A fuzzy-hybrid analysis of citizens’ perception toward immigrants in Europe

Abstract

The public and political debate about immigration now play a big role in all European elections, and there is a trend increasing an anti-immigrant sentiment that receives important media attention. This work, based on the European Social Survey (ESS) round 9 data for 27 European countries, contributes to such debate by introducing a new method in the field, a Fuzzy-Hybrid Approach (FHA), that complements other methodological methods that have been used to measure citizens’ attitudes towards immigrants. The novel approach in the field provides a synthetic indicator that measures openness towards immigrants (OTISI). Then, we analyse the relationship that exists between some specific sociodemographic variables and the new index. Results show that country, political orientation, age, religion, economic situation, gender, birthplace, employment, education, universalism, and conformity are key drivers that explain different attitudes towards immigrants. Our findings concur with other previous studies showing that the results are robust and that the method can be applied in future social science studies.