Prejudice In Europe Research Articles

The last acceptable prejudice in Europe? Anti-Gypsyism as the obstacle to Roma inclusion

National and European policies aim to facilitate the integration of Roma people into mainstream society. Yet, Europe’s largest ethnic group continues to be severely discriminated. Although prejudice has been identified to be at the core of this failure, social psychological research on anti-Gypsyism remains scarce. We conducted a study in six countries using student and community samples ( N = 2,089; Hungary, Romania, Slovakia, Norway, Italy, Spain) to understand how anti-Gypsyism among majority-group members predicts unfavorable acculturation preferences toward Roma people. Openly negative stereotypes predicted acculturation preferences strongly across the countries. However, stereotypes about the Roma receiving undeserved benefits were also relevant to some degree in East-Central Europe, implying that intergroup relations are framed there as realistic conflict. Stereotypes about traditional Roma culture did not play a central role in acculturation preferences. Our findings highlighted that anti-Gypsyism may be an impediment to integration efforts, and efforts should be context-specific rather than pan-national.

The Return of Prejudice in Europe's Regions: The Moderated Relationship between Group Threat and Economic Vulnerability

Using data from 16 countries and employing multilevel analysis that encompasses the national, regional, and individual levels, we find that both economic and social factors trigger anti-immigrant attitudes among Europeans. Regional per capita GDP is positively correlated with tolerant attitudes while the regional unemployment rate drives prejudice. We find a moderating relationship between immigrant population size and per capita GDP, which suggests that, as the size of the immigrant population increases, prejudice rises but only in poorer regions. In more affluent regions, an increase in the immigrant population corresponds to increased tolerance.

What Determines Religious and Racial Prejudice in Europe? The Effects of Religiosity and Trust

This paper analyzes the effects of different dimensions of religiosity and trust on religious and racial prejudice in Europe. The sample is based on 37 European countries that are current or potential members of the European Union (EU). Using multi-level logistic regression modeling and the latest wave from the European Values Study data, we test the effects of both individual and country-level variables. Our results suggest that religious particularism is correlated with more religious and racial prejudice. Doctrinal belief and individual spirituality are both correlated with less religious prejudice only. Nonreligious individuals have the highest religious prejudice compared to members of religious denominations. Individual and country-level generalized trust, as well as trust in the EU, are all negatively correlated with religious and racial prejudice.

"Grace" and the Idea of "the Irish Jew"

