Alin M. Ceobanu

When contact with immigrants matters: threat, interethnic attitudes and foreigner exclusionism in Spain's Comunidades Autónomas

Abstract This article examines the ‘contact hypothesis’ and theories of group threat in Spain, a country of recent mass immigration. Drawing on data for the period 1991–2000, we investigate whether respondents who interact with African and Latin American immigrants express lowered exclusionism compared to those who do not. Measures assessing contact include: close relationship, occasional encounter or acquaintanceship, and workplace contact. After multiple individual- and contextual-level controls, it is found that the close and occasional forms of contact are consistent predictors of lessened foreigner exclusionism across time, but workplace contact is not. Group threat (measured as perceived number of people with different nationality, race, religion or culture) contributes considerably to explaining variation in attitudes inter-regionally. Over time, close contact with migrants becomes a weaker predictor of reduced foreigner exclusionism. Finally, these results suggest that perceived threat is a consistent predictor of exclusionism over time, while the proportional presence of immigrants has no impact in either competitive or non-competitive settings.

Usual suspects? Public views about immigrants’ impact on crime in European countries

Using data from the 2002/3 module of the European Social Survey project, this study examines the relationship between public views about immigrants’ impact on crime and measures of criminal behavior in 21 countries of Europe. The results from hierarchical regression models show that perceptions about immigrants’ impact are unaffected by personal experience with crime and by contextual measures such as the homicide rate, prison population rate, and ratio of foreign inmate to non-European foreign population. The analysis further reveals that perceived immigrants’ impact on crime is sensitive to having friends among immigrants, residing in an ethnic neighborhood, having affinity with right-wing ideologies, as well as several socio-demographic characteristics. At the country level, perceptions that immigrants worsen crime problems are more evident in societies harboring larger stocks of non-European immigrants, but such views are not affected by economic circumstances. These findings imply that Europeans’ expressions of concern regarding immigrants’ impact on crime may be a guised form of prejudice against foreigners, as they seem to be nurtured less by fear of crime and more by fear of immigrants. The reported results are discussed with respect to the restrictiveness of immigration regimes and the practice of criminalizing foreigners.

Nationalisms and Anti-immigrant Sentiment in Spain

This article explores links between nationalism and immigrant exclusionism in Spains 17 Comunidades Autónomas. Drawing from social identity and marginality theories and using Análisis Sociológicos, Económicos y Políticos (ASEP), 1991–2000 data results show that strong national–regional identification is a predictor of anti-immigrant sentiment among Basques, Catalans and Galicians, but not in the remaining Comunidades Autónomas. Basques, Catalans and Galicians who strongly identify with region of residence are more likely to express immigrant exclusionism than those identifying ‘as regional as Spanish’. Simultaneously, ‘Spanish only’ respondents did not yield statistically significant results in favouring exclusionism as compared with those with dual identification across all regions.

Paths to citizenship? Public views on the extension of rights to legal and second-generation immigrants in Europe.

This study uses variations in the legal-institutional frameworks of citizenship to explore cross-nationally public views about granting equal rights to legal immigrants and citizenship status to second-generation immigrants in 20 European countries. We link the literatures on citizenship regimes and attitudes toward immigrants to construct a conceptual model that is tested using ISSP data from 2003 and a set of matching contextual measures. Results from hierarchical linear regression analyses indicate that (1) opposition to the extension of rights to legal immigrants is augmented by shorter periods of required residency for naturalization and (2) granting citizenship status to second-generation immigrants is not sensitive to whether a regime consents or not to citizenship by birth. Net of individual and contextual controls, the findings also show that resistance to the expansion of rights to legal immigrants is higher in countries consenting to dual citizenship. Furthermore, our analyses reveal that Eastern European respondents do not differ significantly from their Western counterparts with respect to extending rights to either category of immigrants. These results are discussed in reference to the diversity of citizenship regimes in Europe and in light of the existing debates on harmonizing immigration policies.