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Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies

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Fearing what? Vignette experiments on anti-immigrant sentiments

Sedef Turper

To cite this article: Sedef Turper (2016): Fearing what? Vignette experiments on anti-immigrantsentiments, Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, DOI: 10.1080/1369183X.2016.1263554

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/1369183X.2016.1263554

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Fearing what? Vignette experiments on anti-immigrantsentimentsSedef Turper

Department of International Relations, Koç University, Istanbul, Turkey

ABSTRACTThis study examines the impact of economic and safety threatperceptions on anti-immigrant sentiments. We investigate theextent to which public support for individual immigrants is affectedby considerations about economic prospects and criminality ofpotential immigrants. We utilise survey vignette experimentsconducted as part of the Panel Component of the European SocialSurvey in the Netherlands with a representative sample of theDutch population. In the vignette experiments, we manipulatedeconomic prospects and criminal background characteristics ofimmigrants, making them appear more or less likely to be aneconomic burden for and to pose a safety threat to the hostsociety. Our findings demonstrate that both economic and safetyconsiderations highly influence the public support for individualimmigrants. We find that citizens’ views on admissibility ofindividual immigrants are predominantly shaped by considerationsabout social welfare costs and criminality of potential immigrants.Our findings further illustrate that safety concerns are yielding tomore exclusionist immigration policy preferences than economicthreat considerations, especially when those safety threats aremeasured at the individual level rather than at the collective level.

ARTICLE HISTORYReceived 21 January 2016Accepted 17 November 2016

KEYWORDSAttitudes towardsimmigrants; economic threat;safety threat; surveyexperiment

1. Introduction

Immigration policies have become prominent issues that dominate election campaignsand public discussions in many European countries as these have witnessed largeinflows of immigrants over the last few decades (Card, Dustmann, and Preston 2005). Pre-vious research firmly has established a strong positive link between anti-immigration atti-tudes and support for right-wing parties (Lewis-Beck and Mitchell 1993; Knigge 1998;Lubbers, Gijsberts, and Scheepers 2002). As those parties increasingly gain power inEurope, public attitudes towards immigrants and immigration policy preferences havebecome even more crucial in understanding contemporary European politics.

Academic research into attitudes towards immigrants mainly adopts a ‘threat frame-work’ to explain anti-immigrant sentiments and support for exclusionist immigration pol-icies. Based on the premises of group conflict (Blumer 1958; Quillian 1995) and socialidentity theories (Tajfel 1981; Brewer 2001), earlier research explored the role of economic

© 2016 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group

CONTACT Sedef Turper sturper@ku.edu.trSupplemental data for this article can be accessed at 10.1080/1369183X.2016.1263554.

JOURNAL OF ETHNIC AND MIGRATION STUDIES, 2016http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/1369183X.2016.1263554

interests and social identities in explaining immigration-related attitudes. Following thesetwo lines of reasoning, previous research has established that both economic and culturalthreat considerations play a crucial role in shaping public attitudes towards immigrants.However, previous research has not generally considered the role of emerging safetythreats in shaping attitudes towards immigrants even though these are heavily emphasisedin the political discussions on and media coverage of immigration issues.

Recent studies exploring the influence of safety threats on immigration-related attitudesillustrate that an increasing concern over ‘national security’ leads to more restrictive immigra-tion policies (Bigo 2002) and exclusionary public opinion towards immigrants (Lahav andCourtemanche 2012). These studies indicate that safety threat framework can contribute toour understanding of immigration-related attitudes. Yet, they focus only on aggregate-levellife- and property-threatening risks that are rare and highly destructive such as the events on9/11 and subsequent terrorist attacks. The impact of perceived safety risks that are less destruc-tive but more likely, is still an understudied area in studies on attitudes towards immigrants.

By utilising a novel experimental design, this study examines the impact of economicand safety concerns on immigration-related attitudes from a group conflict theory per-spective. Based on survey vignette experiments conducted as part of the Panel Componentof the European Social Survey (ESS) with a representative sample of the Dutch population,we investigate the extent to which considerations about economic costs and criminality ofimmigrants are affecting immigration-related attitudes in the Netherlands.

