Conference Agenda

How do voters with an immigrant background react to the discourses of immigration policies? Do they support radical right parties that are opposed to immigration? Or do they show similar voting behavior as natives since they are no longer immigrants but naturalized to the host society? One of the key issues during the recent elections across Europe has been immigrants. Unlike the past elections where far-right parties were still not considered mainstream and their ideologies were radical and socially unacceptable, albeit their rise, the recent elections in Europe show that far-right parties have been “normalized”, meaning that voters now consider them as one of the normal parties and people socially accept their positions and expression. However, many of these “targeted” immigrants do have voting rights just like native-born and these immigrant-origin voters are important electorate as well. They are unfortunate targets of the elections but at the same time the voters who can cast votes for those parties during elections.

Using the European Social Survey (ESS) Round 8 to 10, this paper aims to identify what affects voting behavior among immigrant-origin voters in 23 European countries, based on social cleavage and expressive identity theories. By incorporating literature on political ideology and motivated reasoning in voting behavior, we argue that party positions on immigration policies mainly affect the vote choice among voters with an immigration background in Europe, due to their distinct immigrant identities. Immigrants are more likely to choose a party with more favorable attitudes towards immigrants even when other positions are less appealing. In addition, we attempt to investigate whether their voting behaviors are affected by their political ideologies and the political systems of the host societies.

Our research makes several notable contributions. On a theoretical level, our objective is to integrate the theory of motivated reasoning into the existing immigration literature, shedding light on the evolving dynamics among voter groups within democratic states. In terms of substantive contributions, this paper contributes to our understanding of the psychological dynamics involved in the transition from outsiders (immigrants) to insiders (naturalized voters) and of the political integration of minority groups. Empirically, we utilize cross-national survey data from the European Social Survey (ESS) and the Chapel Hill Expert Survey. This comprehensive approach not only considers individual voting behaviors and the significance of identity but also incorporates party positions, facilitating cross-national comparisons. This approach allows us to explore not just individual voting behaviors and the salience of their immigrant identities but also to incorporate party positions, enabling meaningful cross-national comparisons.

As the European Social Survey European Research Infrastructure Consortium (ESS ERIC) considered to put its established face-to-face approach to survey data collection to rest by 2027, the Covid-19 pandemic offered an opportunity for a practical test of the self-completion mode that has been seen as a fitting replacement. While the majority of participating countries kept the face-to-face approach for the tenth wave of the ‘European Social Survey’ (ESS) (albeit in part in a pandemic-appropriate way through the means of real-time digital communication), several countries turned to a web- and paper-based self-completion mode with a marginally deviating questionnaire instead. Two of the nine countries switching modes for the tenth wave of the ESS have been Austria and Germany. The data collection started in Austria in August 2021 with Germany following suit in October 2021, already well into the pandemic. As such, the data may be regarded as a potential spotlight on the biases that may occur with the full transition to self-completion.

Alike to the population samples already underrepresented subsamples within the ESS (such as immigrants) show significant discrepancies in relation to the data collection modes. Online respondents both with and without a history of migration were younger, more educated, more frequently part of the active workforce and had better financial resources than paper questionnaire participants. Although balancing effects can be attested for both immigrant and population samples, biases are still noticeable in comparison to earlier waves of the ESS collected face-to-face as well to the Austrian ‘Sozialer Survey Österreich’ (SSÖ) and the German ‘Allgemeine Bevölkerungsumfrage der Sozialwissenschaften’ (ALLBUS) undergoing similar pandemic-related developments as the ESS. Aside from being younger and more educated in average, the participants of the tenth wave were also more often areligious and politically left-oriented. Specific to Germany a systematic withdrawal of respondents from the East has been observed at last.

Institutions producing transnational data, such as Eurostat, the OECD, and the World Bank, categorize 'international migrants' as individuals born in a different country from where they currently reside. This classification relies on the current territorial boundaries of independent nation-states. Notably, this definition presents unique implications in regions like post-socialist Europe, where geopolitical borders have shifted relatively recently. Individuals who migrated without crossing international borders at the time—due to changes in national boundaries since then—are now considered international migrants. This situation particularly applies to those born in communist federations like the Soviet Union, Czechoslovakia, and Yugoslavia, who moved between republics of the same sovereign federative state. Despite the tight control over international borders in these socialist federations, internal migration was common. This internal migration was not always a matter of personal choice but a response to state-directed objectives, often influenced by central government resettlement policies and the distribution of industrial sectors. These conditions also affected the perceptions of movement and meanings of belonging among the migrants themselves.

