Ethnic Threat Research Articles

The dynamics of ethnocentrism in Europe. A comparison of enduring and emerging determinants of solidarity towards immigrants

ABSTRACTThis article examines cross-national differences in solidarity towards immigrants in the EU. This concept of solidarity is operationalized through perceived ethnic threat vs. a positive view of multicultural society. The main argument of this article is that ‘classical’ enduring determinants (sociodemographic factors, subjective values and structural factors) are still able to explain ethnocentrism, but these factors are enriched and mediated by a cluster of five emerging explanatory factors which reflect societal malaise. These factors include dissatisfaction with society, political distrust, fear of social decline, lack of recognition, and social distrust. The thesis of societal malaise as a powerful concept to explain contemporary restrictions of macro-solidarity is tested with a Multiple-Group Structural Equation Model using data from 21 countries of the European Social Survey (wave 6 2012). A theory-guided approach is used to categorize European nations into six heterogeneous European areas. Statistical analyses reveal that new emerging factors of societal malaise indeed act as a mediator of classical explanations of ethnocentrism. From a comparative perspective, the determinants of macro-solidarity are strongly heterogeneous throughout the six European areas particularly between the East and West of the European Union.

Sentencing Departures and Female Defendants: Assessing the Effects of Racial and Ethnic Threat

Prior research exploring the effects of racial and ethnic threat has largely focused on the threat posed by minority males, with little attention devoted to understanding how threat accounts for variations in punishment among racial and ethnic female defendants. Using 2003-2012 data from Florida sentencing guidelines, we examine the odds of receiving an upward and downward departure among racial and ethnic females. The results suggest that Black and Latino females sentenced in counties with larger Black populations are more likely to receive an upward departure. However, in counties with larger Latino populations, the likelihood of an upward departure decreases for Blacks and Latinos. In addition, racial and ethnic population sizes do not significantly influence the odds of a downward departure.

Economic conditions, group relative deprivation and ethnic threat perceptions: a cross-national perspective

ABSTRACTExplaining negative attitudes towards immigration in general and threat due to immigration, in particular, has been a major topic of study in recent decades. While intergroup contact has received considerable attention in explaining ethnic threat, group relative deprivation (GRD), that is, feelings that one’s group is unfairly deprived of desirable goods in comparison to relevant out-groups, has been largely ignored in cross-national research. Nevertheless, various smaller-scale studies have demonstrated that GRD can have a decisive impact on prejudice. In the current study, we examine the association between GRD and ethnic threat systematically across 20 European countries, thereby controlling for intergroup contact and value priorities. The 7th round of the European Social Survey (ESS) includes questions assessing respondents’ feelings of group deprivation compared to immigrants and offers for the first time an opportunity to contextualise the threat-inducing effect of GRD across Europe. A multilevel structural equation model (MLSEM) demonstrates a considerable association between GRD and ethnic threat both on the individual and country levels. The results indicate that GRD is not only an important mediating factor between social structural positions and perceived threat, but also fully mediates the relation between contextual economic indicators and ethnic threat.

Minority threat, community disadvantage and sentencing

Purpose Prior studies of criminal sentencing have largely focused on individual-level predictors of sentencing outcomes. The purpose of this paper is to examine the effects of a variety of theoretically derived community measurements of social threat and disadvantage on the criminal sentencing of convicted felons. This analysis permits an evaluation of whether legal ideals such as equality before the law and policy goals of equal treatment for like offenders are achieved. Design/methodology/approach The study examines data of individuals sentenced in the state of Florida and community level measurements of racial and ethnic threat and community disadvantage. Hierarchical generalized linear model is used to analyze the effect of these measures on the dichotomous in/out imprisonment variable, and standard hierarchical linear regression analysis is used to model the continuous dependent variable of sentence length. Findings The results provide support for the racial threat perspective though not for ethnic threat nor community disadvantage. The findings and their implications are discussed in terms of theory, research and policy. Practical implications Racial disparity in criminal justice practices is receiving increasing public and policy attention, as evidenced by the growing Black Lives Matter movement. Regarding sentencing, racial disparity remains a major research and policy question. While the current research and theoretical literature on sentencing is not conclusive, it is clear that race matters. As a result, racial disparity in sentencing needs to be a priority in subsequent “transitional criminology” efforts between researchers and policy makers to identify, explain and ultimately predict exactly how race impacts sentencing, and how to reduce it as a consideration from sentencing. Originality/value This study contributes to a growing body of literature that examines the social context of punishments by using several community level measurements of threat and disadvantage, while modeling the two-step sentencing outcome of imprisonment and sentence length.

