Is There a Backlash Against Immigration From Richer Countries? International Hierarchy and the Limits of Group Threat

Abstract

Why do immigrants from particular countries systematically face more opposition? To resolve inconsistencies of prevailing group‐threat theories, I reintroduce a long‐standing hypothesis stipulating that people have a disposition for maintaining status hierarchy between ethnic groups. Accordingly, independent of perceived economic or cultural threat, natives are more likely to prefer immigrant groups of higher status based on the development level of the group's national origin. To test this argument, I exploit a substantial provincial variation of immigration flows and attitudes in Spain—one of the only countries that has received immigrants from both less and more developed countries. Consistent with my hypothesis, I demonstrate that anti‐immigration attitudes are more widespread in areas with immigrants from less developed countries regardless of their economic and cultural characteristics. I further document that many voters perceive stable group hierarchies and that these preferences are more predictive of anti‐immigration attitudes in lower‐status immigration contexts. Overall, these results suggest that even culturally similar and economically beneficial immigrant groups from poorer countries can face public opposition due to their lower‐status national origin, highlighting the independent role of group‐status perceptions in politics.

Borders of Compassion: Immigration Preferences and Parochial Altruism

“…This division can further complement a prominent—but often less analytically useful—juxtaposition of economic and cultural behavioral causes. For instance, the current debate about the rise of populism that mostly focuses on economic anxiety and cultural backlash as exhaustive explanations (e.g., Norris & Inglehart, 2019) may be missing an important preference variation in the electorate (also see Kustov, 2019b, 2020).…”

Does Origin Matter? Ethnic Group Position and Attitudes Toward Immigrants: The Case of Russia

“…An alternative and perhaps more universal explanation relates to the place in the ethnic hierarchy occupied by target out-groups. Previous research demonstrated that while people show an inclination to maintain status hierarchy between groups, natives prefer immigrant groups of higher status to those of lower status (Kustov 2019). Bessudnov (2016), in his study on public attitudes toward immigrants, concluded that the effect of immigrant concentration (which may be perceived as a measure of the relative size of an out-group) on attitudes toward immigrants appears to be stronger for groups positioned lower in the ethnic hierarchy.…”

The dynamics of attitudes toward immigrants: Cohort analyses for Western EU member states

“…In specifically analyzing periodic changes in the host societies' immigrant populations, this study furthermore contributes to the growing literature investigating whether different types of immigrants are perceived as more or less threatening (Bloom et al, 2015a(Bloom et al, , 2015bSemyonov, 2016, 2019;Kustov, 2019;Stephan et al, 2005). To date, it remains unclear how far increasing intra-European migration (mostly from East to West) affects Western European attitudes toward immigrants compared with immigration from the Global South.…”

“…Second, with regard to immigration from outside Europe, a further distinction of immigrant origin needs to be drawn. Independent of their actual economic and cultural characteristics, immigrants from less developed countries face greater rejection (Kustov, 2019). By definition, this implies immigrants from the Global South, who on average hold a lower socioeconomic status than European citizens.…”

“…To date, it remains unclear how far increasing intra-European migration (mostly from East to West) affects Western European attitudes toward immigrants compared with immigration from the Global South. Since these migrant groups differ in their economic, cultural, and ethnic composition, according to ethnic competition theory, they potentially trigger different threat perceptions in host populations (Bloom et al, 2015b;Czymara and Schmidt-Catran, 2017;Kustov, 2019;Stephan et al, 2005). While empirical research indicates that the level of opposition to immigrants varies depending on the immigrant groups in question, these findings predominantly rely on cross-sectional research designs and do not account for the importance of changes over time.…”