Individual and Social Conceptions of Nationhood: How Do They Relate to Perceptions of Immigrants?

Abstract

This paper contributes to the ongoing discussion about how public opinions regarding citizenship relate to individual attitudes towards immigrants and immigration. With regard to the vast literature on this issue, the study takes a new turn by explicitly focusing on the aggregated opinions in a country and their interplay with individual attitudes as well as naturalisation policies. In doing so, the paper relies on new insights from research on the individual-contextual nexus of mass public opinions and their societal consequences. This research underscored that the climate of opinions may exhibit stronger and more controversial effects than the related individual attitude. In addition, the present study aims at testing the relationship between mass public opinions and the effectiveness of naturalisation policies in reducing anti-immigrant attitudes. Based on cross-national hierarchical analyses of the newest release of the ISSP data on National Identity III (2013) in 20 countries, the preliminary results reveal that more liberal mass public opinions regarding citizenship rights are not able to foster positive attitudes towards immigrant – which counters the effect of individual-level opinions.