A divided nation? Ethnicity, name-calling and nicknames in cyber Ndebele soccer discourse in Zimbabwe

ABSTRACTIn Zimbabwe, ethnicity has long informed the ways people make sense of their membership to the nation. Sport has since the turn of the century emerged as one of the major sites for the performance of ‘patriotic’ and subversive notions of ‘unity in diversity’. This article explores the significance of nicknaming and name-calling by Highlanders Football Club fans on virtual spaces, in illuminating the ethnic threat to dominant conceptions of nation in post-2000 Zimbabwe. The study argues that as psycho-social and cultural constructs, football team nicknames reveal deeper states of ethnic attitudes which indicate the politics of complex ethnic sentiments that destabilise popular notions of belonging to a nation.

What drives the public opinion on asylum policy in the Netherlands?

AbstractAmong the citizens of Western Europe, Dutch residents appear to be the least supportive of a generous judgement of asylum applications. In line with the perceived ethnic threat theory, people with a higher level of education advocate a more generous judgement of asylum applications than people with a low level of education. Surprisingly, income has the opposite effect. The effect of the (perceived) presence of out‐groups members on the attitudes towards asylum seekers appears to vary between different scale levels. Those with a higher level of education estimate the size of the immigrant groups at the national level, the less support they express for a generous judgement of asylum applications. At the neighbourhood level, more interethnic exposure leads to more support for a generous judgement of asylum applications. This may indicate that the ethnic competition theory works at a macro level, while at the neighbourhood level the contact hypothesis applies.

Juvenile Court Outcomes Following Youth’s First Arrest: A National Test of the Racial and Ethnic Threat Hypothesis

Using nationally representative data, this research examined the associations between indicators of minority threat and juvenile justice processing following a first arrest. At intake, increasing Black presence in the community resulted in leniency, rather than severity. Once adjudicated, the size of the Black population had a nonlinear inverted-U shaped relationship with probability of placement. Increasing Hispanic presence was associated with leniency in disposition, and economic threat was not significantly related outcomes. Indicators of minority threat did not exacerbate outcomes for minority youth. These findings suggest that, contrary to the expectations of minority threat theory, the growing presence of minorities in communities may weaken social control and harsh punishments, particularly once the size of the minority population reaches a critical threshold.

Ethnic diversity, ethnic threat, and social cohesion: (re)-evaluating the role of perceived out-group threat and prejudice in the relationship between community ethnic diversity and intra-community cohesion

ABSTRACTResearch frequently demonstrates diverse communities exhibit lower intra-community cohesion. Recent studies suggest there is little evidence perceived ethnic threat plays a role in this relationship. This paper re-examines the roles of ethnic threat and prejudice in the diversity/cohesion relationship. First, we test threat/prejudice as conceptualised in the literature: as mediators of diversity’s effect. Second, we test a reformulation of the roles of threat/prejudice: as moderators of diversity’s effect. Applying multi-level models to cross-sectional and longitudinal data of White British individuals across England and Oldham (a unique English town case-study) we find neighbour-trust lower in diverse communities. However, perceived-threat/prejudice does not mediate this relationship. Instead, we find perceived-threat/prejudice moderate diversity’s impact on neighbour-trust. The result is diversity only reduces neighbour-trust among individuals who already viewed out-groups as threatening. Longitudinal analysis confirms the importance of out-group attitudes in the diversity/neighbour-trust relationship. In diverse communities, residents whose out-group attitudes improve, or worsen, become more, or less, trusting of their neighbours. However, in homogeneous communities, changes in out-group attitudes are not linked to changes in neighbour-trust. We therefore argue and demonstrate that perceived-threat emerges from other societal processes (such as socio-economic precariousness) and it is when individuals who already view out-groups as threatening experience diverse neighbourhoods that local cohesion declines.

Perceived threat, blaming attribution, victim ethnicity and punishment

In cases of inter-group crime, research has shown that attitudes of majority population members toward a supposed defendant are influenced by his or her ethnicity, and, moreover, that levels of perceived (group) threat toward out-group defendants can impact on levels of punishment severity which members of the majority population believe they should receive. However, little research has focused on the ethnicity of the victim and/or on blaming attribution. Based on the theory of Defensive Attribution and Integrative Threat Theory, the purpose of the current study was to extend current understandings to examine a conceptual model in which 1) victim ethnicity moderates and 2) blaming attribution mediates the relationship between ethnic threat perceptions and the support for harsh punitive sanctions toward an out-group perpetrator involved in an intra/inter-racial offence. The study included 230 Israeli-Jewish students, who read a scenario describing an Arab perpetrator of crime and either a Jewish or Arab victim, and answered questions regarding perceived Arab threat, perpetrator blaming and attitudes to punishment. In line with hypotheses, findings showed that blaming attribution toward the perpetrator partially mediated the relationship between threat perceptions and support for harsh punitive sanctions. Furthermore, results showed that ethnic similarity between the observer and victim moderated the relationship between threat perceptions and punitiveness. Results suggest the importance of highlighting understandings of majority-minority relations in the field of criminology.