As of today, transnational statistics include a significant proportion of historically internal migrants—those who moved within a federation—as part of the international migrant category. This classification is particularly evident in the political discourses of some countries, where individuals with a background of internal migration are labeled as international migrants, despite not having crossed international borders during their migration. The distinction between international and internal migrants extends beyond the mere act of crossing sovereign borders. In certain political contexts, naming someone international or internal migrant can have implications for the lives of individuals and affect their access to social resources.

Building on this perspective, the present paper explores whether historically internal migrants, retrospectively categorized as international migrants by transnational data-producing institutions, share more similarities in terms of social, economic, and political characteristics with actual international migrants—who crossed sovereign borders during migration—or with the native-born population in their countries of residence. We further ask whether these patterns of similarities and differences between the groups vary across different post-socialist countries. To investigate these questions, we analyze data from five rounds of the European Social Survey, spanning from 2010 to 2020, focusing on specific countries: Czechia, Croatia, Estonia, Lithuania, Slovenia, and Serbia.

This study uses 10 rounds of data from the European Social Survey (ESS) to study the cultural assimilation of immigrants in Europe. Specifically, we study the differences in attitudes toward gender roles, same-sex relationships, traditionalism, and religiosity among first and second-generation immigrants vs natives. Moreover, we address the role played by religious background, perceived discrimination, and age in shaping these differences.

Three main theoretical arguments are used to account for the variability in the extent to which migrants assimilate into the native majority. The first argument (A1 - Cultural Proximity) posits that cultural assimilation is more likely to occur when there is a small cultural distance between minority groups and the majority. The second argument (A2 - Cultural Import) explicitly focuses on the array of cultural traits that immigrants bring from their home country: immigrants hailing from countries with markedly distinct cultural traits will preserve this gap and likely remain quite different from the cultural mainstream of the destination country. The third theoretical argument (A3 - Blocked Acculturation) addresses situations in which cultural assimilation is significantly compromised, primarily due to processes of exclusion and discrimination, and where members of discriminated-against groups do not assimilate into the cultural mainstream because the process is effectively “blocked.” Because of this third argument, we introduce the role of perceived discrimination as a potential mediator in the assimilation process.

Given that assimilation processes are well under development in Europe, we test three hypotheses to inspect the heterogeneity within this general pattern. Based on A1 and A2, we expect that migrants from Muslim-majority countries assimilate less than migrants coming from non-Muslim countries (H1). Based on A3, we expect assimilation to be weaker for young migrants coming from Muslim-majority countries (H2), partly because of their perception of being discriminated against (H3).

To test these hypotheses, we used 10 rounds of European Social Survey (ESS) data and supplemented this individual information with country-of-origin data from the “Religious Characteristics of States Dataset Project”. Multilevel models are applied to four different dependent variables (attitudes toward gender roles, same-sex relationships, traditionalism, and religiosity) and are run on the full sample to test H1 and H2 and on the migrant sample only to test H3.

Our results depict a common pattern across the four measures of assimilation, namely, that across religious backgrounds second-generation migrants are more similar to natives than first-generation ones. Within this general finding, we show that migrants from Muslim-majority countries still lag behind natives compared to migrants with other religious backgrounds but, against our first hypothesis, they are “closing the gap” faster than other migrants. Moreover, we find confirmation of our second hypothesis, in that Muslim youth are those assimilating less, and that this is especially true among those who perceive themselves as members of a discriminated group, thus confirming H3.

Overall, our findings suggest that some form of “blocked acculturation” might be occurring among the younger members of second-generation immigrants of Muslim backgrounds.

The European Social Survey is not an immigrant survey; nevertheless, its biannual repetition, large samples across a wide range of European countries, and the inclusion of many relevant variables make it an attractive source for migration researchers. While the majority of publications on immigration found in the ESS Bibliography refer to attitudes of the majority population, a growing number focuses on migrants or ethnic minorities themselves. Using a general population survey for this purpose, however, has pitfalls that are not always adequately addressed and reflected.

In this contribution, we aim to firstly provide an overview on how the ESS has been used to study immigrants and related minorities (e.g. ethnic, religious). Using the ESS Bibliography as well as additional bibliographic search data, we classify this field by types of study, from single group in a single country to multiple-origin, multiple-destination designs, using specific examples to illustrate the main features of these approaches. Secondly, we systematically examine the methodological issues faced in each type of research design by drawing on any reflection of this within the studies themselves as well as the broader literature on survey methodology. Lastly, we will highlight potential solutions offered in the literature as well as avenues for future research.