How context shapes acceptance of immigrants: the link between affective social distance and locational distance

Abstract

ABSTRACTThe presence of immigrants is an important contextual variable when explaining attitudes toward immigrants. We examine how the presence of immigrants is related to the affective social distance i.e. the sympathy the members of a group feel for another group. We make use of large data set (n = 2,977) on attitudes toward immigrants in 107 neighbourhoods within a single municipality (Turku, Finland). It allows us to analyze how attitudes toward immigrants vary across different neighbourhoods and how the neighbourhood context shapes the affective social distance to immigrants. Our findings suggest that, although social distance varies between neighbourhoods with a large share of immigrants and those with fewer immigrants, these relationships disappear when individual level characteristics and other contextual variables are considered. Nevertheless, there are some noteworthy differences between how the individual level characteristics unfold in neighbourhoods with a large share of immigrants compared with how they unfold in other neighbourhoods.