Size is in the eye of the beholder: How differences between neighbourhoods and individuals explain variation in estimations of the ethnic out-group size in the neighbourhood

In this paper we shed light on the various ways in which native Dutch estimate the size of the ethnic minority population in their neighbourhood. We formulate hypotheses on how characteristics of the neighbourhood (i.e. objective group sizes, ethnic segregation, economic deprivation and crime), of surrounding neighbourhoods and experiences of interethnic contact and feelings of ethnic threat shape perceptions of the ethnic outgroup size. We employ individual-level data from the 1Vandaag Opinion Panel enriched with contextual-level data from Statistics Netherlands (24,538 respondents in 3113 neighbourhoods). Great variation in residents’ perceptions of the ethnic outgroup size exists both between neighbourhoods and within neighbourhoods. We demonstrate that native Dutch are more likely to overestimate the size of the non-Western minority population than the size of the Western minority population. Larger ethnic outgroup sizes in surrounding neighbourhoods are associated with the sense that one’s own neighbourhood also contains more minority residents. In economically deprived and high crime neighbourhoods, residents are more likely to overestimate the size of the ethnic outgroup. Furthermore, people with more interethnic contact and people who experience more ethnic threat provide higher estimations and are more likely to overestimate the ethnic outgroup size in their neighbourhood.

Media Attention and Radical Right-Wing Populist Party Sympathy: Longitudinal Evidence From The Netherlands

This contribution provides evidence for the sources of sympathies for radical right-wing populist (RRP) parties in a longitudinal perspective. We extend previous knowledge by evaluating the impact of media attention on individual changes of RRP party sympathies. To test our hypotheses, we use panel data from The Netherlands and combine it with information on the saliency of RRP parties and their issues in major Dutch newspapers. Drawing on multilevel structural equation models, our findings indicate that media attention positively affects changes in RRP party sympathies. Furthermore, we find that the effect of media attention on RRP party sympathies is enhanced by perceived ethnic threat and Euroscepticism, respectively. In sum, this study shows that media attention to RRP parties is pivotal for the fortune of such parties.

Spying on Canadians: The Royal Canadian Mounted Police Security Service and the Origins of the Long Cold War by Gregory S. Kealey

Reviewed by: Spying on Canadians: The Royal Canadian Mounted Police Security Service and the Origins of the Long Cold War by Gregory S. Kealey Natalie Adamyk Gregory S. Kealey, Spying on Canadians: The Royal Canadian Mounted Police Security Service and the Origins of the Long Cold War ( Toronto: University of Toronto Press 2017) Gregory S. Kealey's Spying on Canadians is a collection of nine essays about searching for and accessing information. It covers the history of surveillance by police agencies from the 1860s to the Cold War. Together these essays, a collection of Kealey's work (articles, conferences papers, and addresses) written between 1988 and 2003, examine the creation of the Secret Service in Canada - a branch of the rnwmp (Royal North West Mounted Police) and later the rcmp (Royal Canadian Mounted Police). In these essays Kealey illustrates how policing in Canada is intrinsic to the history of the country itself and how police agents have targeted immigrants, labour, and the Left as threats to the nation. Spying on Canadians tracks the changing study of surveillance in Canada and contributes to the field both by expanding the historical context and presenting Kealey's own experience accessing restricted documents. As an authority on policing, surveillance, and security in Canada, Kealey provides readers with studies on the processes of spying, being spied on, and uncovering the history of surveillance. Spying on Canadians is part of an evergrowing field of research. Over the last two decades, historians such as Steve Hewitt have studied the inherent anti-communism within the rcmp proving that police surveillance of leftists was not a product of the 1950s "Red Scare" but grew from earlier fears of Bolshevik uprisings and labour unrest. Kealey expands this history by going farther back to the years leading up to Confederation. By doing this, he demonstrates how distrust of the radical left and fear of ethnic threats exists within the fabric of Canada's origins as a country. The Secret Service, therefore, came into being with Confederation rather than grew from it. Spying on Canadians provides depth to the earlier history of policing that was not fully explored in Secret Service: The History of Political Policing in Canada from the Fenians to Fortress America (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2012), the otherwise comprehensive text on police surveillance in Canada written by Kealey, Reg Whitaker, and Andrew Parnaby. Kealey uses the 19th century to explain the origins of Cold War spying. To have a comprehensive history of police surveillance beginning in the 1860s and leading into the Cold War is significant when much of the scholarship on policing is centred on the second half of the 20th century. In addition to providing greater historical scope to the subject of police surveillance, Spying on Canadians includes a personal angle. Kealey begins the collection describing his own inquiry into [End Page 256] police surveillance of academics at the annual meetings of what were then called the Learned Societies. The fear of the spectre of Marxism spreading through academia combined with student radicals during the 1960s and 1970s led the rcmf to watch specific organizations, such as the Labour History Group, and certain academics including Kealey. Beginning his book in this manner, Kealey effectively demonstrates what police surveillance means to him as a historian and as a Canadian. Kealey divides Spying on Canadians into three parts to facilitate his wide scope. The first section explores the 19th century roots of the Canadian Secret Service and how political policing in this era, from the Fenian raids to the Komagatu Maru affair, was tightly linked to fears of radicalism and anti-imperialism. The second section looks at the origins of the Cold War beginning with the Winnipeg General Strike as well as other acts of labour unrest following World War I and ending with civilian internment during World War II. The third section focuses on the archives and public access to restricted files. What is so fascinating about this book is how Kealey draws these sections together through the theme of labour. Work is at the heart of this collection. Kealey's background as a labour historian allows for a compelling examination of surveillance in Canada...

