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This research note argues that much of the literature on support for European integration misses the heart of the nature of opposition to this process by ignoring the notion of perceived threat. Essentially, people are hostile toward the European project in great part because of their perceptions of threats posed by other cultures. I analyze this hypothesis by replicating a piece of research that previously appeared in this journal, adding measures of perceived threat to that model. The results support the main contention, which is that perceived cultural threat is an important factor that has been mistakenly ignored in explanations of hostility toward the European Union.The European Union has grown in importance to such a degree that interest groups have begun mobilizing around the organization (Marks and McAdam 1996), and parties have begun responding to the preferences of their supporters for European integration (Carrubba 2001). As the EU has become more of a point of reference for citizens living in the member states, interest in those citizens' preferences also has increased. Previous research on public support for European integration has focused considerably on what can be termed "rational" calculations of costs and benefits of integration to the individual EU citizen. We argue that this research has missed an obvious but important factor that determines levels of support for, or hostility toward, the process of European integration. That factor is degree of antipathy toward other cultures stemming from nationalistic attachments. I illustrate the importance of this variable by replicating one of these pieces of previous research and then adding measures of perceived cultural threat to that model. The findings indicate that antipathy toward other cultures is indeed an important element in explaining attitudes toward the EU, with approximately equal effects compared to rational calculations of costs and benefits of EU membership to the individual's own life.

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This article analyses the causes of variation in attitudes to immigration policy in the UK. The key theoretical approaches emphasised are: the role of self‐interest; group conflict over resources; and group conflict over important symbols of Britishness. The connection between perceptions of immigration and crime is also investigated. Based on the 2003 British Social Attitudes Survey, the findings indicate that self‐interest has very little bearing on opposition to immigration and that British citizens instead appear to be most concerned with threats to ingroup resources posed by immigration, threats to the shared customs and traditions of British society (particularly those posed by Muslims) and – to a lesser extent – the potential for increased crime that may result from immigration.

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This article examines EU citizen attitudes to Turkey's bid to join the EU. The key theoretical constructs investigated to explain opposition to Turkey's EU membership are related to rational economic self-interest and group-level interests and concerns. The findings indicate that the former are irrelevant for distinguishing between opponents and supporters of Turkey's candidacy, while the latter do provide fairly powerful explanations for opposition to Turkish EU membership. However, because these factors do not completely explain overall levels of hostility to Turkey's candidacy, context is also introduced, particularly the threatening context provided by Turkish migration. The findings indicate that migration from Turkey to some of the EU member states has combined with feelings of group protectiveness to produce widespread animosity to Turkey's entry into the EU.

Abstract. Opposition to the European integration project can stem from many different sources, but one that appears to be fairly fundamental is the threat that the European Union (EU) poses to long-established national identities. This contention may in fact appear to be so trivial as to make it uninteresting to the social science community. However, this article analyses the degree to which EU citizens do indeed feel their national identities to be under threat by the EU and the effect of such fear on general feelings about the integration process. The impact of fear of loss of national identity due to integration is then compared to the impact of other potential sources of variation in support for the integration project. The results indicate that while large proportions of EU citizens do indeed fear that the EU is threatening their national identity and culture, the effect of this fear on attitudes toward the EU is not all that substantial and other factors play an equal or greater role in explaining individual-level opposition to the EU.As the pace of European integration has increased, interest in the role of the public in this process has increased accordingly. The 'permissive consensus' among the European public on the issue of European integration (Lindberg & Scheingold 1970) of the 1970s gave way to an increased enthusiasm for the Common Market project in the 1980s. Yet more recent decades have seen signs of rumblings from the European public about the direction that integration has taken -especially as the European Union (EU) moves into realms that are far more political than economic and prepares for an eastward enlargement that is expected to be financially costly and produce waves of East European immigrants. One recent analysis (Van der Eijk & Franklin forthcoming) even points to attitudes toward European integration as a potential cleavage that could very easily be co-opted into European party systems if major party leaders ever decide to adopt opposing positions on the integration issue. Moreover, the European public can have an impact on what policymakers do at the EU level, as Tony Blair's hesitancy over bringing Britain into the eurozone illustrates. At times, the public can put a temporary brake on integration plans, as in the case of the Danish referenda, the Norwegian referenda and, more recently, the narrow vote against the Nice Treaty in the Irish Republic. Thus,