Policies and prejudice: Integration policies moderate the link between immigrant presence and anti-immigrant prejudice.

Abstract

More people than ever migrate across the world, thereby more people than ever live, study, and work in countries, regions, and institutions with high immigrant presence. Conflict and threat theories have argued that increasing immigration inevitably heightens native citizens' anti-immigrant prejudice. Drawing on alternate strands of social psychological literature such as contact theory, the present study challenges this argument. We highlight the role of the sociopolitical context of prejudice focusing on socioeconomic and legal integration policies. We reason that such integration policies shape intergroup relations by reducing structural (socioeconomic and legal) inequalities. Thus, inclusive policies will effectively reduce prejudice especially at high levels of immigrant presence through empowering immigrants and reducing immigrant disadvantage. Indeed our findings identify inclusive integration policies as a key condition for low antiimmigrant prejudice in high-immigration contexts. We analyze surveys of 143,752 participants across 66 different countries, 20 subnational regions, and 64 institutions as sociopolitical contexts using six different data sets in eight studies. Our multilevel analyses consistently demonstrate that anti-immigrant prejudice is lower among natives when higher levels of immigrant presence are coupled with inclusive, rather than exclusive, integration policies. Inclusive policies that render immigrants more equal to natives are the path to improved intergroup relations and social cohesion in diverse societies.

The relation between contact experiences and dual identity among German residents with a Turkish or Kurdish identity

“…We did observe, however, significant relationships between contact experiences, identification and the IAT measure of local group evaluation norms: Living in areas with higher levels of implicit racialized prejudice was related to significantly higher reports of discrimination experiences, lower levels of contact and identification with the national majority, and higher levels of contact and identification with their ethnic community. Our findings are consistent with research by Kende, Sarrasin, Manatschal, Phalet, and Green (2022), which shows that contact experiences between immigrants and the native majority are affected not only by the level of immigrant presence but also by integration policies that set social norms and influence levels of anti‐immigrant prejudice among the national majority. These findings illustrate that context variables may influence social identification processes through contact experiences.…”

Inclusive social norms and nationals’ positive intergroup orientations toward refugees: The moderating role of initial prejudice and intergroup contact

“…In our research, we are interested in understanding the influence of inclusive norms, whether injunctive or descriptive, on positive intergroup orientations toward outgroups. For instance, national-level social norms regulate intergroup relations: Right-wing normative climates have been linked to more negative attitudes of the national population toward different outgroups (i.e., the elderly, immigrants, and women; van Assche et al, 2017), while inclusive policies are linked to less adherence to ethnic (exclusive) conceptions of the national identity (Sarrasin et al, 2020) and anti-immigrant prejudice (J. Kende et al, 2022; Visintin et al, 2018).…”

Bringing critical social psychology to the study of political polarization

“…Researchers can examine general, structural measures in form of socioeconomic and integration policies which have been shown to reduce prejudice (Kende et al., 2022). Similarly, as economic inequality and unemployment might be causes of AP (Gidron et al., 2020), these sorts of interventions might well reduce it.…”