"Grace" and the Idea of "the Irish Jew" Claudia Rosenhan (bio) Questions of identity are central to Joyce's artistic engagement with Ireland.1 His identification with his native country and simultaneous resistance to her corrupted myths prompted him to probe the Irish psyche, stripping naive nationalist assumptions and simplistic religious ideologies of their prescribed authenticity while laying bare the multiple cultural, religious, and historical identities of the Irish people.2 These complexities of character are not only mirrored by the complexities of Joyce's construction of Irishness in his work but also by the intricate ways in which he sets them off against another referent acting as a foil to an embattled nationhood—Jewishness. His choice is determined by the many convergences between Irish and Jewish identities. For example, Irishness, like Jewishness, is commonly the subject of an ideological discourse in which identity is fixed by multiple relationships between internal and external forces. There is no unequivocal answer to the question of what it means to be Irish, and the same is true of being Jewish.3 Critics have seized upon the perceived unfixed nature of Jewishness as a significant artistic method by which Joyce is able to manipulate questions of character, selfhood, and identity in his writing. During the last two decades, Joyce studies have generated several authoritative accounts of the representation and construction of Jewishness in Ulysses, and they generally emphasize the parallels between Joyce's own fractured cultural identity and that of Jews reflected through ambiguous and inconsistent prejudice in Europe at the turn of the century.4 Yet whereas Ulysses is widely regarded as the seminal text for this line of inquiry, I propose that Joyce's earlier works are unduly overlooked as part of the argument. One reason for this neglect is the paucity of identifiable evidence in Dubliners and A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. Only a handful of allusions to Jews or Jewishness can be found in both texts, not enough, perhaps, to form the basis of a sustainable theory. One story in Dubliners, however, deserves closer inspection since it reveals a complexity of engagement between Irishness and Jewishness similar to that in Ulysses, especially when seen in dialogue with the typically ambivalent Joycean perspective on Ireland. As Joyce highlights Irish ambivalence towards Jews, he simultaneously reveals his own ambiguous reaction to Ireland by availing himself of Jewishness as the emblematic figure of "otherness." [End Page 71] "Grace" was originally conceived as the final story of Dubliners (LettersII 124) and thus presents the climax of Joyce's moral history of his community (LettersI 62-63) to which "The Dead" acts as the denouement. "Grace" also provides the most direct link to Ulysses with characters from the story reappearing in the novel's "Hades" episode. The tale is constructed from the weft and warp of meanings that, once unraveled, disclose the familiar topical strands of fatuous religious observance, social snobbery, and corrupt politics informing Joyce's exploration of Dublin as the "centre of paralysis" (LettersII 134). It describes a few days in the life of Tom Kernan, tea-taster, apostate, and Dublin character, whose social decline is illustrated by his compromised position with which the story opens. Yet hardly any critic has pondered how Kernan came to be in the pitiful state in which he is found, even though the narrative begins in the middle of a sequence of events that started the previous Friday. Only Scott W. Klein, who is indebted to Margot Norris's gender-based examination of Joyce's narratives, provides an angle that accounts for Kernan's deplorable situation and explains the ubiquitous references to credit rewarded and sums unpaid in "Grace" in his essay, "Strongarming 'Grace.'"5 Based on Kernan's reticence to recount the story of his accident, Klein develops a compelling second story in which Kernan was intercepted by a loan shark and shaken down for the money owed. This "strongarming" reveals a credible picture of Irish economic relations frequently based on extortion and usury. In the depiction of what he knew from personal experience was endemic among his father's family and friends, Joyce composes a multilayered narrative of loyalties and obligations...

Visions of Islam in Europe: European attitudes towards Muslim Asians

CESAA 16TH ANNUAL EUROPE ESSAY COMPETITION 2008 HONOURS CATEGORYThis essay argues that the public discourse surrounding Muslim Asian immigrants in Europe frequently presents them as enemies to stability, democracy and human rights in Europe. Beginning with early-modern descriptions of Muslims by Alexis de Tocqueville, and his perception of Muslims as “deadly”, this essay argues that although his language may seem antiquated today, his principle idea retains acceptance in discussions on Islam in Europe today. In particular, the public reactions to the 7 July 2005 London bombings, the 2004 assassination of Dutch filmmaker Theo van Gogh, the Jyllands-Posten cartoons scandal and the potential ascension of Turkey to the EU have spurred political speeches, voting patterns and newspaper reporting expressing the notion that Islam and Muslims were dangerous to Europe. This essay concludes that not only do these events undermine European senses of security, the also subject Muslims to continuing suspicion and prejudice in Europe.

Anti-Muslim prejudice in Europe: A multilevel analysis of survey data from 30 countries

There is widespread interest in understanding anti-Muslim prejudice in Europe, but there is little systematic evidence about the extent and patterns of the prejudice. Using data from the 1999–2000 wave of European Values Study this article examines the extent and determinants of anti-Muslim prejudice in both Western and Eastern Europe. We find that prejudice against Muslims was more widespread than prejudice against other immigrants, and that the effects of individual and country-level predictors of prejudice resemble those found in research on anti-minority prejudice in general. Fairly similar results were obtained for both Eastern and Western Europe, but the aggregate levels of prejudice are higher in the East. Our results imply that Muslims in Europe were particularly prone to becoming targets of prejudice, even before the attacks of September 11. The results give some support to group-conflict theory, mainly with regard to the effects of the unemployment. However, the size of Muslim population in a country does not seem to increase the level of anti-Muslim prejudice.

