Breidahl, Karen N. & Gina Gustavsson. Can we trust the natives? Exploring the relationship between national identity and trust among immigrants and their descendants in Denmark. (2022). [PDF]

Breidahl, Karen N. & Gina Gustavsson. Can we trust the natives? Exploring the relationship between national identity and trust among immigrants and their descendants in Denmark. Nations and Nationalism, 28(2), 2022, 592–611.

Politicians often seek to strengthen national identity by encouraging immigrants to adopt the ‘national values’, thus supposedly boosting trust. However, empirical studies of the social effects of national identity have focused almost exclusively on the native majority. In this article, we instead ask how national identity among immigrant minorities affects their trust, including towards natives. We draw on unique survey data from a representative sample of the five largest non-Western immigrant groups and their descendants in Denmark. This reveals that national belonging, national pride and citizenship preferences are positively linked to social as well as institutional trust. These relationships hold even when controlling for the perception of sharing one’s values with others and the extent to which one holds ‘typically Danish’ values widely shared among the majority population. This suggests that the emotional component of national identity, but not its content in the form of values, indeed forms an important basis for social cohesion.

PDF: https://doi.org/10.1111/nana.12834

Hjorth, Frederik. Ethnicization in Welfare State Politics. (2016)

Hjorth, Frederik. Ethnicization in Welfare State Politics. Copenhagen: Dissertation. University of Copenhagen, 2016.

A class of countries, so-called universal welfare states, distinguish themselves by having developed encompassing welfare states with high levels of economic redistribution. In recent decades, these countries have also experienced considerable immigration from non-Western countries and, accordingly, rising levels of ethnic diversity. Since higher levels of ethnic diversity are globally associated with lower levels of economic redistribution, scholars have hypothesized that rising ethnic diversity will put downwards pressure on redistribution levels in universal welfare states. In the literature on this question, the case of the United States has become a near-universal analytical template for how to think about the effects of diversity on redistribution. Americans’ attitudes toward welfare are widely considered ‘racialized’, i.e. in part based on attitudes toward racial outgroups. By the same token, we can think of political attitudes in universal welfare states as potentially ‘ethnicized’, i.e. in part based on attitudes toward ethnic outgroups. In this dissertation, I examine when and how ethnicization occurs. The dissertation’s frame, chapters 1–3, presents my argument and ties the dissertation’s papers together. I begin by outlining empirical patterns which challenge the predictions of prevailing theoretical approaches. Contrary to typical predictions, changes in ethnic diversity are not robustly associated with changes in welfare spending. At the same time, citizens in universal welfare states readily subscribe to anti-immigrant attitudes. I argue that this confusion stems in part from insufficient attention to citizen psychology. I outline a framework based on evolutionary psychology which accounts for why citizens’ policy attitudes can be ethnicized, but also why some issues are more likely to be ethnicized than others. In short, attitudes are ethnicized when citizens are exposed to group cues, from local contexts or mass media, that provide a meaningful link between the policy and stereotypes about an ethnic outgroup. By this criterion, welfare is not likely to be ethnicized, but other issues – e.g., European integration and crime – are. The existing literature, often too mechanically applying the American experience onto universal welfare states, has tended to miss this point.

The dissertation includes four academic papers, presented in chapters 4–7. In paper A, ‘Who benefits’, I demonstrate the role of stereotypes in opposition to European cross- border welfare rights, often denoted ‘welfare chauvinism’. In an original large-scale survey experiment, respondents’ evaluations of the policy are sensitive to cues about recipients’ country of origin and family size.

In paper B, ‘European integration’, I argue that political salience of immigration can ethnicize attitudes toward European integration. I first compare two euro referendums, showing that only where immigration was salient did ethnic prejudice predict vote choice and a subset of voters explain their vote in terms of identity. I then demonstrate a similar pattern in cross-national time-series data, showing that immigration attitudes and support for European integration are more closely associated when immigration is politically salient.

In paper C, ‘Immigration debate’, I analyze media coverage of immigration in Danish news media across 25 years. Many accounts characterize coverage as having grown increasingly negative over time. Analyzing the full text of a sample of 68,000 newspaper articles, I provide evidence against the posited negative trend. I also show that the most negative newspapers, tabloids, disproportionately cover immigration through stories about crime.

In paper D, ‘Local contexts’, I propose that exposure to rising ethnic diversity in the local context can in itself give rise to group-centric attitudes. Using two large data sets on citizen attitudes and local ethnic diversity, I show that crime and immigration attitudes are more closely associated in ethnically diverse localities. The finding challenges prevailing explanations of group-centric attitudes, which have tended to emphasize the role of elites. Altogether, these papers illustrate the influence of group identities in political cognition. They suggest that compared to predictions in the existing literature, ethnicization is at once more limited (in that it occurs for some issues, but not the widely studied case of welfare) and more pervasive (in that in can arise from local contexts as well as from media). It is an important mechanism by which immigration can influence political life, even when the agenda ostensibly revolves around something else.

https://polsci.ku.dk/ansatte/PHD/?pure=da%2Fpublications%2Fethnicization-in-welfare-state-politics(d8da00fa-9756-4149-9757-4c46863c85ef)%2Fexport.html

Simonsen, Kristina Bakkær, and Bart Bonikowski. ‘Is Civic Nationalism Necessarily Inclusive? Conceptions of Nationhood and Anti-Muslim Attitudes in Europe’. (2020)

Simonsen, Kristina Bakkær, and Bart Bonikowski. ‘Is Civic Nationalism Necessarily Inclusive? Conceptions of Nationhood and Anti-Muslim Attitudes in Europe’. European Journal of Political Research, vol. 59, no. 1, 2020, pp. 114–136.

