In European Union (EU) countries, public debates about immigrants and citizenship are increasingly framed in cultural terms. Yet, there is no agreement within the citizenship literature on whether a cultural citizenship representation can be distinguished from the more established ethnic and civic representations and on how its measures relate to anti‐immigrant attitudes. The present study tested measures of citizenship representations among high school students (N = 1476) in six EU countries (Belgium, France, Germany, Hungary, the Netherlands, and Sweden). Factor analyses favored a three‐factor model of citizenship representations (i.e., ethnic, cultural, and civic factors), which showed partial metric invariance. Across countries, ethnic and cultural scales correlated positively with each other and negatively with the civic scale. Moreover, ethnic and cultural scales related positively and the civic scale negatively to anti‐immigrant attitudes. However, when analyzed simultaneously, relations of the ethnic scale with anti‐immigrant attitudes were no longer significant, while those of the cultural and civic scales proved to be robust. Implications of these findings are discussed.

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In political debates about the societal inclusion of Muslim minorities in Western European countries it is often stated that large cultural differences between these Muslim minorities and Western European majority groups hinder their integration (Lucassen, 2005

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The present study examined how majority perceptions of intergroup relations afford different contact experiences with immigrant minorities. Majority students attending culturally diverse high schools first completed a survey that measured the extent to which they perceived immigrant minorities as either threatening to the majority or discriminated by the majority. Two weeks later, the same majority students kept a 1-week diary of their contacts with immigrant minorities. As expected, perceived threat at premeasurement was positively associated with situated threat-related appraisals and emotions (e.g., fear) during everyday contacts with immigrant minorities 2–3 weeks later. In contrast, acknowledgment of discrimination at premeasurement was positively associated with perspective taking and enrichment-related appraisals and emotions (e.g., admiration). These findings suggest that generalized threat perceptions can become self-enforcing through repeated threatening contact experiences; but also that an alternative perception of minorities as disrespected by the majority may underlie more positive contact experiences.