ABSTRACT
SUZANNE HALL is a Researcher at LSE Cities in the Department of Sociology at the London School of Economics and Social Science. ADDRESS: LSE Cities, Houghton Street, London WC2A 2AE, UK. Email: s.m.hall@lse.ac.uk
Introduction
In recent decades, migration flows have resulted in an increased level of ethnic and cultural diversity in most societies of Western Europe (Castles and Miller 2003). According to some of the literature, this rise of ethnic diversity has been associated with a rise of anti-immigrant sentiments in at least a number of European countries (Semyonov, Raijman, and Gorofzeisky 2008). A common assumption in the research on this topic is that anti-immigrant attitudes, directly or indirectly, should be seen as a reaction to rising levels of ethnic diversity (Quillian 1995; Scheepers, Gijsberts and Coenders 2002; Schneider 2008; Semyonov, Raijman and Gorofzeisky 2008). The existing body of empirical research, however, does not always support this assumption (Sides and Citrin 2007; Strabac and Listhaug 2008). A prevailing theme in the literature is that anti-immigrant attitudes to a large extent can be understood as a reaction to a real or perceived group threat (LeVine and Campbell 1972; Fossett and Kiecolt 1989; Quillian 1995). As natives assume there is a potential conflict with immigrant groups about the allocation of scarce resources like jobs, housing or cultural hegemony, the most likely outcome could be that they perceive the new groups to be competitors on these markets (McLaren and Johnson 2007). Whether the circumstances favouring inter-group competition and potential threat need to be real
Ethnic and Racial Studies, 2015 Vol. 38, No. 1, 38-56, https://dx.doi.org/10.1080/01419870.2013.800572
(Bobo 1983; Quillian 1995; Putnam 2007; Sniderman and Hagendoorn 2007; Strabac 2011) or can be imagined is still a matter of debate. Regardless of the threat being real or imaginary, group threat theories where competition for scarce resources contributes to a conflict between minorities and majorities predict a positive correlation between the concentration of minorities and anti-immigrant sentiments among the native population. The goal of the present study is to contribute to a better understanding of the
relation between ethnic diversity, perceived threat and anti-immigrant sentiments, by building on recent community-level data from Belgium. Anti-immigrant sentiments may arise as the result of a combination or an interaction between contextual-and individual-level explanatory characteristics (Bobo and Fox 2003; Pettigrew and Tropp 2006; Schlueter and Scheepers 2010). Controlling for relevant individual background characteristics, our goal is to determine whether the presence of immigrant populations is associated with the development of anti-immigrant sentiments. We aim to contribute to the literature in three distinct ways. First, while previous
studies tend to focus on large geographical units, in this study we focus on small local communities, where real contact between different ethnic groups is still possible. Second, the small scale of the communities under investigation renders it possible to include intergroup contact as a variable in the analysis. We do so because the assumption is that prejudice is being reduced as a result of positive interpersonal contacts between groups and it is difficult to test this assumption at the country level. Third, the survey data we are using also include measurements of perceived ethnic diversity. By comparing this assessment with official population figures, we can ascertain whether actual diversity or the perceived level of diversity contributes most strongly to the development of anti-immigrant sentiments. Previous research has shown that ethnic majority residents do not always have a reliable perception about the presence of ethnic minorities, and therefore it is a straightforward assumption that both measurements could diverge and have different effects (Strabac 2011). Majority group members systematically overestimate the proportion of immigrants in society (Herda 2010). The survey we use was conducted in the northern Flemish region of Belgium, a
country with fairly average levels of ethnic diversity and anti-immigrant sentiments for Western Europe (Semyonov, Raijman and Gorofzeisky 2006). In this article, we first briefly review the literature on social and spatial determinants of anti-immigrant sentiments, before presenting the data and methods. Following the results section, we reflect on whether these findings could be generalized towards other contexts.
