Norwegians' Attitudes Toward New Immigrants

Abstract

During the 1980s Norway, together with Denmark and Sweden, experienced an influx of immigrants, refugees and asylum-seekers from the poorer nations of Asia. Africa and Latin America. The encounter forced Norwegians to confront their established values and attitudes. One of the most homogeneous and uniform countries in the world underwent a unique experiment: new groups and colors changed the traditional picture- and perhaps as a result the nation's self-image. In this paper we analyze the attitudes of Norwegians toward the new immigrants. We explain why some are basically positive while others are not. The theoretical discussion draws on the concept of relative deprivation. The main idea is that the beliefs of individuals represent a relationship between their expectations and their achievement relative to others in the same boat as themselves. Negative attitudes are seen as a result of people feeling deprived in com parison with some standard, or with real or imagined conditions for other people. This empirical analysis is based on a national survey from 1988, which includes more than 2000 respondents. We use multiple regression to evaluate effects of various explanatory variables. The results indicate significant effects of education, age, gender and labor market position, together with mediating influences of social psychological and subjective factors. The strong impact of educational background and indicators of self-reliance are interpreted as supporting the general idea that groups that suffer relative deprivation more than others develop negative attitudes. The findings also suggest that education is essential more as a general resource in a competitive society than as a conveyor of an enlightened perspective.