Ethnic Exclusionism in European Countries. Public Opposition to Civil Rights for Legal Migrants as a Response to Perceived Ethnic Threat

Abstract

In this paper we focus on opposition among European citizens to the granting of civil rights to legal migrants, a phenomenon considered to be a crucial aspect of ethnic exclusionism. We set out to establish to what extent differences in support of ethnic exclusionism can be explained in terms of effects of particular (a) individual and (b) contextual characteristics, and in terms of (c) interactions between contextual and individual characteristics. We have systematically derived hypotheses from Ethnic Competition Theory. We used cross-national comparable data from 15 European countries and performed multi-level analyses (total N = 12,728). We found that people living in individual competitive conditions perceive ethnic out-groups as a threat, and that this in turn reinforces ethnic exclusionism. Contextual competitive conditions, particularly the presence of non-EU citizens, also affect ethnic exclusionism.