Exploring the Minority Threat Hypothesis for Juveniles in Criminal Court

In the context of the criminal justice system, the minority threat hypothesis posits that a growing minority population will exacerbate racial and ethnic disparities as those in power seek to establish social control over the threatening population. Decades of research have produced mixed findings, possibly due to the varied approaches to testing this hypothesis as well as the different populations to whom it is applied. To fully explore the racial and ethnic threat hypotheses for an underexamined population—juveniles transferred to criminal court—and an underexamined outcome—pretrial detention—the present article employs a series of multilevel models to test several versions of the hypothesis. Specifically, the article distinguishes between two measures of minority threat—static and dynamic—and two types of threat effects—diffuse and targeted. Findings indicate limited support for the minority threat hypothesis in all forms. Several interpretations are offered, ranging from consideration of the need for more informed measures of threat to a possible need to modify or abandon the minority threat hypothesis in the context of juvenile and criminal justice processing.

The role of inter-ethnic online friendships in prejudice reduction in post-conflict societies: Evidence from Serbia, Croatia and Cyprus

Direct contact between members of ethnic groups is proven to reduce intergroup prejudice. Recent research, however, explores the effects of alternative types of contact, amongst them via social networks in virtual space. This is especially important for e.g. post-conflict societies in which there is limited opportunity for direct contact between the groups. Drawing from a sample of 374 ethnic majority students from three such societies – Serbia, Croatia, and Cyprus, we tested if the number of online interethnic friends predicted more positive out-group attitudes over and above the effect of face-to-face contacts. This relationship testified to the added value of online ties. We also tested if intergroup anxiety and perceived ethnic threat would mediate the relationship between online friendships and out-group attitudes. Results from the combined sample showed clear mediation effects. This suggested that the mechanisms through which online contact reduces prejudice are comparable to the mechanisms detected for face-to-face contact. Yet the mediation was not convincingly replicated at the country level. Further research could make use of this simple measure of alternative contact, as well as test a different set of mediators to identify mechanisms that are possibly unique to online contacts.

Nationalistic attitudes and voting for the radical right in Europe

Voting for radical right-wing parties has been associated most strongly with national identity threats. In Europe, this has been framed by the radical right in terms of mass-migration and European integration, or other politicians bargaining away national interests. Perhaps surprisingly given the radical right’s nationalist ideology, nationalistic attitudes are hardly included in empirical research on the voting behaviour. In this contribution, we test to what extent various dimensions of nationalistic attitudes affect radical right voting, next to the earlier and new assessed effects of perceived ethnic threat, social distance to Muslims, Euroscepticism and political distrust. The findings show that national identification, national pride and an ethnic conception of nationhood are additional explanations of radical right voting. National identification’s effect on radical right voting is found to be stronger when populations on average perceive stronger ethnic threat.