Our findings illustrate that safety concerns are yielding tomore exclusionist immigrationpolicy preferences than economic threat considerations, especiallywhen those safety threatsaremeasured at the individual level rather than at the collective level. Building on this point,we further elaborate on the type and domain of safety concerns that trigger anti-immigrantattitudes. The experimental design of the study also allows us to make comparison betweenthe severity of demanded punishment for immigrant and for native defendants.

2. Theoretical framework and previous research

Group conflict theory argues that negative sentiments towards out-groups stem from theview that their members challenge certain prerogatives of the dominant group (Blumer1958; Hardin 1995; Quillian 1995). In other words, group conflict theory adopts a rationalchoice perspective in explaining attitudes towards immigrants and postulates that natives’negative attitudes towards immigrants originate from their perceptions of immigrants as athreat to their self-interests defined either at the individual or at the collective level, or both(Sniderman and Hagendoorn 2007, 77). The theory predicts anti-immigrant attitudes andpreferences for more exclusionist immigration policies to be fuelled by natives’ fears ofadverse outcomes of immigration, such as economic hardship, increased job competition,reduced social welfare benefits and increased taxes (Sides and Citrin 2007), loss of politicalpower (Stephan et al. 2005), and increased crime rates (Sides and Citrin 2007) definedeither at the individual or at the collective level.

2.1. Immigrants as economic threats

Group conflict theory predicts natives to hold anti-immigrant sentiments to the extentthat they perceive out-group members as threatening their in-group prerogatives. These

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prerogatives include economic interests, and natives are expected to express hostilitytowards immigrants when they perceive immigrants as economically detrimental eitherto their self-interests or to the collective interests of the nation.

As far as the motivating role of economic self-interest is concerned, group conflicttheory foresees those individuals who are in direct competition with immigrants in jobmarket or in accessing social welfare benefits to be more threatened by immigrants, andhence, to display higher levels of anti-immigrant attitudes. Consequently, the theoryanticipates, for instance, low-skilled natives to display higher levels of hostility towardslow-skilled immigrants than towards high-skilled immigrants because they are morelikely to be in direct competition with the former. As far as the motivating role of collectiveeconomic interest of the nation is concerned, however, the theory foresees natives to holdanti-immigrant sentiments if they perceive immigrants as detrimental to the collectiveeconomic interests of the host society as a whole, even if they consider their individualeconomic interests not to be at risk. Accordingly, when applied at the collective level,the theory anticipates those natives who are not in direct competition with immigrantsin the job market or in accessing social welfare benefits to display anti-immigrant senti-ments when they consider immigrants as posing a threat to economic prerogatives oftheir fellow nationals. Therefore, the theory predicts natives to display higher levels ofanti-immigrant sentiments as the expected contribution of immigrants to the nationaleconomy decreases.

Earlier research adopting a group conflict theory perspective found limited traces ofself-interest as a motivating factor (Fetzer 2000; Malchow-Møller et al. 2008; Malhotra,Margalit, and Mo 2013), whereas studies firmly established that perceptions of economicthreats to collective interests of the dominant group play a crucial role in shaping anti-immigrant sentiments and support for more exclusionist immigration policies (Snider-man, Hagendoorn, and Prior 2004; Hainmueller and Hiscox 2007; Schneider 2008; Hain-mueller and Hiscox 2010), especially during times of economic hardship (Sides and Citrin2007; Meuleman, Davidov, and Billiet 2009). Furthermore, experimental studies focusingon evaluations of immigrants on individual basis illustrate that economic considerationsare the principal driving force behind the support for individual immigrants (Aalberg,Iyengar, and Messing 2012; Iyengar et al. 2013; Turper et al. 2014).

2.2. Immigrants as threats to law and order

Immigrants are frequently portrayed as threats to law and order due to their allegedlygreater involvement in criminal activities (Agozino 1996; Bigo 2002). Although a recentliterature review of studies on immigrant criminality indicates that there is no consensusover immigrants’ elevating effect on crime rates (Hiatt 2007), concerns over law compli-ance of immigrants are increasingly emphasised in public discussions on immigrants andimmigration policies in Western democracies. Political discourse utilised by anti-immi-grant parties often connects the issue of crime rates with immigration (Mudde 2007;Dinas and van Spanje 2011; Mudde 2012). Many anti-immigrant parties including theFreedom Party of Austria and the Party for Freedom in the Netherlands have consistentlytargeted immigrants and blamed them for being the main reason for crime (Ignazi 2005,114; Martins 2012; Ray 2012). While in Italy, banners in an anti-immigrant march organ-ised by the Northern League read as ‘Immigrants = Criminals’ (Baker, Cappel, and Carlisle

