ABSTRACT
This chapter examines how the prevalence of frequent loneliness varies across some important classifications of social groups (immigration, race and ethnicity, religion, and urbanization), and how such variation depends on the national context. Nine countries that receive immigrants in Europe are included, in which immigrants are found more likely to feel frequently lonely than the natives, although there is a variation of the strength of the effect of immigration on loneliness across these countries. Except for Sweden, a welcoming attitude towards immigrants in a hosting country will make its immigrants less likely to feel frequently lonely. Except for Belgium and Estonia, the percentage of frequent loneliness among the ethnic minority group is always higher than that among ethnic majority group, but the relationship is statistically significant only for the following countries: Norway, The Netherlands, Germany, Switzerland, and Hungary. The relationship between religion and loneliness is complicated and varies considerably across different national contexts in Europe; for followers of the same religion, the prevalence of frequent loneliness varies considerably from country to country; finally, the more religious, the higher the risk to frequent loneliness. Overall, the type of living area in terms of how urban or rural it is does not seem to make much difference to the prevalence of frequent loneliness; rather, which country the respondents live appears to be much more important.