Anti-Immigrant Prejudice in Europe: Contact, Threat Perception, and Preferences for the Exclusion of Migrants

This article introduces the theoretical approaches of contact, group conflict, and symbolic prejudice to explain levels of exclusionary feelings toward a relatively new minority in the West European context, the immigrant. The findings indicate that even after controls for perceived threat are included in the model, intimate contact with members of minority groups in the form of friendships can reduce levels of willingness to expel legal immigrants from the country. A contextual variable, level of immigration to the country, is also introduced into the model because it is likely that this variable affects both threat perception and exclusionary feelings. While context does not seem to directly affect levels of willingness to expel or include immigrants in the society, it does have a rather powerful impact on perceived threat. Perhaps even more importantly, the findings suggest that contact mediates the effect of the environment, helping to produce lower levels of threat perception in contexts of high immigration.

Social Structural Sources of Anti-immigrant Prejudice in Europe

:In sociological theory, structural perspectives postulate that attitudes are a function of individuals, “life situations,” which result from the prevailing social context and their location within it. This article examines individual-level sources of anti-immigrant prejudice in seventeen European countries included in the International Social Survey Programme (ISSP) 1995: National Identity. The focus is on social structural sources of prejudice that indicate location in the larger social context, such as social class and stratification position. While there are many one-country studies of prejudice that emphasize social structural variables, there are few cross-national analyses. Thus, an important gap in the literature on prejudice is addressed. The following questions are posed: To what extent do both social class and position in the stratification system affect anti-immigrant prejudice in a variety of European countries? Does social class affect prejudice above and beyond stratification position? Does stratification position affect prejudice above and beyond social class? Do the effects of social class and stratification position vary across Western and Eastern Europe?

Education and Ethnic Prejudice in Europe: Explanations for cross-national variances in the educational effect on ethnic prejudice

Education is often found to be a strong determinant of ethnic prejudice. However, there is preliminary evidence that this educational effect varies across countries. Moreover, there are also theoretical arguments to expect cross-national variances in the educational effect on ethnic prejudice. From both a cultural and structural perspective, we set out to explain these cross-national variances in the educational effect. Results of multilevel analyses on data from 11 European countries show that the cultural perspective is more fruitful to explain cross-national variances in the strength of the educational effect on ethnic prejudice than the structural perspective: a country's democratic tradition and degree of religious heterogeneity are important for the strength of the educational effect on ethnic prejudice, whereas a country's ethnic composition and unemployment rate are less relevant.

Prejudice as a Response to Perceived Group Threat: Population Composition and Anti-Immigrant and Racial Prejudice in Europe

L'A. etudie la representation des prejudices. Il evalue la perception de la menace que les groupes subordonnes ferraient peser sur les groupes dominants. Il estime que les conditions economiques et l'importance des groupes subordonnes par rapport aux groupes dominants expliquent ce type de perception. Il note a partir de donneees europeennes des disparites entre les 12 sur ce plan precis. Cette perception de la menace « ethnique » expliquerait le sentiment de prejudice. L'A. invite aux vues de ses analyses a revoir celles du passe

Anti-Arab Prejudice in Europe

Anti-Arab Prejudice in Europe

Anti-Arab Prejudice in Europe

Anti-Arab Prejudice in Europe

Relation of Religion and Racial Prejudice in Europe

INTRODUCTION. In American studies the relation between racial prejudice and religious behavior and values, the finding generally has been of a positive relationship; on average, churchgoers in our country harbor more racial, ethnic and religious prejudice than do non-churchgoers (Allport 1966). However, when researchers separate those whose religious orientation can be characterized as intrinsic (Allport and Ross 1967) or committed (Allen and Spilka 1967) or those whose religious practice is very regular, the prejudice demonstrated by these groups is less than that of those more casual or conventional in their religious behavior and values. (See Dittes 1969 for survey.) The present paper finds these patterns also in data from English and Dutch samples.