When contact with immigrants matters: threat, interethnic attitudes and foreigner exclusionism in Spain's Comunidades Autónomas

Abstract

This article examines the ‘contact hypothesis’ and theories of group threat in Spain, a country of recent mass immigration. Drawing on data for the period 1991–2000, we investigate whether respondents who interact with African and Latin American immigrants express lowered exclusionism compared to those who do not. Measures assessing contact include: close relationship, occasional encounter or acquaintanceship, and workplace contact. After multiple individual- and contextual-level controls, it is found that the close and occasional forms of contact are consistent predictors of lessened foreigner exclusionism across time, but workplace contact is not. Group threat (measured as perceived number of people with different nationality, race, religion or culture) contributes considerably to explaining variation in attitudes inter-regionally. Over time, close contact with migrants becomes a weaker predictor of reduced foreigner exclusionism. Finally, these results suggest that perceived threat is a consistent predictor of exclusionism over time, while the proportional presence of immigrants has no impact in either competitive or non-competitive settings.