“White Flight” or Positive Contact? Local Diversity and Attitudes to Immigration in Britain

Abstract

Does the local presence of immigrant groups increase White hostility to immigration? Most research finds that diverse neighborhoods reduce White opposition to minorities and immigration. However, most studies at higher geographies find the reverse effect. We confirm this pattern for England and Wales for studies are open to selection bias, which is where this article makes its main contribution. Is White tolerance in diverse neighborhoods the result of a positive effect of inter-ethnic contact, or does it arise from White flight, with anti-immigrant Whites exiting diverse areas but remaining within wider geographies as radicalized opponents of immigration? We provide the first attempt we are aware of to track the opinions of in-and out-migrants, as well as stayers, from local areas over an extended period. We use 20 years of large-scale geocoded British longitudinal data and find only limited evidence of selection effects associated with White flight.

The Coevolution of Segregation, Polarized Beliefs, and Discrimination: The Case of Private versus State Education

“…Algann et al (2015) show that students' political opinions converge among friends, and Boisjoly et al (2006) and La Ferrara et al (2014) show that living in mixed-race housing lowers students'prejudiced beliefs. Kaufmann and Harris (2015) study the rise in segregation along racial lines in the UK and …nd signi…cant e¤ects of segregation on attitudes about the bene…ts of immigration. 3 In explaining the relation between segregation and beliefs, the literature has mainly focused on one direction of causality, namely, the a¤ect of segregation on beliefs and attitudes.…”

Natives’ opinions on ethnic residential segregation and neighbourhood diversity in Helsinki, Oslo and Stockholm

“…Both approaches showed a very strong but non-linear relationship between immigrant density in one's own neighbourhood and a preference for a lower share of immigrants. Perhaps somewhat surprisingly, this had nothing to do with real migration behaviour: recent nativeborn neighbourhood movers did not differ from stayers in their views on neighbourhood diversity in general or their preference for share of immigrants in their own neighbourhood (see also Kaufmann & Harris, 2015). However, a couple of things should be added.…”

“…Other types of methodological criticism have also been launched in this Putnam-related debate, such as the Laurence & Bentley (2016) argument that cross-sectional research is inadequate if causal claims about the relationship are to be made. They call for a longitudinal test of the impact of diversity on social cohesion and attitudes towards neighbours, and they decompose residents along the stayer-mover dimension (see also Kaufmann & Harris, 2015). By splitting our respondents along the mover-stayer dimension (see next section), we are able to cast further light on this issue.…”

“…We share the position emphasized by Crowder et al (2011, p. 41): 'While scholarly attention continues to focus on immigrants' residential attainment processes, we call for additional attention to native-born populations' mobility reactions to these immigrant settlement patterns' . Some scholars choose to make such contributions by using register/census-based (Andersson, 2013;Kaufmann & Harris, 2015) or other secondary statistical sources (like the US panel data used by Crowder et al), while the study presented here is based on a large-scale survey conducted in Helsinki, Oslo and Stockholm. Three thousand native-born neighbourhood movers and stayers in child-rearing ages were sampled from the population registers and targeted in each city by a jointly developed questionnaire sent out by respective statistical authorities in the three countries.…”

Is racism the new sectarianism? Negativity towards immigrants and ethnic minorities in Northern Ireland from 2004 to 2015

“…According to this, an increase in the numbers of out-group members should lead to decreases in out-group negativity, as it leads to more contact opportunities. A number of studies found evidence to support this theory both at the level of individual contacts and the neighbourhood level (Schmid et al 2014;Kaufmann and Harris 2015). A negative link between increased contact and negativity towards ethnic minorities was found in Northern Ireland (Hayes and Dowds 2006;McKee 2015), Scandinavia and other European countries (McLaren 2003;Frølund Thomsen 2012;Schmid et al 2014).…”