How people perceive immigrants' role in their country's life: a comparative study of Estonia and Russia (original) (raw)

What Explains People's Attitudes Towards Immigrants? A Comparative Study of Estonia and Russia

SSRN Electronic Journal, 2000

The paper focuses on a comparative analysis of people's attitudes towards immigrants' role in several aspects of countries' life depending on individual's socio-demographic and economic characteristics in Estonia and Russia. The empirical part of the paper relies on the European Social Survey (ESS) fifth round database. The results of the study show that Estonian peoples' attitudes towards immigrants are, on average, better in all aspects of the country's lifeeconomy, culture and the country as a living place, compared to Russia. Both economic and non-economic factors explain the observed variation of individual's opinions about the role of immigrants in countries' life. Ethnic minorities, religious people and people with higher income are more tolerant to immigrants in both countries. Socio-demographic characteristics such as age, gender and education are valid determinants of people's attitudes towards immigrants only in Estonia. Better educated people have more positive attitudes towards immigrants compared to less educated people in the case of Estonia but not Russia. The results of the analysis therefore highlight the necessity to take different factors into account for the design of migration and integration policies in the countries with ethnically diverse population.

Determinants of People’s Attitudes Towards Immigrants in Europe

SSRN Electronic Journal, 2000

The paper is aiming to clarify the possible determinants of peoples' attitudes towards immigrants depending on their personal characteristics as well as attitudes towards households' socio-economic stability and a country's institutions relying on the data of the European Social Survey fourth round database. The study is intending to provide empirical evidence-based grounds for the development of policy measures to integrate ethnically diverse societies, taking into account the composition of the country's population as well as other country's peculiarities. The results of the empirical analysis are consistent with several theories explaining individual and collective determinants of people's attitudes towards immigrants. Ethnic minorities, urban people, people with higher education and higher income, as well as people who have work experience abroad are, as a rule, more tolerant towards immigrants in Europe. Furthermore, people whose attitudes to socio-economic risks are lower and who evaluate the political and legal systems of a country and its police higher (e.g. political trust) are more tolerant towards immigrants. Respondents' labour market status of (employed, unemployed) does not have a statistically significant relationship with their attitudes towards immigrants. In addition to the respondent's personal characteristics and their attitudes, the collective determinants depending on country specific conditions measured by country dummies are valid in explaining people's attitudes towards immigration.

The European residents' attitude towards immigrants: A comparative analysis based on the ESS data

2012

What is the attitude of the inhabitants of European countries to their coexistence with immigrants? The present study attempts to answer this question using the data of the fifth wave of the European Social Survey. All the countries in the sample were divided into three groups: the countries which joined the EU before 2004, those which joined the EU after 2004, and non EU countries. It has been shown that the determinants of the attitude of these three groups of people to the issue raised above are often significantly different.

Does Origin Matter? Ethnic Group Position and Attitudes Toward Immigrants: The Case of Russia

Nationalities Papers, 2022

This article analyzes the relationship between the relative position of an ethnic group, as measured by its majority/minority status at a subnational level, and attitudes of its members toward immigrants of different origins. Based on the Russian case, it addresses the question whether the effects of in-group majority status within a region on attitudes toward the general category of immigrants hold regardless of out-group origin and, if not, what may drive this variation. Using data from the Russia Longitudinal Monitoring Survey of the Higher School of Economics and Bayesian hierarchical structural equation modeling, the study demonstrates that the relative position of an ethnic in-group is of varying importance as a predictor of attitudes toward migrant groups of European versus non-European origin in Russia. A group's majority status within a region proved to play a role in predicting attitudes toward migrants originating from the "south" (encompassing North and South Caucasus; Central Asia; and China, Vietnam, and Korea) but not toward migrants coming from the "west" (Ukraine and Moldova). We draw on arguments related to the source and the level of threat induced by the out-groups, ethnic hierarchies, and group cues to explain this pattern of results.

