Romana Careja

Making Democratic Citizens: The Effects of Migration Experience on Political Attitudes in Central and Eastern Europe

This article examines the effects of migration experience on political attitudes in Central and Eastern European countries. The rationale for this quest is the hypothesis that contact with democratic contexts translates into democratic political attitudes, for which evidence is so far inconclusive. In this article, we are interested to see whether migrants returning from Western countries display different political attitudes than their fellow nonmigrant citizens. The analysis of survey data shows that migration experience diversifies the array of political attitudes: Although migrants are more likely to trust EU institutions and to try to convince friends in political discussions, they do not differ from nonmigrants in their attitudes toward domestic institutions. Based on earlier works on determinants of political attitudes, the authors argue that migration experience has a significant effect only when these attitudes are related to objects that are associated with improvements in the migrants’ material and cognitive status.

Needed but Not Liked – The Impact of Labor Market Policies on Natives’ Opinions about Immigrants

This article builds on the notion that immigrants’ integration into the labor market benefits migrants and shapes natives’ opinions about immigrants. Using insights from the newest literature on labor immigration and drawing upon the literature on attitudes toward immigrants, the article explores in a multilevel design the impact that regulations in the EU member states concerning immigrants’ access to domestic labor markets have on threat perceptions and on opinions about immigrants’ economic role. It finds that labor market regulations have a positive effect on opinions about immigrants’ economic role and reduce the negative relationships between precarious labor market status and opinions about the economic role. However, a robust effect of labor market regulations on threat perceptions was not found. Our results imply that labor market incorporation rules need to be accompanied by other measures to close the gap between natives and immigrants.

Direct and indirect welfare chauvinism as party strategies: an analysis of the Danish people's party

This article develops a theoretical distinction between direct and indirect welfare chauvinism in order to analyze how electorally successful populist right-wing parties transmit social policy preferences with significant redistributive implications for the shape of the welfare state. Direct welfare chauvinism occurs as a result of legislative changes that explicitly exclude recipients from social protection or reduce the level thereof on the basis of ethnicity. Indirect welfare chauvinism is the result of policy measures that apply to both natives and immigrants, but which deliberately negatively affect immigrants the most. Combining quantitative and qualitative analysis of labour market reforms in Denmark, where one of the most successful populist right-wing parties in Europe – the Danish Peoples Party – held a pivotal position in the period 2001–11, the article traces the intentions and deliberate policy-making strategies of the party. It shows that the distinction between direct and indirect chauvinism is a useful theoretical tool for understanding how the Danish Peoples Party can fulfill the expectations of both its electorate and its coalition partners, even if they point in different directions.

Paths to Policy Coherence to Create Market Economies in Central and Eastern Europe

Policy coherence, understood as synergy between policies, has been found to facilitate development and economic growth. However, there is little research on the conditions in which it emerges. This article identifies different paths conducive to policy coherence in the process of transforming centralized economies of Central and Eastern Europe into market-driven ones. It shows that government characteristics with likely impact on the quality of policy-making, such as accountability and institutional constraints, are associated with coherent policies only in a limited number of cases. It also shows that governments that are not constrained and accountable, formulate coherent policies if they find themselves in contexts that do not pose constraints, or that offer strong incentives.

Institutions, culture and migrants' preference for state-provided welfare: Longitudinal evidence from Germany

Using the difference-in-differences estimator and data provided by the German Socio-Economic Panel, this article explores migrants’ preferences for state-provided welfare. The study finds evidence that over time, the preferences of immigrants and natives become more similar. We interpret this finding as evidence that the culture of home countries does not have a time-invariant effect, and that immigrants’ welfare preferences are subject to a socializing effect of the host countries’ welfare regime.

An American dilemma in Europe? Welfare reform and immigration

This chapter argues that in order to observe immigrant-targeted welfare retrenchment, researchers need to analyse more than levels of benefits. Focusing on policy programmes that provide a disproportionate amount of benefits to immigrants, especially those who are newly arrived, on eligibility criteria and the conditions and sanctions that are imposed on benefit claimants and their families, and on policies that regulate entry into and expulsion from the country, the authors uncover a variety of strategies through which governments can affect immigrants’ access to welfare benefits. The chapter covers the period from the 1990s through the 2000s and observes that relatively similar measures were adopted both in the UK and Denmark, indicating that a new ethnic divide marks the politics of welfare reform. However, the prediction that Europe follows in the footsteps of the United States is not fully supported, as the restrictive measures are accompanied by policies aimed at increasing immigrant integration and limiting social exclusion.

Using population registers for migration and integration research: examples from Denmark and Sweden

The paper starts from the observation that research on immigrants’ integration trajectories needs detailed information, both objective and attitudinal, and ideally longitudinal. This study uses the cases of Denmark and Sweden – whose registers produce detailed records about all natives’ and immigrants’ lives in their host countries – in order to, first, review existing research on immigrants and their integration and, second, discuss the way in which register data are used, their caveats and their potential. The study finds that, in Denmark and Sweden, registers provide systematic objective data which are fully available to researchers and have the potential to help in the collection of high-quality subjective data. However, the population registers have some traits which may impact on the representativeness of the samples. The authors argue that, if researchers are aware of the caveats, registers can be used to obtain representative samples of immigrants, and register data can be complemented with survey-based attitudinal data, thus opening up new research opportunities for testing propositions on integration theories.

Party Discourse and Prejudiced Attitudes toward Migrants in Western Europe at the Beginning of the 2000s

Building on framing research and on cognitive dissonance theory, the paper examines the differentiated moderating effect of party discourse on prejudiced attitudes against immigrants. Using ESS 2002 data, the study finds that individuals who are positively oriented toward immigrants become more so when confronted with party discourses with anti-immigrant tones. This effect is, however, visible only when it comes to acceptance in ones private sphere, that is, acceptance of inter-ethnic marriage. The study also found some evidence that friendship with immigrants is not strong enough to impede natives to accept the idea of deporting unemployed immigrants.

Feeling German: The impact of education on immigrants’ national identification

In this study, we investigate the role of education in immigrants’ identification with the host society. Using data from the German Socio-Economic Panel and latent growth curve mediation models, we test the immigration paradox hypothesis (de Vroome et al. 2011), which claims that highly educated immigrants identify less with the host society, due to their higher sensitivity to discriminatory experiences. While previous research found support for this hypothesis based on cross-sectional data, our analysis based on longitudinal data casts doubt on the validity of the immigration paradox argument.

Making good citizens: local authorities’ integration measures navigate national policies and local realities

ABSTRACT Using the case of Odense (Denmark), this article explores how, in the process of devising and implementing integration measures, local authorities mitigate between the demands of national-level integration policies and the local realities. It shows that Odenses local authorities combined local resources into a variety of horizontal governance structures geared towards supporting refugees’ integration, and engaged in vertical interactions responding to local priorities. The study finds that new governance structures emerging at sub-national create opportunities for refugees and help their integration. However, inequalities between national and sub-national levels may have negative consequences for refugees’ integration outcomes.