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The link between educational attainment and attitudes towards out‐groups stands out as one of the most consistent statistical associations in the social and political sciences. However, a recent analysis of survey data from the United States finds that the relationship between higher education and out‐group prejudice depends on the content of education. In this Research Note, we replicate that study's analysis of tertiary‐level academic majors within a European context and extend it to include academic specializations below the tertiary level. Our analyses of European Social Survey (ESS) data, spanning 32 countries and over 120,000 respondents, reveal substantial variation in the association between field of study and anti‐immigrant prejudice. Specifically, we find that individuals with degrees in arts, humanities, and social sciences express more positive views towards immigrants than those with degrees in other fields. A similar, though less pronounced, pattern emerges among individuals with lower levels of educational attainment. These findings challenge simplistic and politicized notions of the impact of higher education, offering a more nuanced understanding of educational attainment and its so‐called “liberalizing effect.”

Despite a large literature consistently showing a relationship between higher levels of education and lower levels of ethnic prejudice, some points of contention remain. First, it remains unclear whether education has a causal effect on attitudes, mainly due to a lack of longitudinal studies. Second, due to the majority of studies on prejudice being conducted in Europe and North America, we do not know to what extent the inverse relationship between education and prejudice is generalizable beyond the “global North.” To answer these questions, I study attitudes toward immigrants in Chile in the years 2016–2022, using six waves of the Chilean Longitudinal Social Survey. Chile provides new variations in economic and cultural factors, with its stable albeit highly unequal economy, and increased immigration from culturally similar countries which shed light on possible scope conditions of the so-called liberalizing effect of education. I analyze whether attaining more education has an effect on reducing levels of perceived economic and cultural threat. The findings show that increases in education are associated with both lower levels of perceived economic and cultural threat, with education having a stronger effect on the latter.

Recent research shows that better educated and structurally integrated immigrants do not articulate more positive attitudes toward the ethnic majority than immigrants who have lower levels of educational attainment, described as evidence of an “integration paradox.” While these findings have important implications for theories of immigrant integration, they stand in contrast with theories of intergroup relations, e.g., intergrou pcontact theory. Importantly, these findings also challenge the strong theoretical expectation that higher levels of education generate more positive intergroup attitudes, that is, the universality of the educational effect. Using four waves from ‘New Immigrants Survey Netherlands’ (NIS2NL) survey, I investigate attitudinal differences toward both the ethnic majority and other ethnic minorities in the Netherlands for four recent immigrant groups by focusing on the highest level of education from their country of origin. First, I analyze whether the relationship between education andoutgroup attitudes differs toward the ethnic majority and toward ethnic minorities.Second, I look at how attitudes toward outgroups change over time. Findings indicate that immigrants with higher levels of educational attainment hold more positive attitudes toward other ethnic minority groups, and these attitudes are stable over time. Attitudes toward the ethnic majority, however, are initially very positive but become lessso over time, regardless of level of education. The findings shed new light on the universality of the educational effect on interethnic attitudes by showing that higher levels of education among immigrants have a potential “liberalizing” effect only toward minority groups, but not toward the ethnic majority.

This chapter advances a theoretical framework to understand within- and between-country variation in the level of stigmatization experienced by immigrant groups and their descendants over time. Since processes of stigmatization and destigmatization may unfold over generations, it is imperative for research to adopt a longer time horizon to identify the factors that lead to the emergence, persistence, and/or dissipation of stigma. Expanding the time frame of analysis to decades (or even centuries) requires an explicit focus on the experiences of groups rather than individuals. Based on the observation that the labeling of some groups as "migrants" does not always follow from actual histories of immigration, this framework treats "migrant" as a social category. To guide future empirical research, this chapter introduces two analytical models. The first identifies the factors and processes responsible for stigmatization or destigmatization over time. The second presents five ideal-typical pathways that immigrants and their descendants may experience in relation to stigma: non-emergence, increase, reinforcement, reduction, and status reversal.

This chapter focuses on group threat theory (Blumer 1958), one of the main sociological approaches used to explain prejudice toward minority groups. It examines the utility of the theory when applied to prejudice in the context of migration-generated diversity and analyzes how its original formulation by Blumer compares with the conceptualization of stigma by Link and Phelan (2001). Similarities and diff erences are drawn between Blumer's "four feelings" in prejudice and Link and Phelan's "four components" constitutive of stigma. Despite overlapping, complementary, and at time divergent arguments, using these two approaches in tandem may overcome the limitations of group threat theory and, in the process, advance research into anti-immigrant sentiment. In turn, it is posited that scholarship on stigma may gain from incorporating the concept of threat into its framework.