Despite the centrality of national identity in the exclusionary discourse of the European radical right, scholars have not investigated how popular definitions of nationhood are connected to dispositions toward Muslims. Moreover, survey-based studies tend to conflate anti-Muslim attitudes with general anti-immigrant sentiments. This article contributes to research on nationalism and out-group attitudes by demonstrating that varieties of national self-understanding are predictive of anti-Muslim attitudes, above and beyond dispositions toward immigrants. Using latent class analysis and regression models of survey data from 41 European countries, it demonstrates that conceptions of nationhood are heterogeneous within countries and that their relationship with anti-Muslim attitudes is contextually variable. Consistent with expectations, in most countries, anti-Muslim attitudes are positively associated with ascriptive – and negatively associated with elective (including civic) – conceptions of nationhood. Northwestern Europe, however, is an exception to this pattern: in this region, civic nationalism is linked to greater antipathy toward Muslims. It is suggested that in this region, elective criteria of belonging have become fused with exclusionary notions of national culture that portray Muslims as incompatible with European liberal values, effectively legitimating anti-Muslim sentiments in mainstream political culture. This may heighten the appeal of anti-Muslim sentiments not only on the radical right, but also among mainstream segments of the Northwestern European public, with important implications for social exclusion and political behaviour.

doi:https://doi.org/10.1111/1475-6765.12337.

https://ejpr.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/1475-6765.12337.

Hervik, Peter. ‘Fortællingen om de danske værter og deres generende gæster’. (2016) [PDF]

Hervik, Peter. ‘Fortællingen om de danske værter og deres generende gæster’. Narrativ Forskning, Eds. Glavind Bo Inger, Ann-Dorte Christensen, and Trine Thomsen, 2016. Hans Reitzels Forlag, 275–292.

De fleste danskere har meget begrænset kontakt med indvandrere, flygtninge og efterkommere. De baserer i stedet deres holdninger på de kategorier, argumenter, billeder, følelser og indtryk fra narrativer, som cirkulerer i nyhedsmedierne og bliver luftet i samtaler på arbejdspladsen, i supermarkedet og til familiesammenkomster. Efterhånden bliver talen og fortællingerne om indvandrerne mere og mere indlejret som en særlig grundfortælling, hvor de nye borgere bliver sat ind i et gæst-vært scenarie fremfor i et fælles-menneskeligt og inkluderende “vi”. I artiklen præsenteres denne grundfortællings bestanddele og der argumenteres for, hvordan den forstærker og fastholder relationen mellem indfødte danskere og danskere med indvandrerbaggrund i et forhold af uforenelighed. Dette er et forhold, der udgør en fremtrædende fortælling hos danskerne allerede inden de møder mennesker med anden etnisk og kulturel baggrund.

PDF: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/308892284_Fortaellingen_om_de_danske_vaerter_og_deres_generende_gaester.

Hervik, Peter. ‘The Danish Cultural World of Unbridgeable Differences’. (2004)

Hervik, Peter. ‘The Danish Cultural World of Unbridgeable Differences’. Ethnos, vol. 69, no. 2, Routledge, June 2004, pp. 247–267.

This article looks at the contestation of foreign presence in Denmark from the perspective of popular consciousness. I infer the cultural world of Danish host and non-Danish guests from a pool of 55 in-depth interviews about multicultural issues. In this culturally figured world the guests are constructed as widely different cultural bearers who refuse to downplay their cultural markers, therefore upsetting the guests. According to this reasoning, the racial outburst of the hosts is caused solely by the unruly guests. Blaming the guests for creating racist responses, I contend, can best be understood as a naturalization of racism. This denial of racism in the popular sphere builds on the same culturalist construction of unbridgeable differences between a ‘we-group’ of ‘alike’ (or invisible) Danes and a visible ‘out group’ that dominates both popular and political understandings of immigrants and refugees in Denmark in the end of the 1990s.

doi:10.1080/0014184042000212885.

https://doi.org/10.1080/0014184042000212885.

Hervik, Peter, and Carolina Boe. ‘Integration through Ridicule?’ (2008) [PDF]

Hervik, Peter, and Carolina Boe. ‘Integration through Ridicule?’ Transnational Media Events: The Mohammed Cartoons & the Imagined Clash of Civilizations, Eds. Elisabeth Eide, Risto Kunelius, and Angela Phillips, Göteborg: Nordiskt Informationscenter for, 2008.

