Anti-immigrant Attitudes in Russia: The Group Position Model Reconsidered

Abstract

This article analyses the relationship between relative group position in an ethnically stratified social order and anti-immigrant attitudes in Russia. Based on data from the Russia Longitudinal Monitoring Survey of the Higher School of Economics, it studies the role of two objective indicators of group position: relative ingroup size and the group’s dominant political status within a region. The findings show that when a group position is measured in numerical terms, the attitudes of ethnic Russians seem to follow social dominance theory, while titulars tend to conform to the alienation-based extension to the group position model.