In this article, we challenge the prevailing assumption about the impact of higher education on attitudes toward racial and ethnic minorities by examining whether educational effects are monolithic or manifold instead. Using data from the General Social Survey (1972-2021), we use a variety of measures of education (years, levels, sectors, and majors) to unpack the relationship between higher education and intergroup attitudes, specifically anti-immigration attitudes among native-born Americans and anti-Black attitudes among non-African Americans. Results show that some higher education graduates hold out-group attitudes that are not much different from those without any higher education. Narrowing our focus to respondents only with higher education, we find significant variation in out-group attitudes across educational sectors and academic majors. These results have implications for how we understand previous scholarship on prejudice and higher education, which may have overestimated the impact higher education has, in general, on prejudice.

Background: This dissertation looks at the effect of higher education on prejudice, in particular anti-immigrant sentiment. In studies of prejudice, higher education is constantly shown to correlate to lower levels of prejudice, the so-called “liberalizing effect of education,” yet we do not fully understand to what extent education matters for these attitudes. By using longitudinal data, this dissertation looks at the effect of education on out-group attitudes from different angles. It seeks to investigate whether attaining more education results in lower levels of prejudice; whether this educational effect is universal; to what extent levels of prejudice differ among academic majors, as well as theorizing about the possible mechanisms responsible for this robust relationship.

Methods: This dissertation relies on both longitudinal data and cross-sectional data and a mixture of multilevel, cross-classified, and OLS linear regression models. Data come from the Norwegian Citizen Panel (NCP) and Statistics Norway, the New Immigrant Survey Netherlands (NIS2NL), the General Social Survey (GSS), and the Chilean Longitudinal Social Survey (ELSOC).

Results: The four studies give insight into how and why education matters for ethnic out-group attitudes, by emphasizing different aspects of education. The main contributions from this dissertation are the following: education has the potential to reduce prejudice, albeit in cultural terms; education has an “inoculation effect” in situations that give rise to insecurity and uncertainty; the liberalizing effect of education is manifested toward ethnic minorities but not toward the ethnic majority; the content of education matters for attitudes, that is, higher education does not have a monolithic effect on attitudes; and education yields effects that are separate and/or different from other socio-economic indicators.

Conclusion: This dissertation makes empirical and theoretical contributions to the study of prejudice by finding longitudinal evidence of an inverse relationship of education and anti-immigrant sentiment over time, in both Western and non-Western contexts. In addition, it provides a foundation for future research on the possible theoretical mechanisms responsible for this relationship.

The main purpose of this paper is to provide a biographical sketch of the late Hans L. Zetterberg and a historical background to a translation of an essay based on a lecture given by Zetterberg in Stockholm in 1995. In it, he recounts his time at the Department of Sociology at Columbia University in the years 1953–1964. This essay is full of insights into an inspiring and formative period for Zetterberg in the United States, particularly in the stimulating milieu that was Columbia, at this time the center of American sociology led by Robert K. Merton and Paul Lazarsfeld. In the introduction to this translated essay, I give a brief overview of the establishment of sociology as a discipline in Sweden, and the transfer of knowledge between the United States and Sweden (and Europe, more broadly), embodied in Hans Zetterberg. In the post-WWII years, American sociology, which had a strong positivistic imprint, played an important role in shaping the beginnings of Swedish sociology. However, the transfer of knowledge went both ways, with Zetterberg, a semi-central and often neglected figure, being both a significant contributor to sociology at Columbia in its period of greatest prominence, and in his native Sweden.

Previous research has consistently shown a negative correlation between education and anti-immigrant sentiment. This association is most pronounced when distinguishing between adults with higher education and those without a tertiary degree. Yet it remains unclear whether educational attainment actually matters for attitudes, mainly due to a lack of longitudinal studies. This article investigates the so-called liberalizing effect of education on adults' attitudes towards immigrants by taking into account individual, regional, and period effects. Using 12 waves of the Norwegian Citizen Panel (2013-2020) combined with contextual data from Statistics Norway, we assess the effects of: 1) educational attainment at the individual level; 2) the expansion of higher education at the regional level; and 3) higher education during a time of social upheaval. Results from multilevel cross-classified, repeated measurement models show that within-individual and within-county changes in educational attainment have a small but liberalizing effect on attitudes. Further, individuals with at least 3-4 years of university education do not react as strongly to the highly salient European migration crisis than those with lower levels of education. This finding suggests that higher education inhibits perceptions of threat that may manifest during "big events" such as a dramatic increase in asylum seeking. We interpret these novel results as evidence of an inoculating effect, in that higher education protects individuals against whatever instinct exists to react strongly during such crises.