Temporal Dynamics and Drivers of Europeans' Support for Granting Equal Rights to Legal Immigrants

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

Abstract

Using cross-sectional data from the 2003 and 2013 ISSP modules, we examine change in public support for granting equal rights to legal immigrants and the drivers of these attitudes in 17 European countries that have participated in both waves. Drawing on the literatures on citizenship regimes and immigrant exclusionism, as well as on our earlier work (Ceobanu and Escandell 2011), we assess the temporal change in the roles played by a series of personal beliefs and macro-level indicators on these attitudes. At the individual-level, we investigate the independent effects exerted by the perceived importance of the three defining principles for national solidarity and inclusion in the national and political community: ancestry (jus sanguinis), birthplace (jus soli) and residency (jus domicile). The results from the multilevel regression models reveal that the rather robust relationships between placing greater importance on the jus sanguinis and jus soli criteria and lesser support for granting same rights as citizens has been retained over the years. In addition, we find that support for rights extension to legal immigrants is not sensitive to the duration of required residency for naturalization for the year 2003, but that it is augmented by longer periods of required residency in the 2013 model. Net of controls at the individual and contextual level, our findings indicate an inverse effect of the relative magnitude of the redistributive policies, but that this disappears over time, suggesting that a possible “denationalization” of the welfare solidarity practices may have occurred. The results are discussed in light of the literatures informing this study.

Authors

• Alin Mihai Ceobanu, University of Florida

• Xavier Escandell, Grinnell College