Excerpt from introduction:

When the now infamous cartoons depicting Prophet Muhammad were published by Denmark’s most powerful newspaper Morgenavisen Jyllands-Posten,2 the culture editor Flemming Rose wrote that they were deliberately intended “to insult, mock and ridicule” Muslims in Denmark. During the last decade, Jyl-lands-Posten has regularly argued that too much consideration is being shown towards religious feelings and that overt criticism, derogatory comments and ridicule are necessary provocations to accelerate social integration. This is the claim made by Flemming Rose in the above quotation from Ayaan Hirsi Ali. As such, Jyllands-Posten not only asserts its right to publish – it argues that publishing is a duty. The cartoons were published September 30, 2005. Eight months later, Rose justified his act as one of inclusion of Muslims in Denmark, arguing that he had meant to “integrate” “Them” “into the Danish tradition of satire” by “treating them like anyone else”:

PDF: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/271016661_Integration_through_Ridicule?channel=doi&linkId=54bc1b7b0cf29e0cb04be58e&showFulltext=true

Juhl Jørgensen, Frederik. How to Develop Policies That Foster Refugee Integration and Are Supported by Voters. (2020) [PDF]

Juhl Jørgensen, Frederik. How to Develop Policies That Foster Refugee Integration and Are Supported by Voters. Dissertation. Aarhus University, 2020,

This dissertation contributes to our understanding of a fundamental policy challenge that refugee-receiving countries face: how to develop policies that foster integration and are supported by voters. It splits this challenge into two. On the one hand, there is the policy goal of promoting integration. This leads to research question 1: how does integration policies affect refugee integration. On the other hand, policy makers face the electoral constraint that policies need to be supported by voters. This leads to research question 2: does refugees’ integration success or failure affect public support for policy. The dissertation takes its theoretical point of departure in two contrasting theoretical paradigms that structure the debates about integration policy. One paradigm, argues that strict policies—such as limited benefits or forced placement—promote integration. The contrasting paradigm, holds that lenient policies—like equal benefits or voluntary placement—catalyze social mobility and integration. I study these contrasting expectations in the context of two Danish policy reforms: the start help policy and the forced placement policy. Combined, these policies have formed the backbone of Danish integration policy for the past two decades. The start help policy lowered refugees’ social assistance benefits by up to 50 percent for new refugees who obtained residency after July 1 2002. The forced placement policy fundamentally changed the Danish dispersal system as of January 1 1999: new refugees who obtained residency after this date were subject to forced placement, whereas refugees who arrived earlier were placed on a voluntary basis. I exploit these cutoffs in regression dis- continuity designs that just like controlled randomized experiments control for all confounding factors by design. The reforms provide rigorous research designs (i.e., natural experiments) for causal identification. My data are based on the Danish national registers and combine information about the treatments (i.e., the cutoffs) with information on relevant integration outcomes. Overall, the findings show that the start help and forced placement policy are too strict if the aim is to maximize integration. For policy design, this means that policy makers should reassess current policies: they should pro- vide refugees with equal benefits to prevent negative effects from economic deprivation and remove restrictions on relocation to leverage synergy effects between individual characteristics and place characteristics. Theoretically, the findings support the paradigm, which argues that equal benefits and voluntary placement catalyze social mobility and integration. These results align with recent studies, which show that less restrictive policies—i.e., fewer restrictions 87 on citizenship acquisition (Hainmueller et al. 2015; 2017a; 2019), faster processing of asylum applications (Hainmueller et al. 2016; Hvidtfeldt et al. 2018), protection of unauthorized immigrants (Orrenius and Zavodny 2012; Hainmueller et al. 2017b), and fewer restrictions on asylum seekers’ possibility of employment (Marbach et al. 2018)—are catalysts of integration. In spite of this evidence, we continuously experience that policy makers tighten integration policies and thereby decrease refugees’ chances of success- ful integration. One plausible reason for the mismatch between the supply of policies and the aim of maximizing integration is that domestic voters demand strict policies (Lawrence and Sides 2014; Hopkins et al. 2019). This constrains policy makers’ ability to deliver policies that achieve the goal of promoting integration. The last part of the dissertation moves on to study this policy constraint and explores strategies that can potentially create leeway to develop less strict policies that would promote integration. This part of the dissertation examines whether it is possible to promote citizens preferences regarding integration policy by providing them with information about refugees’ actual integration success or failure. In particular, we conduct a large-scale survey experiment that isolates the effects of correct information about non-Western immigrants’ welfare dependency rates, their crime rates, and their overall size in relation to the total population. Two opposing views structure the theoretical expectations to the impacts of this type of information. One view that draws on Bayesian learning models argues that citizens use information to update their evaluations of immigrants’ integration performance into the host society. In this logic, the provision of information may be expected to promote more positive preferences regarding policy (Sides and Citrin 2007; Nadeau et al. 1993). Another view holds that people acknowledge correct information and update their factual beliefs, but reinterpret the information in a selective fashion that justifies their existing opinions (Gaines et al. 2007). In this logic, the provision of information has little, if any, influence on citizens’ policy preferences. In line with previous work, the findings first show that citizens’ are very skeptical of non-Western immigrants and markedly exaggerate problems related to immigration. In addition, there is a strong correlation between skepticism and support for anti-immigration policies. This demonstrates that pol- icy makers indeed face pronounced electoral constraints when designing integration policy. Second, the results demonstrate that while participants update their factual beliefs in light of correct information, they remain unwilling to change their policy preferences. These findings support conclusions from ear- lier work (Lawrence and Sides 2014; Hopkins et al. 2019). As a novel finding, we show that the link between facts and policy beliefs breaks down because people interpret the correct information in a belief-consistent manner that al- lows them to avoid using the new information to guide their policy prefer- ences. Overall, this means policy makers seemingly cannot rely on “explaining the facts” as a strategy to promote more favorable integration policy views and thereby create leeway to develop less strict policies that would foster integra- tion.

