What Explains People's Attitudes Towards Immigrants? A Comparative Study of Estonia and Russia

Abstract

The paper focuses on a comparative analysis of people’s attitudes towards immigrants’ role in several aspects of countries’ life depending on individual’s socio-demographic and economic characteristics in Estonia and Russia. The empirical part of the paper relies on the European Social Survey (ESS) fifth round database. The results of the study show that Estonian peoples’ attitudes towards immigrants are, on average, better in all aspects of the country’s life – economy, culture and the country as a living place, compared to Russia. Both economic and non-economic factors explain the observed variation of individual’s opinions about the role of immigrants in countries’ life. Ethnic minorities, religious people and people with higher income are more tolerant to immigrants in both countries. Socio-demographic characteristics such as age, gender and education are valid determinants of people’s attitudes towards immigrants only in Estonia. Better educated people have more positive attitudes towards immigrants compared to less educated people in the case of Estonia but not Russia. The results of the analysis therefore highlight the necessity to take different factors into account for the design of migration and integration policies in the countries with ethnically diverse population.