JOURNAL OF ETHNIC AND MIGRATION STUDIES 3

2002), the former leader of the German Republican Party, Franz Schönhuber, publiclylabelled immigrants as ‘carriers of crime’ (Ignazi 2005, 72). In a similar vein, news cover-age on immigrants and immigration disproportionately reports immigrants in associationwith criminal activities (van Dijk 1993; Burns and Gimpel 2000). A content analysis ofDutch newspapers covering the period between 1990 and 1995 illustrates that 34 percent of the news coverage on immigrants and ethnic minorities in the largest Dutch news-paper Telegraaf was on violation of law by ethnic minorities and immigrants (Lubbers,Scheepers, and Wester 1998).

Previous research illustrates that political discourse and representations in the mediacan be fairly influential in shaping public attitudes towards immigrants, especially forthose citizens who lack personal contact with immigrants, and hence rely on the infor-mation they acquire through public discussions for forming their judgements on immi-grants. Earlier research illustrated that voter support for anti-immigrant parties areeffectively mobilised by discourses linking immigration to criminality and social unrest(Rydgren 2008). Similarly, frequent representations of immigrants as outlaws in themedia lead people to perceive immigrants as threats to law and order (Lubbers, Scheepers,and Vergeer 2000), and elicit anti-immigrant sentiments and support for harsher punitiveattitudes towards immigrants (Windzio and Kleimann 2009; Meeussen et al. 2013).

In accordance with the tone of public representations of immigrants as outlaws andcriminals, the idea that immigration has an elevating effect on crime is a commonlyheld belief among European publics. According to ESS data with questions tapping con-siderations about the presumed consequences of immigration, respondents are mostlyconcerned with increasing crime rates in 20 of the 21 European countries (Ceobanu2010). However, research focusing on the immigration and crime relationship mainly con-centrated on comparing crime rates for immigrant and native populations (Engbersen,van der Leun, and de Boom 2007; Melossi 2014), the impact of ethnic composition onthe perceptions of neighbourhood safety (Semyonov, Gorodzeisky, and Glikman 2012)and previous studies often overlooked the relationship between immigration attitudesand natives’ perceptions of immigrants as threats to law and order.

From a group conflict theory perspective, natives are expected to perceive immigrantsas endangering their prerogatives when those immigrants pose a real or perceived threat totheir personal safety or to collective safety. Therefore, according to the theory, concernsabout immigrant delinquency – both at the personal and the collective level – are expectedto lead to anti-immigrant sentiments. However, there are only few studies focusing on howperceptions of immigrants as threats to personal and collective safety affect attitudestowards immigrants. Existing research illustrate that concerns about the crimes com-mitted by immigrants are strongly related to immigration attitudes and support formore exclusionist immigration policies (Mayda 2006; Hainmueller and Hiscox 2007;McLaren and Johnson 2007), and lends support to the predictions the group conflicttheory regarding the relationship between safety threat perceptions and anti-immigrantsentiments. Those studies testing the expectations of the theory at the collective level byutilising longitudinal and experimental data illustrate that concerns about immigrants’impact on crime rates in the society is a strong predictor of anti-immigrant sentiments.A recent panel study demonstrates that fear of crime affects immigration attitudes evenafter controlling for pre-existing immigration attitudes (Fitzgerald, Curtis, and Corliss2011). Similarly, the decoupling experiments aiming at disentangling the relationship

4 S. TURPER

between safety threat perceptions and attitudes towards the immigrant groups that alleg-edly pose these threats, demonstrate that fear of increasing violence and vandalism in theDutch society as a whole plays a significant role in shaping hostility towards immigrants(Sniderman and Hagendoorn 2007). Empirical studies testing the predictions of groupconflict theory at the individual level, however, are far more scarce, and they suggest con-cerns over personal safety not to be a significant predictor of anti-immigrant sentiments(Sniderman, Hagendoorn, and Prior 2004; Sniderman and Hagendoorn 2007).