Dansk resumé Lande der modtager flygtninge står over for den fundamentale politiske ud- fordring: hvordan udvikles politikker der fremmer integrationen og som samtidig bakkes op af vælgerne. Afhandlingen bidrager til forståelsen af problemstilling, og inddeler udfordringen i to forskningsspørgsmål. På den ene side er der målet om at udvikle politikker, der fremmer integrationen, hvilket fører til forskningsspørgsmål 1: hvordan påvirker integrationspolitikker flygtninges integration. På den anden side begrænses politiske beslutningstagere af, at det er nødvendigt at politikkerne møder opbakning i befolkningen. Dette fører til forskningsspørgsmål 2: påvirker flygtninges integrationssucces eller -fiasko befolkningens opbakningen til policy. Afhandlingen tager sit teoretiske afsæt i to modsatrettede teoretiske paradigmer, som ofte strukturerer debatten omhandlende integrationspolitik. Det første paradigme argumenterer for, at strengere politikker, såsom begrænset adgang til overførselsindkomster eller tvungen placering, fremmer integrationen. Det andet paradigme argumenterer modsat for, at mindre strenge politikker, såsom lige adgang til overførselsindkomster eller frivillig placering, fremskynder social mobilitet og integration. Til at studere disse modsatrettede forventninger anvender jeg henholdsvis den danske starthjælpsreform og reformen af den danske placeringspolitik, der tilsammen har udgjort rygraden af dansk integrationspolitik de seneste to årtier. Starthjælpspolitikken nedsatte flygtninges overførselsindkomst med op til 50 procent for nye flygtninge, der opnåede opholdstilladelse efter 1. juli 2002. Den danske placeringspolitik blev fundamentalt ændret fra 1. januar 1999, hvor spredningen af flygtninge overgik fra et frivilligt til tvunget regime. Jeg udnytter disse tærskler i regressionsdiskontinuitetsdesigns, der ligesom randomiserede eksperimenter per konstruktion kontrollerer for alternative forklaringer. Reformerne udgør dermed naturlige eksperimenter og stringente forskningsdesigns for kausal inferens. Mit data er baseret på de national danske registre og kombinerer information omkring reformernes tærskelværdier med information omkring relevante integrationsvariable. Overordnet viser resultaterne, at starthjælpen og tvungen placering er for stramme, såfremt målet er, at fremme integrationen. For policy betyder det, at de politiske beslutningstagere bør genoverveje disse politikker. Konkret bør de give flygtninge ret til regulære overførselsindkomster for at forhindre de negative konsekvenser der følger af økonomiske afsavn. Endvidere bør de fjerne den tvungne placering, der forhindrer udnyttelsen af potentielle positive synergieffekter, der måtte være mellem flygtninges og deres placerings karakteristika. Teoretisk støtter resultaterne det andet paradigme, der argumenterer for, at lige overførselsindkomster og frivillig placering fremskynder social mobilitet og integration. Resultaterne flugter ned den seneste forskning, der viser, at færre begrænsninger på erhvervelsen af statsborgerskab (Hainmueller et al. 2015; 2017a; 2019), hurtigere behandling af asylansøgninger (Hainmueller et al. 2016; Hvidtfeldt et al. 2018), beskyttelse af illegale indva drer (Orrenius and Zavodny 2012; Hainmueller et al. 2017b), samt færre begrænsninger af asylansøgeres muligheder for at arbejde (Marbach et al. 2018) fremmer integrationen. På trods af disse resultater oplever vi en stadig stigende tendens til, at de politiske beslutningstagere strammer forskellige integrationspolitikker. Der- med besværliggør de faktisk flygtninges integration fremfor at hjælpe den på vej. En potentiel årsag til dette misforhold mellem målet om at fremme integrationen og politikudbuddet er, at vælgerne rent faktisk efterspørger disse politikker (Lawrence and Sides 2014; Hopkins et al. 2019), og dermed begrænser beslutningstagernes muligheder for at udvikle alternativer, der kan levere på målet om at fremskynde integrationen. Den sidste del af afhandlingen beskæftiger sig med disse vælgermæssige begrænsninger, og udforsker strategier, beslutningstagerne potentielt kan an- vende til at skabe sig selv spillerum til at udvikle politikker, der fremmer integrationen. Denne del af afhandlingen undersøger, om det er muligt at fremme vælgernes præferencer for integrationspolitik ved at præsentere dem for in- formation om flygtninges faktiske integration. Konkret anvender vi et survey-eksperiment til at isolere effekterne af at give vores respondenter korrekt in- formation om ikke-vestlige indvandreres afhængighed af overførselsindkomster, deres kriminalitetsrater samt størrelsen af den ikke-vestlige indvandrer- befolkning relativt til den samlede befolkning. To modsatrette perspektiver strukturerer hvordan denne type information kan forventes at påvirke respondenterne. Det første perspektiv, der baserer sig på bayesianske læringsmodeller, argumenterer for, at vælgere anvender information til at opdatere deres evalueringer af immigranternes faktiske integration. Følgeligt forventes det, at de justerer deres policy præferencer i en mere positiv retning (Sides and Citrin 2007; Nadeau et al. 1993). Det andet perspektiv anerkender at vælgerne måske anvender information til at opdatere deres faktiske overbevisninger, men argumenterer modsat for, at de fortolker information på selektiv vis således de er i stand til at retfærdiggøre deres eksisterende meninger (Gaines et al. 2007). Dermed kan det ikke forventes, at information har nogen effekt på deres policy præferencer. På linje med den eksisterende litteratur viser mine resultater for det første, at vælgerne er meget skeptiske overfor ikke-vestlige indvandrere, og markant overestimerer problemer relaterer til denne immigration. Derudover viser resultaterne, at der er en stærk korrelation mellem at være skeptisk og fore- trække stramme politikker. Samlet viser det, at beslutningstager står overfor markante elektorale begrænsninger i deres overvejelser om udformningen af integrationspolitikker. For det andet viser resultaterne, at vores respondenter er parate til at opdatere deres faktiske overbevisninger i lyset af ny information, men de forbliver modvillige i forhold til at justere deres policy præferencer. Dette underbygger konklusionerne fra tidligere studier i andre kontekster (Lawrence and Sides 2014; Hopkins et al. 2019). Vi viser samtidig, at linket mellem fakta og policy bryder sammen, fordi vores respondenter fortolker den nye information på en måde, der er i overensstemmelse med deres eksisterende meninger, hvilket retfærdiggør at de undgår at anvende den nye information til at guide deres policy præference. Samlet set betyder det, at beslutningstagerne tilsyneladende ikke kan regne med, at det er tilstrækkeligt at for- klare de faktiske forhold, som en strategi til at fremme mere favorable integrationspolitiske holdninger og dermed skabe sig selv et spillerum til at ud- vikle politikker, der fremskynder integrationen.

