Neighbourhood Ethnic Composition and Voting for the Radical Right in The Netherlands. The Role of Perceived Neighbourhood Threat and Interethnic Neighbourhood Contact

Abstract

Support for radical right parties has grown rapidly in many Western countries over the past few decades. In recent years, many studies have addressed the relationship between the presence of ethnic minorities in people's living environment and their support for a radical right party, but consensus is hard to find as to how ethnic minority density is related to support for the radical right, let alone why. In this contribution, we demonstrate that in The Netherlands, ethnic minority density is positively related to the likelihood to vote for the Party for Freedom. This is particularly the case when the size of the minority group exceeds 15 per cent of the total neighbourhood population. We could establish this relationship by using the Dutch 1Vandaag Opinion Panel data set, a unique large-scale, individual-level data set comprising 21,200 native Dutch respondents living in 3,068 different neighbourhoods. We enriched this data set with contextual information derived from Statistics Netherlands. The reason why ethnic minority density is linked to support for the radical right is that these residents see non-Western migrants as a threat for their neighbourhood. This is particularly true for residents who do not mingle with their non-coethnic neighbours.

Contextual Effects on Populist Radical Right Support: Consensual Neighbourhood Effects and the Dutch PVV

“…Bowyer, 2008;Rydgren & Ruth, 2013), others finding positive effects in line with group threat theory (e.g. Coffé et al, 2007;Bowyer, 2008;Savelkoul et al, 2017; see also Enos, 2017, for evidence of ethnic threat in the US), and yet others finding no effect at all (e.g. Lubbers & Scheepers, 2000;De Blok & Van der Meer, 2018).…”

“…The ethnic contact hypothesis is based on contact theory (Allport, 1954) and argues that a higher percentage of ethnic minorities in the residential environment will increase positive interethnic contact, which in turn decreases negative attitudes towards minorities as well as the chance to vote for a PRRP (Biggs & Knauss, 2012;Savelkoul et al, 2017). This effect is expected to be greater under certain conditions, such as equal group status, common objectives, intergroup cooperation, and the support of authorities, law, and custom (Savelkoul et al, 2017). In the context of this research, based on contact theory, it is hypothesized that (H1A) individuals living in residential environments with higher shares of ethnic minorities are less likely to support the PVV.…”

“…As feelings of threat are expected to grow with increasing minority group size and visibility, the presence of large ethnic minority groups in the local environment is often presumed to instigate feelings of ethnic threat and, as a result, increase PRRP support (e.g. Rink et al, 2009;Enos, 2017;Savelkoul et al, 2017). Therefore, group threat theory would predict that (H1B) individuals living in residential environments with higher shares of ethnic minorities are more likely to support the PVV.…”

“…effects (e.g. Savelkoul et al, 2017), and to deal with the overrepresentation of non-western ethnic minorities in the NELLS data, non-western respondents were excluded from the calculation of the precision-weighted estimates, effectively yielding a measure of the percentage of Dutch and western residents in a district that is highly educated. 7…”

Negative Intergroup Contact and Radical Right‐Wing Voting: The Moderating Roles of Personal and Collective Self‐Efficacy

“…Another explanation for this might be that the measure of collective self‐efficacy focused more on the perceived willingness to do something about the situation whereas the measure of personal self‐efficacy was more concerned with individuals’ perceived ability. Future research could investigate feelings of collective self‐efficacy by more explicitly focusing on the perceived ability and by considering threats at the level of the neighborhood (see Savelkoul, Laméris, & Tolsma, ).…”