3. Current study

The current study investigates to what extent concerns about economic costs of immi-grants and the threats to social law and order that those immigrants pose in the hostsociety affect the level of support for individual immigrants. By utilising data fromsurvey experiments, this study provides much needed direct evidence for investigatingthe impact of economic and safety threats on natives’ evaluations of individual immi-grants. In the first experimental study, we investigate the extent to which economic con-siderations and concerns over law and order affect support for individual immigrants. Thesecond experimental study focuses on concerns over law and order only, and it explores towhat extent different types of minor criminal offenses that are frequently associated withimmigrants affect the levels of support for individual immigrants. Furthermore, weexplore the extent to which the severity of punitive judgements differs for native andimmigrant defendants.

3.1. Theoretical expectations

Group conflict theory predicts that natives’willingness to admit immigrants to the countrywould be affected by their perceptions of immigrants as economic threats. More specifi-cally, concerns over increasing burden to the welfare state and increasing labour andself-employment market competition are expected to influence attitudes towards individ-ual immigrants. Previous research illustrates that concerns over welfare costs of immigra-tion (Dustmann and Preston 2004), and the fear of adverse outcomes of immigration onjob competition lead to anti-immigrant sentiments (Hainmueller and Hiscox 2007;Malchow-Møller et al. 2008). Furthermore, Helbling and Kriesi (2014) illustrate that con-cerns over welfare costs of immigrants better explain public attitudes towards less-skilledimmigrants when compared to the concerns over increased job competition. Therefore, weexpect the level of support for individual immigrants to be influenced more by consider-ations over social welfare costs of immigrants than by considerations over increased jobcompetition due to immigration, and we formulate our first hypothesis as follows:

Hypothesis 1. The level of support for individual immigrants is lower for those immigrantsposing burden on the social welfare system than those immigrants contributing to jobcompetition.

Although there is no conclusive evidence indicating immigrants’ aggravating effect oncrime rates, immigrants are often portrayed as threats to social law and order in the hostcountry. Anti-immigrant parties in Western democracies explicitly associate crime andimmigration issues and hold immigrants responsible for crime. Similarly, news coverage

JOURNAL OF ETHNIC AND MIGRATION STUDIES 5

on immigrants disproportionately reports crimes with immigrant defendants. Previousresearch demonstrated that both the frequency and the tone of news coverage of immi-grant actors affect immigration-related attitudes (Boomgaarden and Vliegenthart 2009),and negative news about immigrants boost opposition to immigration (Brader, Valentino,and Suhay 2008). Given the recurring emphasis on immigrant criminality in public discus-sions, we expect considerations over immigrant criminality to affect natives’ willingness toadmit individual immigrants in the country. Therefore, we formulate our second hypoth-esis as follows:

Hypothesis 2. The level of support for individual immigrants is higher for immigrants whoare law abiding compared to those immigrants who are not.

Furthermore, earlier research adopting a group conflict theory perspective foundlimited traces of concerns over individual safety as a motivating factor for anti-immigrantsentiments (Sniderman, Hagendoorn, and Prior 2004; Sniderman and Hagendoorn 2007),whereas studies testing the predictions of group conflict theory at the collective levelsuggested that concerns about immigrants’ impact on crime rates in the society play acrucial role in shaping anti-immigrant sentiments and support for more exclusionistimmigration policies (Sniderman and Hagendoorn 2007; Fitzgerald, Curtis, and Corliss2011). Therefore, we expect safety threats at the collective level to lead higher levels ofanti-immigrant sentiments when compared to safety threats at the individual level, andformulate our third hypothesis as follows:

Hypothesis 3. The level of support for individual immigrants is lower for those immigrantsposing threats to safety in the society as a whole than those immigrants posing threats to indi-vidual safety.

Cases involving immigrant defendants committing crimes against natives are hypoth-esised to be treated as matters of intergroup conflict. Accordingly, natives are expected touse ethnicity as an heuristic cue for judging the defendants’ blameworthiness and deserv-ingness of punishment (Eberhardt et al. 2006). Previous research confirms that percep-tions of ethnic and immigrant populations as threats to social law and order excitesupport for harsher punitive policies (King and Wheelock 2007). Studies demonstratethat ethnic typification of crime is a significant predictor of punitive attitudes (Chiricos,Welch, and Gertz 2004), and ethnic minorities are more severely punished than nativesfor criminal offenses they commit against the members of the dominant group (Eberhardtet al. 2006). Consequently, we expect immigrant defendants to be evaluated as deservingharsher punishment than their native counterparts. Our fourth hypothesis reads asfollows:

Hypothesis 4. The proposed punishment is more severe for immigrant defendants comparedto native defendants who committed the same criminal offense.