Attitudes toward immigrants in European societies

International Journal of Comparative Sociology

Since the middle of the 20th century, immigrants, ex-colonials, labor migrants, asylum seekers, and refugees arrived in European societies in ever-increasing numbers, and the migration flows continue until today. Some even suggest that the flows, especially of refugees from the war zones in the Middle East and Africa, actually intensified dramatically in recent years. Consequently, the social composition and ethnic fabric of many European traditional nation states have changed. Alongside these changes, we find a marked increase in the number of societal actors who address the questions about the terms of inclusion or exclusion of immigrants and the types of immigrants in society. That is, with more immigrants making Europe their permanent home, Europeans citizens and politicians began raising questions about the social, political, economic, and legal rights of the immigrants and especially about the place of immigrants in European societies. They also raise questions about the social, cultural, and economic impact that immigrants exert on host societies. Indeed, the status of immigrants in European societies is now one of the major issues of the public debate in contemporary Europe. The public and political debate regarding immigrants' place in society progressed in recent years from a labor market problem to a social, cultural, and political problem with greater emphasis on the issue of national identity. In this regard, it is important to note that the lion's share of the immigrants in Europe arrived as an initial response to the economic needs of the European countries in the middle of the previous century. Many European countries were (and some still are) in dire need of labor, especially cheap labor, due to a steady decline in the population and lack of native workforce (resulting from declining fertility and aging population). That is, immigrants, labor migrants, and 'guest workers' were invited and recruited to perform jobs that the local populations were unwilling or unable to take (mostly menial, low-skilled low-paying jobs in declining profit industries). Importation of immigrants appeared to be a simple, temporary solution to a domestic problem and market demand in Western European countries. The demand for workforce in Western Europe was met by the readily available supply of workers in poor countries outside Europe (and at times by the readily available supply of workers from poor countries in Eastern or Southern Europe). In other words, immigrants were attracted to Europe (push factors) from countries ravaged by high unemployment, poverty, and political instability and, at times, ravaged by war, to societies (pull factors) characterized by prosperous markets, high salaries, and political stability; to countries that offer a better quality of life and higher standard of living for themselves 732183C OS0010.

Turkey: A Puzzling Case to Understand Public Attitudes toward Immigrants

One of the keys to understand Turkish society is to focus on different types of migration Turkish Republic has been through since its establishment. Turkey, however, had been mostly known as a sender country rather than a receiving one. Thus even prior to the Syrian refugees which had reached 1.05 million i , Turkey has become a receiving country, and therefore the number of immigrants and the number of studies on immigrants are in increase ii . These studies in general focus on different groups of immigrants and their experiences and there is almost no study which focuses specificly on the public attitude toward immigrants in Turkey. This commentary, therefore, has the aim of presenting Turkey, with its claim of 'traditional hospitality', as a puzzling case with low immigration and simultaneous high levels of anti-immigration attitudes.

Attitudes towards immigrants and the integration of ethnically diverse societies

The paper focuses on exploring people’s attitudes towards immigration in 26 European countries based on the European Social Survey fourth round database. Outcomes of the empirical analysis show that the attitudes of European people towards immigrants vary depending on 1) the personal characteristics of the respondents; 2) the country’s characteristics; and 3) the attitudes of people towards country institutions and socio-economic security. The studies results provide empirical evidence-based grounds for the development of policy measures to integrate ethnically diverse societies, taking into account the composition of the country's population and their attitudes to institutions and socio-economic security.

A Comparative Analysis of Attitudes Toward Immigrants

The current study examined attitudes toward immigrants in four countries including the United States, China, South Africa, and Turkey, differing from each other by their economic development levels and past immigration experiences. Although considerable attention has been paid to public attitudes toward immigrants, extant research have remained limited to economic and cultural factors as potential determinants of public attitudes, and they have failed to widen the scope of the issue. Thus, they have ignored the role of countries' past immigration practices and effective immigration policies in shaping natives' perceptions of immigrants. The current study has added some unique and valuable findings to the literature on attitudes toward immigrants by revealing the distinctive impacts of countries' past immigration experiences and their immigration policies on natives' perceptions of immigrants. By using data drawn from the 2015 Global @dvisor Survey, the current study also provided up-to-date research outcomes on the topic.