Building walls or opening borders? Global immigration policy attitudes across economic,cultural and human security contexts

Using data from the World Values Survey for 51 countries, we conduct a multi-level analysis with mixed effects multinomial logistic regression models to explore the effects of economic context, cultural context, and national security events on immigration policy attitudes. Analyses of attitudes towards immigration to date have been limited in key respects: the scope has been mostly restricted to Western Europe and the Americas; limited attention has been paid to institutional and sociopolitical features of the macro-context; and national security events have been rarely taken into account. We propose a theoretical framework incorporating three overarching contextual domains. We find support for two of the three contextual domains. Contrary to our expectation, macro-level economic context shows no association immigration policy attitudes, and socio-cultural context evinces unexpected patterns. However, in the national security domain, recent terrorist events demonstrate a consistent association with anti-immigration policy attitudes.     

Competitive threat and temporal change in anti-immigrant sentiment: Insights from a hierarchical age-period-cohort model

The study focuses on over-time change in anti-immigrant attitudes across European societies and on the role played by cohorts in producing the change in attitudes. We assembled data from four waves of the European Social Surveys for 14 countries between 2002 and 2014. The data analysis is conducted within the framework of a hierarchical age-period-cohort model (HAPC) to estimate the dynamic relations between anti-immigrant sentiment and country's social and economic conditions, while taking into consideration variations across individuals and birth-cohorts. The analysis lends support to expectations derived from the ‘competitive threat’ theoretical model. The findings show that a higher share of non-European ethnic minorities in the country's population is associated with a higher level of ant-immigrant attitudes. Anti-immigrant sentiment was found to be more pronounced in the ‘old immigration countries’ than in the ‘new immigration countries.’ The impact of economic conditions on anti-immigrant sentiment becomes evident through the effect of cohort in the ‘new immigration countries’: cohorts that entered the labor market when the unemployment rate was high are likely to hold more negative attitudes toward immigrants.     

Urban Europeans' viewpoints on immigrants in the city: Re-considering how group threat operates across national and urban contexts

Research analyzing attitudes toward immigrants in Europe studies how the immigrant population size in a country conditions prejudicial attitudes against immigrants. While research on immigrant group size in countries is important, research considering the size of immigrant groups at other geographic scales, such as cities, is relatively unexplored. Using data on nearly 30,000 residents of 63 European cities from the Flash Eurobarometer 366 survey, we ask: how does the immigrant population size in a country and a city relate to how Europeans consider immigrants in their city? Findings show support for a group threat framework in that greater immigrant group size is linked to more anti-immigrant views, but this finding holds only for cities, not for countries. Our discussion centers on the ways in which cities may be linked to this threat, and how a multi-scalar conception of group threat can uncover varying relationships for immigration attitudes.     

Examining macroeconomic determinants of trust in parliament: A dynamic multilevel framework

The extensive literature on political trust has long suggested a link between macroeconomic conditions and public trust in political institutions. However, empirical evidence regarding this relationship remains ambiguous. Conflicting results appear to be related to differences in research design: while cross-sectional studies tend not to find evidence of a link between macroeconomic variables and trust in political institutions, most longitudinal studies do. In this paper, using recent advances in multilevel methodology, we examine both cross-sectional and longitudinal effects of macroeconomic variables on trust in national parliament within a single dynamic multilevel framework. By analyzing all seven waves of the European Social Survey (2002–2014), we demonstrate that declining macroeconomic performance has a negative within-country effect on trust in national parliament. At the same time, we find limited evidence in support of this association at the between-country level. This discrepancy suggests the presence of confounding factors that are unaccounted for in cross-sectional designs. We therefore argue for the importance of examining within-country effects as they provide a more stringent test of causality.     

One flag,two rallies: Mechanisms of public opinion in Israel during the 2014 Gaza war

In Israel, public reaction to the 2014 Gaza war included massive support for the military operation and a sharp increase in the popularity of Prime Minister Netanyahu. To understand what caused these “rally-round-the-flag” (RRTF) effects, panel data were collected from a representative sample of the Jewish majority in Israel during and after the war. The article integrate empirical and theoretical arguments from public opinion studies, and from social and political psychology, to contextualize and guide the analysis. The results reveal that perceived threat to collective security produced two simultaneous rally outcomes through distinct processes: First, increased identification with the ethno-national Jewish group led to a rally behind Israel's prime minister. Second, anger toward Hamas and sentiment of national superiority, which was activated by increased ethno-national identification, produced a rally behind the military operation. In addition to explaining its specific empirical case, this study makes three broader contributions. First, it extends the investigation of the RRTF phenomenon in wartime beyond the popularity of the head of the state (the focus of most previous studies) by also examining levels of support for the use of military power. Second, it reveals some of the mechanisms through which distinct elements of popular nationalism mediate the relationship between war events and heterogeneous rally effects. Third, this study shows that the mechanisms that have been detected in studies of individual attitudes and behavior in small groups under conditions of perceived threat or competition can help explain the behavior of these individuals as members of larger, imagined national communities during war.     