3.2. Data

For the current study, we utilise data from survey experiments conducted as part of thePanel Component of the ESS.1 The panel study started with ESS Round-5 in October2010 and with the participation of 1829 respondents representative of the Dutch popu-lation over the age 16. After completing the ESS questionnaire, all respondents were

6 S. TURPER

approached to take part in the four-wave panel study to which 1501 agreed. The sub-sequent waves of the study were conducted between May 2011 and January 2013 witheight-month intervals in-between. The response rates for the panel study were .60 inthe initial ESS Round-5 study and .72, .70 and .86 in subsequent waves, respectively. Atotal of 647 respondents completed the final wave of the panel study.2

The first experimental study was conducted as part of the third wave of the panel studywith a subsample of 275 Dutch respondents excluding first generation immigrants. For thesecond experimental study, we utilised data obtained from the survey experiments con-ducted as part of the fourth wave of the study, which was completed with the participationof a full sample of 619 Dutch respondents born in the Netherlands.

3.3. Study 1

3.3.1. Experimental designIn the first experimental study, we investigated the extent to which the economic consider-ations and concerns over law and order affect the support for individual immigrants. Tothis end, respondents were randomly assigned to three experimental groups. Respondentsin each experimental condition were presented with a brief vignette text describing animmigrant who placed a request for extending his residence permit (Online AppendixA). The vignettes manipulated immigrants’ economic attributes as well as their levels ofrespect for law and order. Respondents were then asked to decide whether they wouldapprove or reject the residence permit extension application placed by the immigrant pre-sented to them.

As presented in Table 1, we employed a 3*2 between-subjects factorial design with sixexperimental conditions corresponding to three economic (self-employment prospect orpaid-employment prospect or unemployment prospect) and two respect for law andorder (law-abiding and not law-abiding) attribute treatments. Respondents in each exper-imental group were asked to evaluate two immigrants.3

3.3.2. Experimental manipulations3.3.2.1. Economic cues. The vignettes manipulated the economic prospects of the immi-grants by presenting them as potential sources of more or less economic burden for thenational economy. The immigrants were described as having either unemployment, orpaid-employment or self-employment prospects. In all three experimental conditionsthe immigrants are depicted as individuals whose work contracts are about to expire intwo months’ time. While the unemployment prospect condition featured immigrantswilling to receive unemployment benefits, respondents in the paid-employment prospectcondition are presented with immigrants who are willing to seek a new employment oncetheir residence permit is extended. In the self-employment prospect condition,

Table 1. Experimental design for experimental study 1.Economic prospects

Law compliance Unemployment Paid-employment Self-employment

Law-abiding R R RNot law-abiding R R R

Note: Cells marked with ‘R’ indicate experimental conditions where ‘residence permit’ questions were present.

JOURNAL OF ETHNIC AND MIGRATION STUDIES 7

immigrants are depicted as individuals who are willing to start up their own business inthe Netherlands once their application for residence permit extension is approved. Toput it differently, unemployment prospect condition speaks to ‘social welfare threat’,whereas paid- and self-employment prospect conditions represent ‘job competitionthreat’ for the salaried and the self-employed segments of the society, respectively.

3.3.2.2. Respect for law and order cues. The vignettes further manipulated immigrants’level of respect for law and order. In half of the vignettes the immigrant is described asa person who is known to be complying with laws, whereas the other half featured animmigrant who is known to be not always complying with laws. The experimental con-ditions deliberately left this vague to allow respondents to utilise their pre-existing defi-nitions of law-abidingness.

3.3.3. Variables3.3.3.1. Dependent variable.We assess the admissibility of individual immigrants by usingrespondents’ evaluations of residence permit extension applications placed by the immi-grants presented to them. The question read as ‘Please indicate whether you wouldapprove or disapprove a residence permit application of the individual describedabove?’, and the response options are given in dichotomous format (0 = approve, 1 =disapprove).

3.3.3.2. Independent variables.We utilise categorical variables for the experimental treat-ments of economic prospects (0 = self-employment prospect, 1 = paid-employment pro-spect, 2 = unemployment prospect), and law compliance (0 = law-abiding, 1 = not law-abiding).

