners in the context, and across the number ofminority friendships held by the respondents. Figures 1 and 2 present twoalternate views of the same predicted values.

Figure 1 indicates that those who have many friends from minority groupshave the same level of threat perception, no matter what the context ofimmigration; on the other hand, among those who have no minority friends,an increasingly threatening context increases the level of threat perception, aswould be predicted by the “power threat” hypothesis. Figure 2 allows us totranslate the same information in a slightly different manner; when there arelarge numbers of foreigners in the context, having more friends from amongminorities reduces the level of perceived threat considerably. On the otherhand, when there are only small numbers of foreigners in the context, havingminority friendships has less of an impact on the level of threat perception,which is already relatively low. Thus, contact can be said to mediate the effectsof the context. This finding has important implications for the role of contactand for the contact hypothesis.


Conclusions

Although conclusions must be developed with some caution due to the cross-sectional nature of the survey used in the above analysis, there is rather strongevidence here in support of the contact hypothesis. Even in the face of multiplecontrols for various forms of threat, contact has a small but nontrivial effecton the treatment that survey respondents would give legally establishedimmigrants, with those who have some contact leaning more toward aninclusive treatment and those who have no contact leaning more towardexpulsion.

Since more peaceful relations between established majority groups andminority groups in Europe are probably related to the level of willingness toembrace those minority groups as full members of society, the findings here

FIGURE 1: Percent Foreign/Minority Friendships Interaction

Figure 1. Percent Foreign/

Minority Friendships Interaction

Percent Foreign

9.105.101.10

Per

ceiv

edT

hrea

t

12.0

11.5

11.0

10.5

10.0

9.5

9.0

8.5

Minority Friends

None

Some

Many

Percent Foreign

Per

ceiv

ed T

hre

at


imply that one way to encourage more peaceful relations may be to encouragefriendships between members of the different groups. Although the specificrelationship between contact and feelings of exclusion is not all that strong andcould perhaps be easily discounted, the other important finding here provideseven more confirmation that contact does have an effect on attitudes towardimmigrants in the European context. This is because contact appears to mediatethe effect of threatening environments, reducing threat perceptions in contextsof high immigration.

It is also important to note that all of the investigations of the contacthypothesis in the European context, including this one, have indicated thatcontact does matter for reducing hostility toward immigrants to Europe. Thisis in contrast to studies from the U.S., which have provided rather conflictingresults when they tested this hypothesis. Part of this difference in findings

FIGURE 2: Interaction, Another View

Figure 2. Interaction, Another View

Minority Friends

ManySomeNone

Per

ceiv

edT

hrea

t12.0

11.5

11.0

10.5

10.0

9.5

9.0

8.5

Percent Foreign

1.10

5.10

9.10

Minority Friends

Per

ceiv

ed T

hre

at


probably results from the fact that the European studies have attempted to testthe hypothesis only in situations where intimate contact is actually likely tohave occurred. In other words, no tests of neighborhood contact or of work-related contact have been conducted. Much of the older research from the U.S.did focus considerably on these forms of contact — which often did not reduceprejudice. This provides one possible explanation for the difference in the levelof consistency of findings.

Another reason for the difference in the findings across the two settingsmight lie in the different historical contexts for different minority groups. Theminority group that is usually the focus of the contact hypothesis in the U.S.,African Americans, lived within a context, both before and after the Civil War,in which open prejudice and violence toward them were acceptable and ofteneven condoned, both by citizens in the majority group and by the legal system.Europe’s minority groups immigrated in very different times, however — post-World War II and more specifically, post-Holocaust.

The reactions on the part of Europe’s majority groups in countries likeFrance and Germany to anti-immigrant violence provide some indication thatthe overall environment in which these minorities exist might be far less hostileand thus more embracing that the environment in which African Americanshave existed. In other words, the very lengthy historical development of anti–African American hostility may be one that is much more difficult to breakdown through the strategies such as contact than is the less lengthy and moreaccommodating history of minority groups in Europe. This is not to say thatsocial relations between immigrants and citizens in Europe are unproblematic,but that the context of increased tolerance and respect for human rights, anda legal system that promotes these values, all resulting from the horrors of theHolocaust, might have made the likelihood of open contact between groupsmore possible than it was throughout much of the history of minority-majorityrelations in the U.S. Moreover, the emphasis on values such as human rightsand equality in post–World War II Europe may mean that the contact that doesoccur is based on very different assumptions and beliefs about the treatmentof minorities than was the case in the U.S.

Naturally, more work must be done to determine whether there areconditions in which contact actually has a negative effect on attitudes towardEurope’s minorities. On average, its effects appear to be positive, but no attemptwas made here to search for interactive effects (other than between contactand level of immigration to the country). Moreover, no attempt was made todetermine who is likely to have such contact in the first place and who avoidsit or lacks the opportunity for it. In short, the positive relations between migrantminorities and established Europeans that are likely to occur as a result ofcontact may or may not be encouraged by government policy because it ispossible that the individual-level characteristics that make contact likely orunlikely are not easily changed by such policies.


Finally, more work must be done on the question of whether contact-encouraging policies already exist in Europe and what the effect of thosepolicies might be. All European countries encourage the integration of legallyestablished immigrants into society, but this occurs in varying degrees acrossEurope and is also likely to vary quite widely across local settings. The findingsin this paper, combined with others from Western Europe regarding the effectsof contact, ought to provide encouragement for the development of a researchdesign that can answer such policy-related questions.