Vijfentwintig jaar onderzoek naar de houding tegenover migranten in België: verandering en stabiliteit in de periode 1991-2014

Since 1991, the Belgian Election Survey (organised by ISPO-KU Leuven) gauges perceptions of economic and cultural threat that are related to the presence of immigrants. A structural equation model (with scalar invariance) for Flemish and Walloon voters shows relative stability in the prevalence of negative attitudes towards immigrants between 1991 and 2014, notwithstanding a couple of mild fluctuations. Anti-immigrant sentiments do not display a clear-cut upward or downward trend since the early 1990s. A comparison between Flanders and Wallonia reveals regional differences in the evolution of ethnic threat perceptions. Remarkably, in both regions we find an unexpected yet sizable decrease in perceived ethnic threat between 2010 and 2014. This finding is furthermore corroborated by the yearly SCV survey.

Support for restrictive immigration policies in the European Union 2002–2013: the impact of economic strain and ethnic threat for vulnerable economic groups

ABSTRACTTesting propositions from ethnic competition theory, we examine contextual and individual determinants of support for restrictive immigration policies in 26 European Union member states between 2002 and 2013, a period characterized by enduring economic downturn. We hypothesize that natives in vulnerable economic positions, similar to many migrants, are more restrictive toward immigration, because they perceive more economic strain and more ethnic threat. We expect that natives are more restrictive in times of economic decline – when national unemployment rates and debts increase – especially those who hold similar economic positions as many migrants. We enriched European Social Survey data (2002–2013, containing more than 210,000 respondents) with cross-national data on the economic situation. We indeed find that support for immigration restrictiveness is higher among natives in more vulnerable socio-economic positions. They perceive more economic strain, which is directly related to restrictiveness. But economic strain also increases perceptions of ethnic threat, which is strongly related to restrictiveness. We do, however, not find strong empirical evidence that economic decline more strongly affects support for restrictive immigration policies among vulnerable economic groups. Stronger changes in national debts induce more restrictiveness among the full population, but especially among those who perceive more economic strain and more ethnic threat.

Municipal Law Enforcement Policy on Illegal Immigration Stops: Do Social Factors Determine How Aggressively Local Police Respond to Unauthorized Immigrants?

The devolution of immigration law has increased local police involvement in the enforcement of federal immigration law. But only some departments have responded by implementing policies that restrict their officers' involvement in order to protect residents from overzealous policing. We test theories of economic and ethnic threat to explore the structural characteristics of cities that explain this variation. Multiple regression results show that the most unequal cities that have large Hispanic populations are less likely to have a policy. Hispanic white segregation and high unemployment also reduce the likelihood of policy implementation. We discuss theoretical and policy implications.

Why lower educated people are more likely to cast their vote for radical right parties: Testing alternative explanations in The Netherlands

We address the relationship between educational attainment and radical right voting (i.e., voting for the PVV) in the Netherlands. We tested whether lower educated people are overrepresented among the electorate of the PVV – as often found in earlier research – and considered underlying explanations for this relationship. Using data derived from the Religion in Dutch Society (SOCON, 2011/2012) survey, we were able to empirically test a set of innovative mediators (e.g., interethnic contact, euroscepticism, associational involvement and social trust) simultaneously next to theoretically well-established mediators (e.g., perceived ethnic threat, nationalistic attitudes and authoritarianism). Our results indicated that lower educated people are more likely to cast their vote for the PVV than higher educated people, due to their level of perceived ethnic threat, anti-Muslim attitudes and authoritarianism. Using bootstrapping, only ethnic threat perceptions turned out to significantly mediate the relationship between educational attainment and radical right voting, ruling out many other explanations. Our findings underline the importance of precluding spurious influences when addressing radical right voting and show that radical right parties’ emphasis on the economic and cultural threats that immigrants would pose for Western societies seems to bear fruit in terms of mobilizing lower educated people, at least among the Dutch electorate.

Threat, Competition, and Mobilizing Structures: Motivational and Organizational Contingenies of the Civil Rights-Era Ku Klux Klan

While previous studies of ethnic contention and conflict identify important structural and meso-level indicators of threat and competition, analysis of variation in the mechanisms linking these sources of potential grievance formation with mobilization remains unclear. To address this issue, this study explores the social organization of Ku Klux Klan mobilization in 1960s North Carolina. While regarded as a progressive state in the civil rights era, North Carolina exhibited a greater level of Klan mobilization than the rest of the South combined. We build on models of “mediated competition,” where ethnic competition and group threat are held as necessary, and propinquity, authority work, and legacies of previous racial violence link threat and competition with mobilization. Extending prior formulations centered on the discrete impact of individual components of competition, we employ fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis to precisely specify the conjunctural conditions governing two modes of Klan mobilization: public rally events and the establishment of local organizational units. Our findings indicate that the mobilizing effects of threat and competition varied between rural and urban areas, and that threat/competition and organization/leadership play a dual role in translating collective grievances into mobilization.