ABSTRACT
Since the 1990s, Europe has experienced increasing immigration ows (Hooghe, Trappers, Meuleman, & Reeskens, 2008), and simultaneous electoral successes of anti-immigration parties (Anderson, 1996; Lubbers, 2001). ese tendencies have revived scientic attention to the perceptions of ethnic threat and to anti-immigration attitudes. Because of the increasing availability of European cross-national survey data, scholars have started to approach these topics from a comparative point of view. Following the lead set by Quillian (1995), various recent studies have investigated whether or not international variations in the prevalence of negative attitudes toward out-groups are dependent on contextual factors, such as economic conditions and immigrant group size (studies concerning the national level: Coenders, 2001; Meuleman, Davidov, & Billiet, 2009; Scheepers, Gijsberts, & Coenders, 2002; Schneider, 2008; Semyonov, Raijman, & Gorodzeisky, 2006, 2008; Sides & Citrin, 2007; Strabac & Listhaug, 2008; studies concerning the regional or local level: Schlueter & Wagner, 2008; Semyonov, Raijman, Yom Tov, & Schmidt, 2004; Wagner, Christ, Pettigrew, Stellmacher, & Wolf, 2006).