PDF: https://politica.dk/fileadmin/politica/Dokumenter/ph.d.-afhandlinger/frederik_juhl.pdf.

Storm, Ingrid. ‘«Christian Nations»? Ethnic Christianity and Anti-Immigration Attitudes in Four Western European Countries’. (2011) [PDF]

Storm, Ingrid. ‘«Christian Nations»? Ethnic Christianity and Anti-Immigration Attitudes in Four Western European Countries’. Nordic Journal of Religion & Society, vol. 24, no. 1, May 2011, pp. 75–96.

Despite a general decline in religious belief and practice in Europe, questions of national religious heritage have become increasingly salient in recent public debates about immigration and integration. Using data from the 2008 International Social Survey Programme (Religion III module), this study explores associations between individual religiosity and attitudes to immigration in four Western European countries: Great Britain, the Netherlands, Ireland and Denmark. Multivariate analysis reveals contrasting associations. Identifying with a Christian religion makes one more likely to think immigration is a threat to national identity, whereas regular church attendance reduces this effect. Despite national differences, the results from all four countries indicate a prevalence of Cultural or Ethnic Christianity, where religion is used to identify with national traditions or ethnic heritage rather than faith.

https://www.research.manchester.ac.uk/portal/en/publications/christian-nations-ethnic-christianity-and-antiimmigration-attitudes-in-four-western-european-countries(6b3a6051-eff8-4cda-9ed6-f82c3439abde).html

PDF: https://www.idunn.no/file/ci/66929888/Christian_Nations_Ethnic_Christianity_And_Anti-Immigratio.pdf

van Klingeren, Marijn, Hajo G. Boomgaarden, Rens Vliegenthart, and Claes H. de Vreese. ‘Real World Is Not Enough: The Media as an Additional Source of Negative Attitudes Toward Immigration, Comparing Denmark and the Netherlands’. (2015) [PDF]

van Klingeren, Marijn, Hajo G. Boomgaarden, Rens Vliegenthart, and Claes H. de Vreese. ‘Real World Is Not Enough: The Media as an Additional Source of Negative Attitudes Toward Immigration, Comparing Denmark and the Netherlands’. European Sociological Review, vol. 31, no. 3, June 2015, pp. 268–283.