3.3.4. ResultsThe response distributions across experimental treatment groups are presented in Table 2.Inspection of the Table suggests that both the economic prospects and the law complianceof potential immigrants affect the level of public support for individual immigrants. Wefurther investigate the extent to which the economic considerations and concerns overlaw and order affect the level of support for individual immigrants by conducting a logisticregression analysis.

Our findings from logistic regression models demonstrate that natives’ willingness toadmit immigrants in the country, in other words admissibility of immigrants, is affectedby both the economic prospects and the law compliance of potential immigrants. As

Table 2. Response distributions by experimental treatments (raw numbers, percentages).Law-abiding Not Law-abiding

Approve DisapproveDo notknow N Approve Disapprove

Do notknow N

Unemploymentprospect

32(36.4)

36(40.9)

20(22.7)

88(100.0)

4(4.9)

70(86.4)

7(8.6)

81(100.0)

Paid-employmentprospect

77(72.6)

25(23.6)

4(3.8)

106(100.0)

14(15.9)

58(65.9)

16(18.2)

88(100.0)

Self-employmentprospect

60(74.1)

12(14.8)

9(11.1)

81(100.0)

19(17.9)

85(80.2)

2(1.9)

106(100.0)

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presented in Table 3, respondents clearly prefer immigrants with employment prospectsover their counterparts with unemployment prospects. Compared to potential entrepre-neurs, immigrants depicted as potential recipients of unemployment benefits are approxi-mately four and a half times more likely to have their application for an extended residencepermit rejected. As illustrated in Figure 1, the predicted probabilities of admitting law-abiding immigrants who wish to receive unemployment benefits are found to be 34 per-centage points lower than those of their potential entrepreneur counterparts. Similarly, thelevel of support for immigrants who do not always comply with the law decreases by 15percentage points as we move from self-employment to unemployment prospect con-dition. The differences between the levels of support for immigrants with self-employmentand paid-employment prospects are found not to be statistically significant. Our findingsof economic prospect manipulations demonstrate that admissibility of individual immi-grants are to a greater extent affected by concerns about social welfare costs of immigrantsthan by considerations over increased competition in the labour and self-employmentmarket.

While the economic prospects of immigrants have a considerable impact on the admis-sibility of individual immigrants, our results demonstrate that law compliance of potentialimmigrants is a much stronger predictor of support for individual immigrants. Thoseimmigrants who are depicted as not always complying with the laws are found to be 16times more likely to be rejected for their applications to extend their resident permitthan their law-abiding counterparts. As we move from the law-abiding to the non-law-abiding category, the predicted probabilities of approving residence permit applicationsof immigrants drop by approximately 60 percentage points for immigrants with employ-ment prospects and by 42 percentage points for immigrants with unemploymentprospects.

Our findings demonstrate that both the economic threat perceptions and the concernsabout social law and order are significant predictors of support for individual immigrants.Our findings provide support for Hypothesis 1 suggesting that the support for individualimmigrants will be lower for those immigrants posing burden on the social welfare systemthan those immigrants contributing to job competition. We find that those immigrantsdescribed as having unemployment prospects elicited significantly lower levels ofsupport when compared to their counterparts both with self-employment and paid-employment prospects. Hence, our findings reveal that considerations about welfarecosts of potential immigrants play a larger role in shaping natives’ willingness to admit

Table 3. Disapproval of extended residence permit applications by economic and safety threatmanipulations.

B S.E. Exp(B)

Economic prospectsPaid-employment .236 (.268) 1.230Unemployment 1.562*** (.302) 4.636Law complianceNot law-abiding 2.825*** (.243) 16.528Constant −1.498*** (.236)Nagelkerke’s R square .439Hosmere and Lemeshow test .903N 492

*p < .05, **p < .01, ***p < .001.

JOURNAL OF ETHNIC AND MIGRATION STUDIES 9

individual immigrants to the country than the fear that immigrants will increase compe-tition in the labour and self-employment market. In line with our expectations stated inHypothesis 2, we find that level of support for individual immigrants is higher for law-abiding immigrants when compared to their non-law-abiding counterparts. Our findingsfurther demonstrate that law compliance of potential immigrants is a much strongerdeterminant of admissibility of individual immigrants in the country.

