Our Own and the Others: What Happens to Perceived Immigrant Threat when Value Priorities Collide?

• In Event: 2145 - Attitudes Towards Immigrants and the Construction of Citizenship

Abstract

With immigration controversies increasingly found at the forefront of the European public arena, understanding the social and cultural forces driving negative perceptions of immigrants becomes a pressing task of academic scholarship. Situated within the broader theoretical framework of group-conflict theories, human values theory (Schwartz 1994) and social identity theory (Tajfel and Turner 1979) encourage different interpretations of how our interest to the welfare of the people closest to us (benevolence) and the broader human community (universalism) can inform attitudes towards immigrants. Human values theory argues for a unidirectional, negative effect of benevolence and universalism on negative perceptions of immigrants (Davidov et al. 2008; Vecchione et al. 2012), while social identity theory suggests that, unlike universalism, benevolence would increase such perceptions. The present study seeks to examine how self-transcending human values (a.k.a. benevolence and universalism) affect perceptions of immigrant threat and whether the locus of our value priority matters. Using nationally pooled data from the European Social Survey (ESS) for 15 European countries, the results provide robust evidence that benevolence and universalism often affect perceived immigrant threat in opposite directions. The group we place our loyalty matters. At the same time, national context matters too suggesting that grand scheme interpretations of this phenomenon fall short. Theoretical implications and future directions are further discussed.

Author

• Nikolitsa Grigoropoulou, University of Bremen