发展中大国的金融发展与经济增长——基于规模效应的分析

近年来,发展中大国在其宏观经济诸多方面均表现出强劲的上升趋势。该发展浪潮往往被归因于规模效应——凭借规模经济、范围经济和聚集经济效应等导致了生产率的提高。通过将金融发展的特征嵌入到已有的增长和规模效应理论中,可以检验发展中大国金融发展和经济增长之间的关系,分析其产出、投资、贸易以及金融之间的相互关联效应,从而把握发展中大国的总体发展趋势。在金融危机发生时,经济刺激政策更应该倾向于贸易和投资领域,而不是金融领域,也就是说,在发展中大国,金融发展对经济的刺激作用非常明显地低于贸易和投资两个最重要的实体经济领域。     

The immigration–crime relationship: Evidence across US metropolitan areas

Despite popular commentary claiming a link between immigration and crime, empirical research exploring this relationship is sparse. Especially missing from the literature on immigration and crime is a consideration of how immigration affects rates of crime at the macro-level. Although individual-level studies of immigrant criminality and victimization tend to demonstrate that immigrants typically engage in less crime than their native-born counterparts, the effect of immigration on aggregate criminal offending is less clear. In this research, we attempt to address this weakness in the literature by examining the effects of aspects of immigration on crime rates in metropolitan areas. We combine 2000 US Census data and 2000 Uniform Crime Report data to explore how the foreign-born population influences criminal offending across a sample of metropolitan areas. After controlling for a host of demographic and economic characteristics, we find that immigration does not increase crime rates, and some aspects of immigration lessen crime in metropolitan areas.     

The motherhood wage penalty: A meta-analysis

Mothers tend to receive lower wages than comparable childless women. This ‘motherhood wage gap’ has been reported in numerous studies. We summarize the existing empirical evidence on this topic using meta-analysis and test for several mechanisms which can be responsible for the persistence of the wage gap. Based on 208 wage effects of having exactly one child and 245 wage effects of the total number of children, we find an average motherhood wage gap of around 3.6–3.8%. While the gaps associated with the total number of children are mostly explained by the loss of mothers' human capital during child-related career breaks, the gaps associated with one child are predominantly driven by mothers' choice of jobs and occupations that pay less. The residual gap is smallest in Nordic countries, where public policies actively support gender equality and reconciliation of work and family, as well as Belgium and France, and largest in the post-socialist countries of Central and Eastern Europe and Anglo-Saxon countries.     

Assessing the effect of social desirability on nativism attitude responses

Attempts to measure and analyze public opinion attitudes toward racial/ethnic minorities often confront the “social desirability” problem: those who have prejudiced attitudes are rarely willing to admit them to surveyors. Instead, they may be more likely to give a socially acceptable answer rather an accurate reflection of their views. Previous research has clearly established that this effect presents a challenge for accurately measuring self-reported racial and policy attitudes that primarily affect African–Americans. It is less clear, however, how it might affect self-reported responses to attitudes dealing with Latinos and immigration. This study thus seeks to analyze the extent to which social desirability may affect survey measures of perceived levels of cultural threat (nativism). Results from two separate analyses using the Crowne–Marlowe “social desirability scale” and a survey “list experiment” demonstrate that social desirability is indeed a concern for accurately measuring nativism in the American public, but that it exerts an opposite effect from what has previously been observed: nativist attitudes tend to be over-reported in opinion surveys.     

Immigration and violence: The offsetting effects of immigrant concentration on Latino violence

Despite longstanding interest in the effects of immigration on American society, there are few studies that examine the relationship between immigration and crime. Drawing from social disorganization theory and community resource/social capital perspectives, this study examines the effects of Latino immigration on Latino violence. Data on violence (i.e., homicide, robbery, and Violent Index) and the structural conditions of Latino populations are drawn from the California Arrest Data (CAL), New York State Arrest Data (NYSAD), and U.S. Census data for approximately 400 census places during the 1999–2001 period. Findings suggest that immigrant concentration has no direct effect on Latino homicide or Violent Index rates but may reduce Latino robbery. Immigration also appears to have multiple, offsetting indirect effects on Latino violence that work through social disorganization and community resource measures. These results suggest that (1) immigrant concentration does not contribute to Latino violence and may even reduce some forms of violence, (2) immigration simultaneously stabilizes and destabilizes structural conditions in Latino populations, and (3) it is useful to examine both the direct and indirect effects of immigration on crime.     

