Economic conditions and perceptions of immigrants as an economic threat in Europe: Temporal dynamics and mediating processes

Boris Heizmann,Nora Huth

doi:10.1177/0020715221993529

Abstract

This article addresses the extent to which economic downturns influence the perception of immigrants as an economic threat and through which channels this occurs. Our primary objective is an investigation of the specific mechanisms that connect economic conditions to the perception of immigrants as a threat. We therefore also contribute to theoretical discussions based on group threat and realistic group conflict theory by exposing the dominant source of competition relevant to these relationships. Furthermore, we investigate whether people react more sensitive to short-term economic dynamics within countries than to the long-term economic circumstances. Our database comprises all waves of the European Social Survey from 2002 to 2017. The macro-economic indicators we use include GDP per capita, unemployment, and national debt levels, covering the most salient economic dimensions. We furthermore control for the country’s migration situation and aggregate party positions toward cultural diversity. Our results show that the dynamic short-term developments of the economy and migration within countries are of greater relevance for perceived immigrant threat than the long-term situation. In contrast, the long-term political climate appears to be more important than short-term changes in the aggregate party positions. Further mediation analyses show that objective economic conditions influence anti-immigrant attitudes primarily through individual perceptions of the country’s economic performance and that unemployment rates are of primary importance.

Highlights

The economic developments after 2007 had an enormous impact across the world
An upsurge in right-wing populist party presence across many countries (Dennison and Geddes, 2018), various public debates about immigration, and increasingly hostile attitudes toward immigrants in several European countries (Isaksen, 2019; Turner and Cross, 2015) exemplify such societal pressures. Whether such societal pressures are related to economic downturns taking place within those countries or whether they develop independently of these remains open for scrutiny
It may well be that levels of debt are more influential when it comes to public opinion toward redistributing welfare resources toward immigrants: high levels of debt may increase welfare chauvinism, that is, the idea that immigrants should not partake from welfare resources (Heizmann et al, 2018; Kitschelt, 1995; Reeskens and Van Oorschot, 2012), because debt itself may pose a strain on public finances

Summary

Introduction

The economic developments after 2007 had an enormous impact across the world. Numerous countries faced a diverse and shifting set of economic challenges, and only some of them have far fully recovered. An upsurge in right-wing populist party presence across many countries (Dennison and Geddes, 2018), various public debates about immigration, and increasingly hostile attitudes toward immigrants in several European countries (Isaksen, 2019; Turner and Cross, 2015) exemplify such societal pressures. Whether such societal pressures are related to economic downturns taking place within those countries or whether they develop independently of these remains open for scrutiny. We approach this issue by focusing on the perception of immigrants as an economic threat and ask the following research questions: Are perceptions of immigration being bad for the economy a reaction to countries’ economic conditions? If so, through which channels does this relationship unfold?

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Conclusion