Notes

1. Other countries, like Great Britain, did not necessarily need to recruit labor fromformer colonies because of a vast supply of labor from Ireland, but because citizens ofthe former colonies were also officially citizens of the host country, they were allowedto move freely to those host countries (Layton-Henry 1985).

2. Ford’s review (1986) highlights the huge array of diverse findings.

3. Allport actually argues that stereotypes are not an integral part of prejudice and thatthey are essentially a consequence of prejudice and discrimination; stereotypes developin order to rationalize or justify one’s prejudice and discrimination.

4. The “inflexible generalization” in Allport’s definition refers to the concept ofstereotyping, which most later researchers, including Ashmore, thought should bedistinguished from prejudice.

5. However, Barnard and Benn (1988), in an experiment conducted among collegestudents, find that whether white students discover that their attitudes differ from thoseof African American participants makes no difference in reducing prejudice; rather, havingdiscussions about values (no matter whether there is agreement or disagreement) tendsto reduce prejudice, if only slightly.

6. Pettigrew’s (1998) analysis relies on surveys from France, Great Britain, theNetherlands, and the former West Germany, which are all high-immigration countries.

7. Early formulations of this hypothesis can be found in Key (1949/1984) and Blalock(1967).

8. This survey was selected because it includes measures for the important conceptsdiscussed above, whereas other available surveys do not.

9. There are questions in this particular survey about both illegal and legal immigrants.The focus of the current study is legal immigrants because people are likely to thinkvery differently about the two types of migrants, because citizens of a country are unlikelyto have illegal immigrants as friends, and because legal immigrants are the ones who areexpected to become part of the society which they have joined.

10. The range and values of the scale are as follows (the set of questions mentionedbelow begins “Now we are going to talk about people who have come to live in [Our


Country] and who are not citizens of a Member State of the European Union, who fromnow on we will call ‘immigrants’”):

1. Legally established immigrants from outside the European Union should have the rightto bring members of their immediate family in [Our Country] and Legally establishedimmigrants from outside the European Union should be able to become naturalized easily(but disagreed with all questions that appear in 3–5 below).

2. Legally established immigrants from outside the European Union should have the rightto bring members of their immediate family in [Our Country] or Legally establishedimmigrants from outside the European Union should be able to become naturalized easily(but disagreed with all questions that appear in 3–5 below).

3. Legally established immigrants from outside the European Union should be sent backto their country of origin if they have been convicted of serious offenses (but disagreedwith the questions that appear in 4–5 below).

4. Legally established immigrants from outside the European Union should be sent backto their country of origin if they are unemployed (but disagreed with number 5 below).

5. Legally established immigrants from outside the European Union should all be sentback to their country of origin.

11. The closest question available that might be used as a measure of neighborhoodcontact asks whether the respondent would find it difficult to accept having membersof a minority group living in his or her neighborhood. This might be considered forinclusion as a proxy for the likelihood of neighborhood contact, except that it follows afilter question related to whether the respondent finds any minority groups “disturbing.”Even more problematic, this filter question follows a series of 10 questions that indicatethat this is the “Year Against Racism” and ask the respondent how he or she feels aboutthis. Put simply, the respondent is told that the European Union has designated this theYear Against Racism, and then is asked whether he or she finds any minority groupsdisturbing, to which approximately half of the sample responds negatively. Thus, in orderto use this proxy for neighborhood contact, approximately half of the sample would belost, and the variance of all of the variables in the model changes accordingly. It shouldbe noted that the questions that are used in the current analysis were asked prior to thefilter question.

12. The perception of the likelihood of losing one’s job was measured with the followingquestion: [If doing any paid work] How likely do you think it is that you may lose yourjob in the next few years? 0% / No risk at all; 25% / Low risk; 50% / Fifty-fifty; 75% /High risk; 100% / Definitely will; Don’t know. Because of the potential for a huge amountof missing data due to those who are not working and those who chose the “Don’t know”category, this variable was recoded into a series of dummy variables, with a special dummyrepresenting the category of people who are not working and another dummyrepresenting the group who said “Don’t know,” as well as dummies representing thesubstantive categories. The omitted category in the analysis below is the “No risk at all”category.

13. The questions are:


1. On the whole, are you very satisfied, fairly satisfied, not very satisfied or not at all

satisfied with the life you lead?

2. If you compare your present situation with five years ago, would you say it has

improved, stayed about the same or got worse?

3. In the course of the next five years, do you expect your personal situation to improve,

to stay about the same or to get worse?

The coding of all of these questions was a 3-point scale, in which high values representdissatisfaction or concerns that one’s situation is worsening or will worsen in the future.

14. All of these questions had response choices of “tend to agree,” “tend to disagree,” or“don’t know.” They were coded as 1-3 scales, with high values representing feeling morethreatened (depending on the question wording), low values representing less threat,and the “don’t know” category being placed in the center.

15. The correlations between the items that make up each of the indices are, of course,fairly strong (usually in the range of 0.30).

16. This is, of course, part of the reason that this category does not achieve statisticalsignificance in some countries.

17. As the number of immigrants to Northern Ireland is quite low, individuals there aremost likely thinking of different religious groups when answering the question of whetherthey have friends from minority groups.

18. Note that controls for variables thought to be related to anti-immigrant prejudice,such as ideology, education, gender, and age (see Hoskin 1991; Quillian 1995), were alsoincluded in the model.

19. Each interaction is entered into the equation separately because collinearity diagnosticsindicate that tolerance is reached when multiple interactions are included in the equation.

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w2 anti immigrant prejudice in europe

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developed countries

perceived threat

labor shortages

country hammar

anabundance of labor

antiimmigrant prejudice

levels ofwillingness

levels of willingness