Income inequality,distributive fairness and political trust in Latin America

In the wake of rising levels of income inequality during the past two decades, widespread concerns emerged about the social and political consequences of the widening gap between the poor and the rich that can be observed in many established democracies. Several empirical studies substantiate the link between macro-level income inequality and political attitudes and behavior, pointing at its broad and negative implications for political equality. Accordingly, these implications are expected to be accentuated in contexts of high inequality, as is the case in Latin America. Despite these general concerns about the consequences of income inequality, few studies have accounted for the importance of individual perceptions of distributive fairness in regard to trust in political institutions. Even less is known about the extent to which distributive fairness perceptions co-vary with objective indicators of inequality. Moreover, the research in this area has traditionally focused on OECD countries, which have lower indexes of inequality than the rest of the world. This study aims at filling this gap by focusing on the relevance of distributive fairness perceptions and macro-level inequality for political trust and on how these two levels interact in Latin American countries. The analyses are based on the Latinobarometer survey 2011, which consists of 18 countries. Multilevel estimations suggest that both dimensions of inequality are negatively associated with political trust but that higher levels of macro-level inequality attenuate rather than increase the strength of the negative association between distributive fairness perceptions and political trust.     

Response effects to attitudinal questions about domestic violence against women: A comparative perspective

According to the national Demographic and Health Surveys (DHS), between 10% and 90% of women in poorer countries agree that domestic violence against women is justified. Such wide variation in women’s responses raises concerns about the comparability of the underlying attitudinal question, and the validity of comparative research that assumes comparability. Using 67 DHS conducted in 48 countries between 1995 and 2007, we explored whether cross-national variation in women’s affirmative responses to this question were explained by cross-national variation in survey design, socioeconomic conditions, or both. Variation in survey design had considerable predictive power and accounted for a non-trivial amount of the variance in women’s affirmative responses. Including the survey-design variables also modestly altered associations of the outcome with structural variables of interest in comparative studies. These findings offer insights about future analyses and data collections on women’s attitudes about domestic violence against women.     

Universalism,conservation and attitudes toward minority groups

Findings from previous studies corroborate the hypothesis that universalism and conservation values are associated with negative attitudes toward immigration. In the current study we examine whether universalism and conservation values also play a critical role in the explanation of attitudes toward other minority groups. Drawing on previous research on group-focused enmity, we explore its relations with universalism and conservation values in a German sample. Employing structural equation modeling, we find that individuals who prioritize universalism values approve of various minorities more whereas those who prioritize conservation values exhibit more disapproval.     

Re-examining the relationship between Latino immigration and racial/ethnic violence

Whether immigration increases crime has long been a source of political debate and scholarly interest. Despite widespread public opinion to the contrary, the weight of evidence suggests the most recent wave of U.S. immigration has not increased crime, and may have actually helped reduce criminal violence. However, with recent shifts in immigrant settlement patterns away from traditional receiving destinations, a series of contemporary studies suggests a more complicated immigration-crime relationship, whereby Latino immigration is said to increase violence in newer immigrant destinations (but not in established destinations) and has varied effects for different racial/ethnic groups. With few exceptions, these more recent studies rely on cross-sectional analyses, thus limiting their ability to examine the longitudinal nexus between Latino immigration and violent crime. This study brings to bear the first longitudinal data set to test the relationship between immigration and racial/ethnic homicide in U.S. metropolitan areas between 1990 and 2010. Results from bivariate longitudinal associations and multivariate fixed effects models are contrary to recent findings – Latino immigration is generally associated with decreases in homicide victimization for whites, blacks, and Hispanics in both established and non-established immigrant destinations, though these associations are not significant in all cases.     

The impact of attitudes and behavioral costs on environmental behavior: A natural experiment on household waste recycling

Numerous studies have shown the importance of incentives as well as of attitudes in explaining pro-environmental behavior. Reported attitude effects, however, are generally rather small and exhibit considerable variation among studies. Different theoretical perspectives can account for this finding: whereas theories of rational action suggest additive effects of costs and attitudes, the low-cost hypothesis and dual-process theories imply interaction effects - in different directions, resulting from different mechanisms. The present study tries to overcome the shortcomings of past research by using advanced statistical methods to test competitive hypotheses in the context of post-consumer waste recycling. We utilize data from a natural experiment on recycling participation in Cologne/Germany (n = 1882) in which the incentive structure for recycling changed due to the conversion of the recycling scheme from a drop-off system to curbside collection. In order to avoid self-selection bias, we conducted pre- and post-treatment surveys and applied conditional fixed-effects regression models. We found that curbside collection had a strong impact on recycling participation and attitudes had a moderate effect. The interaction is negative but statistically insignificant. Our findings contradict the low-cost hypothesis and provide some evidence that environmental concerns moderate the effect of the recycling scheme. We cannot, however, reject the rational choice proposition of mere additive effects.     