Most people are unable to accurately estimate the number of immigrants in their country. Nonetheless, it has been argued that the size of the immigrant population would affect people’s immigration attitudes. Part of the effect of immigration on attitudes occurs not so much because of real immigration figures, but rather because of media reporting about immigration. In this study, negative attitudes towards immigration are explained by investigating the impact of the salience and the tone of immigration topics in the news media vis-a` -vis the impact of immigration statistics. The cases of Denmark and the Netherlands are analysed for a period from 2003 to 2010, using a multilevel design. Overall, real-world immigration numbers have little impact. The tone of news coverage has an effect in the Netherlands: a positive tone reduces negativity towards immigration, while a negative tone does not increase negativity. We cautiously conclude that the longevity of the issue’s salience has a moderating effect.

doi:10.1093/esr/jcu089.

PDF: https://academic.oup.com/esr/article-lookup/doi/10.1093/esr/jcu089.

Yael Enoch. ‘The Intolerance of a Tolerant People: Ethnic Relations in Denmark’. (1994) [PDF]

Yael Enoch. ‘The Intolerance of a Tolerant People: Ethnic Relations in Denmark’. Ethnic & Racial Studies, vol. 17, no. 2, Apr. 1994, p. 282.

The Danes have traditionally seen themselves as an enlightened and tolerant people, regarding with contempt those who, like many white Americans or South Africans, hold negative attitudes towards ethnic or racial minorities. This positive self-image was confirmed during World War II when in an impressive rescue operation almost all Danish Jews (the only sizeable minority group in Denmark at the time) were helped to safety in neutral Sweden. During the 1960’s and 1970’s Danish society – until then one of the most homogeneous societies in Europe – became increasingly more heterogeneous through the influx of economic migrants – ‘foreign workers’ – mainly from Turkey, Pakistan and Yugoslavia. For the first time the Danes have had to deal with ethnic minorities whose culture, language, religion and physical appearance differ significantly from the majority’s. On the basis of a comprehensive attitude survey, it appears that the Danes today are less tolerant towards ‘foreign workers’ than might have been expected on the basis of their past record. This article considers whether this intolerance can be explained in terms of (1) the structure of present-day Danish society; (2) the general characteristics of the respondents (age, gender, etc.), or (3) the social and cultural characteristics of the new minorities. It is suggested that ethnic prejudice exists latently even in apparently tolerant societies and tends to surface when a ‘suitable’ target group becomes available.

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/01419870.1994.9993825

PDF: http://www1.geo.ntnu.edu.tw/~moise/Data/Books/Reach%20of%20culture/cultural%20racism.pdf

Hervik, Peter. ‘Ending Tolerance as a Solution to Incompatibility: The Danish “Crisis of Multiculturalism”’ (2012) [PDF]

Hervik, Peter. ‘Ending Tolerance as a Solution to Incompatibility: The Danish “Crisis of Multiculturalism”’. European Journal of Cultural Studies, vol. 15, no. 2, Apr. 2012, pp. 211–225.

Successful integration must include the long-term enactment of ‘the will to feel Danish’. As Jews in Denmark have done in the course of many generations, so immigrant Muslims must immerse themselves to the extent that feeling Danish is naturalized. Such is the perspective proposed in a recent focus group discussion in Denmark on the integration of Muslims into Danish society. This idea of incompatibility between native Danes and Muslim ‘newcomers’ has become a salient feature of what is termed ‘value-based journalism’ and ‘value-based politics’ in the last decade. This article traces the origin of the ‘end of tolerance’ strategy, which follows from this development and examines the emergence of neo-racism in Denmark with its ideas of xenophobia as a natural reaction to other ‘cultures’ which do not belong ’naturally’. It shows that migrants of non-European origin are talked about in an increasingly crass and uncompromising way as a consequence of the belief in incompatibility.

doi:10.1177/1367549411432024.

PDF: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/254088469_Ending_Tolerance_as_a_Solution_to_Incompatibility_The_Danish_%27Crisis_of_Multiculturalism%27.

Hercowitz-Amir, Adi, and Rebeca Raijman. ‘Restrictive Borders and Rights: Attitudes of the Danish Public to Asylum Seekers’. (2019)

Hercowitz-Amir, Adi, and Rebeca Raijman. ‘Restrictive Borders and Rights: Attitudes of the Danish Public to Asylum Seekers’. Ethnic and Racial Studies, May 2019, pp. 1–20.

Social mechanisms explaining Danes’ attitudes to asylum seekers were analysed on two main dimensions: border control and rights allocation, in a national survey of 500 adult respondents in September 2013. Data show that the respondents supported exclusionary practices against asylum seekers much more than exclusion from rights. Three main mechanisms were simultaneously at play in both exclusionary dimensions: perceptions of threat, social distance (prejudice), and perceiving asylum seekers as not “genuine refugees”. Identifying asylum seekers’ as a security and socio-economic threat, as persons not in “real” fear of persecution, together with prejudicial attitudes to them had a boosting effect on excluding asylum seekers from the Danish collective in terms of entry and rights. Findings are discussed in light of existing theories on exclusionary attitudes to asylum seekers.

doi:10.1080/01419870.2019.1606435.

https://doi.org/10.1080/01419870.2019.1606435.

