Immigration and the Imagined Community in Europe and the United States

Abstract

Both Europe and the United States are confronting the challenges of economic and cultural integration posed by immigration. This article uses the ESS and CID surveys to compare transatlantic public opinion about immigrants and immigration.We find more tolerance for cultural diversity in the United States, but we also find that Americans, like Europeans, tend to overestimate the number of immigrants in their countries and tend to favor lower levels of immigration. The underpinnings of individual attitudes are similar in all countries and immigration attitudes are surprisingly unrelated to country-level differences in GDP, unemployment and the number and composition of the foreign born. An implication of these findings is that acceptance of higher levels of immigration, deemed by many to be an economic need, will require both more selective immigration policies and an emphasis on the cultural assimilation of newcomers.

We Spend How Much? Misperceptions, Innumeracy, and Support for the Foreign Aid in the United States and Great Britain

“…Unlike the US case, those favouring economic redistribution or who are economic optimists are no more likely to be leery of aid cuts when they receive the PO treatments. 4 To summarize, we find that the treatment effects for the PO treatment hold in both countries (Question A above). Plus, we find that an instrumentalist belief in the benefits of aid also makes people warm towards aid spending.…”

“…5 Results from the above experiment suggest that it is possible to shift people's scepticism towards aid spending by presenting the percentage of the UK and US budgets allocated to foreign aid. 6 The observed reduction in citizen demands to cut foreign aid when only percentages of budgets are mentioned 4 The significant marginal effect for the interaction between economic optimism and the treatment where respondents are provided with information concerning the amount of money and percentage of the "budget" Britain spends on foreign aid is curious as the interaction between economic optimism and the PO treatment is insignificant (as are the two components of the interaction term on their own). We refrain from over-speculation on this point as the size of the number of respondents who both receive the treatment and express economic optimism is quite small (n=27) and pales in comparison to the number of people in the affirmative category of the significant interaction between economic optimism and the percent only treatment in the US (n=118).…”

Multicultural Policy and Political Support in European Democracies

“…Often described as the "politics of recognition," this ideology endorses the coexistence of plural cultures or "ways of life" within a single polity (Kymlicka, 1995;Taylor, 1994) rather than prioritizing a common cultural core as the foundation of national unity and social cohesion. Its policies are deployed in part to disarm conceptions of national identity based on ethnic and cultural homogeneity that have been linked with hostility to immigration (Citrin & Sides, 2008;Wright, 2011a) and to incorporate official respect for minority cultures into the nation's self-concept. Specific multiculturalism policies (MCPs) designed to legitimate and preserve cultural diversity vary in scope and intensity and range from symbolic gestures to substantive mandates (Kymlicka, 2012;Tolley, 2010).…”

Need for support or economic competition? Implicit associations with immigrants during the 2015 migrant crisis

“…Moreover, Eurosceptics and those disillusioned with democracy in general have been found to support far-right parties, which often centre their policies around antiimmigrant beliefs (Billet and De Witte, 1995;Escandell, 2010, 2008;Citrin and Sides, 2008;Coenders and Scheepers, 2003;Janus, 2010;Sides and Citrin, 2007;Tajfel and Turner, 1986).…”

“…If competition additionally centres around resources, such as jobs, benefits, or welfare, group conflicts may be particularly severe (e.g. Citrin and Sides, 2008;LeVine and Campbell, 1972).…”