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Session Chair: Eldad Davidov Session Chair: Oshrat Hochman Session Chair: Vera Messing Session Chair: Alice Ramos
Location:C104, Floor 1
Iscte's Building 2 / Edifício 2
Session Abstract
The module on attitudes to immigration has been fielded in the 1st and the 7th rounds of the ESS, and it is going to be fielded again in Round 12. This module has been widely used by academics and policy makers, and the topic remains highly salient for theory, research and political debates. The key questions from the previous modules which have been the most widely used include the measurement of attitudes toward different immigrant groups, realistic and symbolic threat, contact quantity and quality with immigrants, social distance, subjective group size, conditions to accept immigrants, fraternal deprivation, or racism, just to name a few. A small number of core items on immigration have been asked in every round of the European Social Survey. In this session we invite researchers to present their ongoing research on attitudes toward immigration and related topics using ESS data, particularly (but not necessarily) from a comparative perspective.
Presentations
Perceived (In-)Justice and Attitudes Towards Immigration - An Application of the Theory of Social Production Functions and Goal Framing
Stefan Liebig
Freie Universitaet Berlin, Germany
Immigration is currently one of the most controversial policy areas in all European societies. Growing migration and the associated immigration figures into the EU are one reaon why populist parties have become increasingly popular in recent years. Proponents of a liberal immigration policy justify their position either with moral arguments or by pointing to macroeco-nomic necessities and overall economic benefits. Despite the presence of these arguments in the media, they are obviously not really convincing for the opponents of liberal immigration policy - a change in attitudes towards immigration has not been observed in recent years. From an action-theoretical perspective, this is not surprising. This is because a "moral" argument fails to recognize that moral reasons are only a weak motive for action for many people and are accordingly overlaid by motives of self-interest. The "economic benefit" argument is similarly problematic. It expects individuals to agree to immigration because it is in the interests of everyone in society. However, this reference to the collective rationality of immigration is rarely in line with individual rationality calculations and is therefore also only a very weak motive for action.
In order to gain understanding or support for an immigration policy that is justified on the basis of both arguments, it is necessary to understand the individual motivations and individual reasons for approving or rejecting immigration and, if necessary, to address them politically. This paper deals with such an understanding of the individual rationality of attitudes towards immigration. In con-trast to previous approaches, which are primarily anchored in psychological concepts, this will be done on the basis of a general model of action. With the help of the Theory of Social Production Functions and Goal Framing Theory, (1) it is possible to systematically derive the indi-vidual and social conditions under which approval or rejection of immigration is individually ration-al. By means of the theoretical tools used, it is (2) possible to justify why the determinants of indi-vidual attitudes towards immigration identified in the literature to date must be extended to in-clude attitudes towards social justice. Building on this, (3) clear assumptions can be formulated as to the conditions under which subjectively experienced injustices and normative ideas about justice become relevant for the approval or rejection of immigration. These assumptions are tested with data from the European Social Survey Round 9 from 2018. The analyses based on multilevel ran-dom-effects models for 29 countries show that attitudes towards justice make a substantial contribution to explaining the variation in attitudes towards immigration and that subjectively experienced injustices can explain a high proportion of the variance, especially among people who describe themselves as economically deprived. Conversely, economically non-deprived members of the majority society and people with a migration background are more strongly guided by their normative ideas about justice (moral argument). By extending the classical explanatory models with attitudes towards justice, this article not only provides new evidence for the causes of attitudes towards immigration, it also proposes a more theory-driven approach to survey-based research on attitudes towards immigration.