Gender Double Standards in Parenting Attitudes

This paper investigates the double standard in attitudes toward courtship and family formation behaviors of sons and daughters. We argue there are strong theoretical reasons to expect that the magnitude of this double standard varies across substantive domains, as well as among parents and non-parents. We also argue key methodological limitations of previous studies likely produce an under-estimate of the gender double standard. We provide empirical estimates of the gender double standard that overcome these limitations, including a random-assignment experiment explicitly designed to control the effects of social desirability. These estimates demonstrate variability in the double standard across domains and reveal key factors contributing to the magnitude of the double standards in parenting attitudes held by individuals.     

Mexican parent's undocumented status and the educational attainment of the children left behind

Research shows that having undocumented parents lowers the educational attainment of children that grew up in the United States, but we know less about how it affects the education of children left behind in their origin countries. We use fixed effects models and data from the Mexican Migration Project to examine this relationship. We find that having both parents documented increases the educational attainment of children left behind by over two years in comparison to similar children with mixed-status, undocumented, and nonimmigrant parents. The effect is especially robust for boys that migrate as teenagers. These findings reveal that US immigration laws that define most Mexican immigrants as undocumented have had a devastating effect on the education of Mexican children left behind.     

Collective religiosity and the gender gap in attitudes towards economic redistribution in 86 countries, 1990–2008

What is the relationship between gender and the demand for redistribution? Because, on average, women face more economic deprivation than men, in many countries women favor redistribution more than men. However, this is not the case in a number of other countries, where women do not support redistribution more than men. To explain this cross-national paradox, we stress the role of collective religiosity. In many religions, theological principles both militate against public policies designed to redistribute income, and also promote traditionally gendered patterns of work and family involvement. Hence, we hypothesize that, in those countries where religion remains influential either through closer church-state ties or an intensely religious population, men and women should differ less in their attitudes towards redistribution. Drawing upon the World Values Survey, we estimate three-level regression models that test our religiosity-based approach and two alternative explanations in 86 countries and 175 country-years. The results are consistent with our hypothesis. Moreover, in further support of our theoretical approach, societal religiosity undermines pro-redistribution preferences more among women than men. Our findings suggest that collective religiosity matters more to the gender gap in redistributive attitudes than traditional political and labor force factors.     

从“手抄本”到“印刷本”的文化旅程——《寻隐者不遇》传播接受史研究

贾岛的《寻隐者不遇》,从文本的传播史看,实际上经历了从“手抄本文化”到“印刷本文化”两个阶段.在其流传过程中,作者、诗题和诗句的变动,可概括为“两个源头,三种态度”.这首单纯的唐人绝句复杂的流传历程,为考察这两个阶段文学传播接受的不同特点提供了有趣的范例;通过《寻隐者不遇》明代迄今接受史的细读,又可以得到这样的启示:要让古典诗歌进入现代人的心灵,既要有诗评家紧扣文本的诗艺阐释,也要有哲学家超越文本的哲理阐发;因为审美不是认识而是想象,诗意不是知识而是智慧.     

Skill and education effects on earnings in 18 Countries: The role of national educational institutions

This study investigates whether the mechanisms why education is rewarded vary across countries. Do educational institutions affect the likelihood that support for a particular mechanism is found? Combining IALS survey data and OECD statistics on educational institutions, it was shown that the effect of measured skill on earnings - controlled for educational attainment - is lower in countries where educational institutions produce skills relevant for work through the vocational system. This indicates that the human capital perspective on education works particularly well in vocationally oriented educational systems, as the skills generated in education are strongly overlapping with the skills that are rewarded. An alternative mechanism sees education as a means for social closure through credentialization. Under the credentialization model, education is not primarily rewarded for the productivity-enhancing skills it entails, but rather for reasons unrelated to productivity. Following this theory education is used for selection into the organization, after which directly observable skills are determining wages. Assuming that a strongly differentiated educational system creates boundaries between social groups, it is hypothesized that strongly differentiated systems lead to stronger measured skill effects. We do not find support for this hypothesis.