Hercowitz-Amir, A., R. Raijman, and E. Davidov. ‘Host or Hostile? Attitudes towards Asylum Seekers in Israel and in Denmark’. (2017) [PDF]

Hercowitz-Amir, A., R. Raijman, and E. Davidov. ‘Host or Hostile? Attitudes towards Asylum Seekers in Israel and in Denmark’. International Journal of Comparative Sociology, vol. 58, no. 5, 2017, pp. 416–439.

In this study, we focus on attitudes towards asylum seekers in two countries: Denmark and Israel. Both serve as interesting cases through which to study public sentiment of host populations for people seeking refuge. We examine the role of three core dimensions that have been relatively overlooked in previous studies: social contact with asylum seekers, the role of support for humanitarian policies and perceptions of legitimacy of the asylum seekers’ claims. We also gauge the way perceptions of threat mediate the effect of these core dimensions on individuals’ willingness to share their national benefits with those looking for refugee status in the two countries. For the analysis, we use multiple group structural equation modelling. On the descriptive level, findings suggest that respondents are considerably more hostile in Israel than in Denmark, although the mechanisms leading to the formation of exclusionary attitudes are partly similar. We conclude with some limitations of the study and closing remarks about similarities and differences across the two countries.

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0020715217722039

PDF: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/0020715217722039

Fietkau, Sebastian, and Kasper M. Hansen. ‘How Perceptions of Immigrants Trigger Feelings of Economic and Cultural Threats in Two Welfare States, How Perceptions of Immigrants Trigger Feelings of Economic and Cultural Threats in Two Welfare States’. European Union Politics, vol. 19, no. 1, Mar. 2018, pp. 119–139.

Better understanding of attitudes toward immigration is crucial to avoid misperception of immigration in the public debate. Through two identical online survey experiments applying morphed faces of non-Western immigrants and textual vignettes, the authors manipulate complexion, education, family background, and gender in Denmark and Germany. For women, an additional split in which half of the women wore a headscarf is performed. In both countries, highly skilled immigrants are preferred to low-skilled immigrants. Danes are more skeptical toward non-Western immigration than Germans. Essentially, less educated Danes are very critical of accepting non-Western immigrants in their country. It is suggested that this difference is driven by a large welfare state in Denmark compared to Germany, suggesting a stronger fear in welfare societies that immigrants will exploit welfare benefits., Better understanding of attitudes toward immigration is crucial to avoid misperception of immigration in the public debate. Through two identical online survey experiments applying morphed faces of non-Western immigrants and textual vignettes, the authors manipulate complexion, education, family background, and gender in Denmark and Germany. For women, an additional split in which half of the women wore a headscarf is performed. In both countries, highly skilled immigrants are preferred to low-skilled immigrants. Danes are more skeptical toward non-Western immigration than Germans. Essentially, less educated Danes are very critical of accepting non-Western immigrants in their country. It is suggested that this difference is driven by a large welfare state in Denmark compared to Germany, suggesting a stronger fear in welfare societies that immigrants will exploit welfare benefits.

doi:10.1177/1465116517734064.

PDF: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/1465116517734064.

Dinesen, Peter Thisted, Robert Klemmensen, and Asbjørn Sonne Nørgaard. ‘Attitudes Toward Immigration: The Role of Personal Predispositions: Personality and Immigration Attitudes’. (2016)

Dinesen, Peter Thisted, Robert Klemmensen, and Asbjørn Sonne Nørgaard. ‘Attitudes Toward Immigration: The Role of Personal Predispositions: Personality and Immigration Attitudes’. Political Psychology, vol. 37, no. 1, Feb. 2016, pp. 55–72.

In this paper we examine how individual predispositions in terms of the Big Five personality traits affect attitudes toward immigration. This allows us go beyond the assumption that individuals react to situational factors in a uniform way, which underlies established theories of attitudes toward immigration focusing mainly on economic and cultural threat. Adding personality traits to the explanation of attitudes toward immigration allows us to develop a more full understanding of attitude formation beyond situational factors as well as more insight into how individuals react differently based on their personality when confronted with the same situational triggers. We examined the question of how personality influence attitudes toward immigration using a Danish survey experiment and show that personality traits display direct as well as conditional effects on opposition towards immigration. As expected, we find that that Openness and Agreeableness have strong effects on attitudes toward immigration; individuals scoring high on these two traits are significantly more willing to admit immigrants compared to individuals scoring lower on the traits. We also find evidence that individuals react differently to economic threat depending on their score on the trait Conscientiousness; individuals scoring high on Conscientiousness have a greater tendency to oppose low-skilled immigration than individual scoring lower on this trait. This result implies that the influence of situational factors may critically depend on personality traits. More generally, the results suggest that the literature on political attitude formation may benefit from including more differentiated models of man.

doi:10.1111/pops.12220

http://doi.wiley.com/10.1111/pops.12220.

