Why Do Some Countries Fear Immigration More than Others? Evidence from Europe

Abstract

In this pa per we show that the ind ividuals' per ception of immigra tion is shake by the ir cultural a nd soc ial c harac ter istic s. In o rder to acc ount for cultu ral d iffere nce s in a br oader se nse, we r e ly on linguistic re lativity theory acc ording to which lingu is tic diffe renc es in grammatical stru ctur e may induce spe aker s of diff ere nt la ngu a ge s to c once ptual ize and exper ie nce the world d iffe re ntly (Sapir (1921), Whorf and Carr oll (1964)). L ingu istic varia tion is mea sured by mea ns of a spe c ific linguistic mar ker deve l oped in Kovac ic e t a l. (2015) ba sed on the number of gra mmatical cate gorie s (mood s)c oncer ned with the expre ssion of uncertainty. We show that more inte nsive u ser s of the se spe c ific gra mmatica l forms a re signfi ca ntly more intoler ant towa rd immigration with respec t to othe r ide n tical ind ividua ls speaking a d iffe rent language/s. In lin e with Kovac ic e t al. (2015), this result c an be inter pre ted as a dire ct c onseque nce of individ ua l u nobserve d ge neral attitude toward s uncertainty reflec ted by the specifi c lingu istic marker u sed to mea sure the de gree of linguistic varia tion. The resu lts a re robu st to the inc lu sion of additiona l se t of expla na tory a nd contr ol varia bles, c ou ntry a nd year fi xed effec ts, a nd alter na tive estimation method s.

Linguistic Structures and Economic Outcomes

“…Furthermore, they use mood as an instrument to study the effect of risk aversion on the probability of holding risky financial assets. In a further study, Kovacic and Orso () demonstrate significantly higher intolerance towards immigration among individuals who speak a language where irrealis mood is used more frequently.…”