Anti-Immigrant Attitudes, Social Integration, and Crime Motivated by Bias: A Cross-National Multilevel Analysis

• In Event: Hate Groups and Other Macro-Level Influences on Hate Crimes

Abstract

In light of massive influx of immigration to Europe from the Middle East and North Africa, scholars, politicians, and the public have begun to engage in considerable debate about the issue of crime motivated by bias. A fairly large body of work has examined the effects of a growing minority population and economic conditions on the public perception of immigrants in European nations, yet this line of research has yet to fully account for the impact of anti-immigrant sentiment on crime motivated by bias. The present study addresses this point by examining the impact of public attitudes towards immigrants on levels of racially motivated crime across different regions in seven European countries between 1997 and 2013. We estimate multilevel panel rate models where time is nested within subnational units, which avoids direct comparison of crime motivated by bias across different nations. The results reveal that racially motivated crime rates are higher in regions with higher levels of anti-immigrant sentiment, higher levels of ethnic discrimination, and less social integration. Consistent with the power-differential hypothesis, racially motivated crime rates were shown to be negatively associated with the relative size of the foreign-born population.

Authors

• Andreas Hövermann, University of Bielefeld

• Sylwia Janina Piatkowska, Old Dominion University