Lecture 4 - Migration Flashcards
What explain negative sentiment towards immigrants?
Historical reasonings
Economic competition: higher unemployment => higher prejudice. Higher number of immigrants => higher prejudice.
Threats (e.g, Covid): but anti immigration sentiments decreased with the pandemic => might be due to decrease in immigration + increase in solidarity (all in this together)
Educated preferences: lower educated people feel more threatened by all types of immigration (both richer/poorer countries)
Realistic conflict group theory does not hold empirical: more educated people do not feel more threatened by more educated immigrants.
Schooling: the more educated the more positive attitudes towards immigrants.
Contact Hypothesis: the more familiar you are with outsiders the more solidarity/tolerance you grow towards them. But how the government interacts and the policies they implement matters a lot towards the development of immigrants.
What are the historical reasonings for negative sentiment towards immigrants?
Massive migrations waves (fight over limited resources)
Authoritarian personality (out-groups seen as inferior biologically): in war times need a black sheep to blame
Were the economic reasons for explaining negative sentiment towards immigrants confirmed?
No!
Hypothesis: countries with more immigrants and higher unemployment rates have more negative emotions towards emigrants.
Reality: Different countries are affected by crisis differently.
Objective vs perceived conditions.
Thomas Theorem: the way people perceive things changes the outcome (objectively, things are better, but individual people feel like it’s worse => behave like it’s worse)
So, in reality, the perception of economic insecurity causes the increase in anti-immigrant sentiment.
What is a theory that can explain inter-group relations?
Realistic conflict theory:
conflict arises between groups when they are competing for limited resources => prejudice and negative attitudes towards out-group
Coexistence did not eliminate negative attitudes, but cooperation did.
What were the findings of the schooling hypothesis?
More time in university does not increase tolerance, but being/having been a university student makes you more likely to be tolerant.
Based on the idea of who attends higher education: higher cultural capital (socialization as a kid towards being tolerant) => more likely to be more tolerant + more likely to be in university
So, they already tend to have a more open mindset before they study
What is the main takeaway from studying migration?
Findings are not black and white, context matters lot.
