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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.

According to scapegoat theory, individuals tend to attribute personal or social problems to an out-group (real or imagined). This self-serving bias protects the ego or social identity from responsibility while increasing prejudice towards the out-group blamed for feelings of frustration. In this research note, we test this theory using five waves of the Czech Household Panel Study (CHPS 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020), which captures the tail end of the 2015–2016 refugee crisis in Europe through the lockdown in response to COVID-19 pandemic in 2020. We focus attention on both personal and professional domains, asking if factors like subjective health, work stress, relationship dissatisfaction, life dissatisfaction, and unhappiness contribute to attitudes towards immigrants over time. We also ask whether socio-political attitudes such as distrust in the government, social distrust, and political disinterest are associated with changes in anti-immigrant sentiment. Results show that personal and professional domains help explain between-individual differences in attitudes towards immigrants, while trust in the government and society are related to both within-individual change and between-individual differences in anti-immigrant sentiment.

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.

The relationship between police and ethnic minorities has been the subject ofincreasing interest in many Western societies in recent years. We examine firstgeneration immigrants’ trust in the police in Europe from a comparative andlongitudinal perspective. Based on roughly 20,000 immigrants observed in 22countries over 13 years in the European Social Survey, results show thatinitially high levels of trust in the police among immigrants tend to erodewith the length of their stay in the host country. We show that twosimultaneous processes drive this pattern: a fading reference effect(downward assimilation) and an increasing discrimination effect. Crossnational comparisons show that, on average, immigrants in countries withmore police trust the police less. However, there is no effect of police sizewithin countries, mostly because police numbers hardly change over time.We discuss implications for future research and policy development based onour findings.

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.

Previous research on neo-nationalism has largely focused on the political arena, analyzing voters, parties, and policies. The scholarship featured in this special issue moves beyond the analysis of neo-nationalism in contemporary politics to show how the ideology is enacted at the micro level. The stage for these dynamic interactions is educational settings related to the teaching of English. In this article, we comment on this new research that illustrates the variety of ways English language instruction can either advance or combat neo-nationalism. Despite the diversity of roles that English plays across different geographic and national-level contexts, this corpus of work makes evident the importance of language in maintaining national group boundaries. Inspired by this knowledge, we use data from the International Social Survey Program (ISSP) to explore how attitudes about speaking the national language are related to neo-nationalist stances cross-nationally. Our findings, which echo the micro-level evidence presented in the special issue, show that national languages are inextricably linked to the maintenance of national group boundaries and associated with neo-nationalist concerns about the erosion of national culture, economy, and political institutions due to perceived foreign threats.

While radical right parties championing anti-immigrant platforms have made electoral gains throughout Europe, anti-immigrant sentiment—a key indicator of radical right support—has not dramatically increased during this same period. In this article, we seek to help make sense of this paradox by incorporating a contextual factor missing from previous studies: levels of anti-immigrant violence. Our key argument is that higher levels of collective violence targeting immigrants raise the salience of the immigrant/native boundary, which activates both positive and negative views of immigrants and makes these attitudes more cognitively accessible and politically relevant. This argument implies that exposure to violence against immigrants should strengthen existing prejudice (or empathy) toward immigrants and engender feelings of affinity (or antipathy) for radical right parties. Analyses of the German portion of the European Social Survey (ESS 2014 − 2019) and the Anti-Refugee Violence in Germany (ARVIG 2014 − 2017) datasets reveal a powerful interaction effect: exposure to higher levels of collective violence increased the probability of feeling closest to radical right parties among those who held neutral, negative, and extremely negative views of immigrants. However, these events were not associated with radical right sympathies among those holding pro-immigrant attitudes. We conclude that when violence against immigrants resonates with public opinion on immigrants, it opens new political opportunities for radical right parties. These findings should inform future research on the politicization of international migration, especially studies investigating how anti-immigrant attitudes translate into political outcomes.

Our reply to Bonikowski and DiMaggio (2021) is in three parts. First, we clarify the aim of our research note (Eger & Hjerm, 2021). Our original critique was based on a replication of their inductive analysis, and we evaluated their work using best practices for the methodology that they chose. Our argument is straightforward: If one is going to use inductive methods to say something meaningful about the real world, one needs to make sure that the model being advanced fits the data. We present additional evidence supporting our original critique. Second, we discuss whether their new analyses bolster their original results and conclusions. Third, because their own results actually suggest that different levels of American nationalism exist rather than qualitatively different types, we question their claim of convergent validity. In short, we stand by our original critique.

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. 

This chapter assesses the extent to which immigration poses a challenge to the welfare state. To do this, I synthesize previous scholarship from economics, political science, and sociology to evaluate the economic and political implications of immigration for welfare states. Contrary to the fiscal burden and welfare magnet hypotheses, the most recent cross-national and longitudinal studies indicate that, on average, immigration's net fiscal impact is positive—albeit small. However, research on the political impact of immigration does provide evidence that immigration creates challenges for welfare states in regards to welfare attitudes, support for left parties, and redistributive social policies.