Brändle, Verena K., Olga Eisele, Hans-Jörg Trenz. ‘Contesting European Solidarity During the “Refugee Crisis”: A Comparative Investigation of Media Claims in Denmark, Germany, Greece and Italy’. (2019) [PDF]

Brändle, Verena K., Olga Eisele, et al. ‘Contesting European Solidarity During the “Refugee Crisis”: A Comparative Investigation of Media Claims in Denmark, Germany, Greece and Italy’. Mass Communication and Society, vol. 22, no. 6, Nov. 2019, pp. 708–732.

The migration crisis of 2015 and 2016 was a litmus test for EU solidarity, when increasing numbers of newly arriving refugees fueled its public contestation. Our overall assumption is that the “refugee crisis” contributed to a solidarity gap between inclusive liberal-cosmopolitan and exclusive communitarian attitudes in the EU. We investigate this assumption by contrasting positions regarding solidarity with refugees among state and societal actors. We base our analysis on a fresh dataset of solidarity claims in the largest print newspapers in Denmark, Germany, Greece and Italy for the period of August 2015 – April 2016 coded in the TransSOL project. These four countries were affected differently by the “crisis” and differently attractive for refugees and asylum-seekers as arrival, destination or transit countries. Results suggest a solidarity gap between state actors and societal actors and a higher degree of solidarity contestation in countries with state actors strongly promoting exclusive notions of solidarity. Results speak to the discussion about media representations of migration as well as the contestation of solidarity as a fundamental value.

doi:10.1080/15205436.2019.1674877.

PDF: https://transsol.eu/files/2020/04/Braendle-et-al-2019-Contesting-European-Solidarity_MCAS.pdf?file=2020/04/Braendle-et-al-2019-Contesting-European-Solidarity_MCAS.pdf

Bohman, Andrea. ‘Who’s Welcome and Who’s Not? Opposition towards Immigration in the Nordic Countries, 2002–2014’. (2018)

Bohman, Andrea. ‘Who’s Welcome and Who’s Not? Opposition towards Immigration in the Nordic Countries, 2002–2014’. Scandinavian Political Studies, vol. 41, no. 3, Sept. 2018, pp. 283–306.

This article demonstrates the analytical advantages of studying not only the degree to which people oppose immigration in a country, but also the character of their opposition. Using Latent Class Analysis and data from the European Social Survey, Nordic patterns and trends are examined with the aim of identifying different kinds of immigration attitudes and how they develop in different national contexts. The Nordic countries are interesting to compare as, while they are similar in many respects, they also diverge significantly from each other in areas theoretically considered important to the formation of attitudes towards immigration. Studying the character of immigration opposition reveals five different types of immigration attitudes. These are differently distributed between the Nordic countries as well as over time, and include nativist opposition (opposition only towards immigrants of ethnic/racial groups other than that of the majority population) and economic opposition (opposition that entails a separation between immigrants considered to be an economic resource and an economic burden). By demonstrating how immigration opposition in the Nordic countries varies not only in degree but also in character, the article contributes to a deeper understanding of the nature of immigration opposition as well as of how different attitudinal profiles evolve under different contextual circumstances.

doi:10.1111/1467-9477.12120.

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/1467-9477.12120

Albrekt Larsen, Christian. ‘Fordomme over for etniske minoriteter i Danmark, Sverige, Storbritannien og USA’. (2012) [PDF]

Albrekt Larsen, Christian. ‘Fordomme over for etniske minoriteter i Danmark, Sverige, Storbritannien og USA’. Politica, vol. 44, no. 4, Jan. 2012, pp. 488–504.

Artiklen sammenligninger, hvorledes majoritetsbefolkningen i Danmark, Sverige, Storbritannien og USA opfatter etniske minoriteter. I USA har en lang forsk- ningstradition afdækket, hvorledes hvide amerikanere har fordomme over for afroamerikanere. Artiklen beskriver, hvorvidt danskerne, svenskerne og briterne har udviklet de samme slags fordomme om ikke-vestlige indvandrere. Det gøres ved hjælp af et unikt datamateriale, hvor amerikanske spørgsmål fra General Social Survey er blevet repliceret i de tre lande. Sammenligningen viser, at danskernes, svenskernes og briternes opfattelse af ikke-vestlige indvandrere ikke er mere positiv end amerikanernes opfattelse af afroamerikanerne. Det leder til en konklusion om, at hverken politiske forsøg på at afpolitisere det etniske spørgsmål eller tilstedeværelsen af samhørighedsskabende universelle velfærdsstater har formået at afværge en negativ opfattelse af socialt udsatte etniske minoriteter.

PDF: https://tidsskrift.dk/politica/article/view/69959

doi:10.7146/politica.v44i4.69959.