3.4. Study 2

3.4.1. Experimental designIn the second experimental study, we investigate the extent to which those criminaloffenses that are frequently associated with immigrants influence the level of supportfor individual immigrants. To this end, respondents were randomly assigned to fourexperimental groups. Respondents in each experimental condition were presented witha brief vignette describing either an immigrant who placed an application to extend hisresidence permit, or a native citizen (Online Appendix B). The vignettes manipulatedthe criminal background of both the immigrants and the natives described in the vignettes.Respondents who were presented with immigrant vignettes were first asked to decidewhether they would approve or reject the application for an extended residence permit.Secondly, they were asked to indicate how severely they would like the immigrant to bepunished provided that he would actually be proven guilty for committing the criminaloffense described in the vignette. Respondents who were presented with native citizenvignettes were only asked to indicate how severely they would like this person to bepunished provided that he committed the described criminal offense.

In this experimental study, we employed a factorial design with eight experimental con-ditions corresponding to a 2*4 between-subjects factorial design with two nationality(Dutch citizen or non-naturalised immigrant), and four types of criminal offense

Figure 1. Predicted probabilities for rejecting resident permit applications of immigrants.

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(public property or individual property or public safety or individual safety) treatments.We included one further experimental condition where the immigrant was depicted asbeing not accused of any criminal activities. Respondents presented with this vignettewere requested only to state whether they would approve or disapprove the residencepermit extension application placed by the immigrant described in the vignette, andthey were not presented with the severity of punishment question. As Table 4 illustrates,the design includes nine experimental conditions. While in all four of the experimentalgroups respondents were asked to evaluate two immigrant or two native subjects, respon-dents in one of the experimental groups evaluating native subjects were further asked toevaluate the resident permit application of the immigrant depicted as being not accused ofany criminal offenses.

3.4.2. Experimental manipulations3.4.2.1. Citizenship status cues. Five of the experimental conditions featured an immigrantwho has been living in the Netherlands for two years and whose residence permit is aboutto expire in two months’ time, whereas the respondents in the remaining experimentalconditions were presented with a Dutch citizen.

3.4.2.2. Criminal offense cues. The vignettes further manipulate the criminal backgroundof the immigrants and natives presented to the respondents. The vignettes manipulatedthe domain of criminal offense by making immigrants and natives appear as threatseither to the general public or to individuals, and also the type of criminal offense by pre-senting those immigrants and natives as posing threats either to physical safety or to prop-erty. Except for the vignette which featured an immigrant who has not been accused of anycriminal offenses, all vignette texts featured immigrants and natives who were described ashave been accused of one of the four types of minor criminal offenses, namely public prop-erty, individual property, public safety and individual safety. In the public property offensecondition, immigrants and the Dutch citizens are described as having been accused ofmaking an exaggerated insurance claim, whereas in the individual property conditionthey are depicted as having been accused of house squatting. The distinction betweenthe public safety and private safety conditions is drawn based on presence or absence oftargeted victims, and the public safety and individual safety conditions featured immi-grants and natives who have been accused of drunken driving and slight bodily assaultoffenses, respectively. While the public property and public safety manipulations speakto ‘safety threats at the collective level’, individual property and individual physicalsafety conditions speak to ‘safety threats at individual level’.

Table 4. Experimental design for experimental study 2.

Citizenship status

Criminal background

Public offense Individual offense

No criminal offenseSafety Property Safety Property

Immigrant R – P R – P R – P R – P RNative P P P P –

Note: Cells marked with ‘R’ indicate experimental conditions where ‘residence permit’ questions were present. Cells markedwith ‘P’ indicate experimental conditions where ‘severity of punishment’ questions were present.

JOURNAL OF ETHNIC AND MIGRATION STUDIES 11

3.4.3. Variables3.4.3.1. Dependent variables. We measure the admissibility of individual immigrantsthrough respondents’ assessments of residence permit extension applications placed bythe immigrants presented to them, and the response options are given in dichotomousformat (0 = approve, 1 = disapprove). We further measure the severity of punitive judge-ments on an 11-point scale by using respondents’ responses for the question asking‘assuming that this person has actually committed the above-mentioned offense, howseverely do you think he should be punished?’ (0 = not severely at all, 10 = very severely).

3.4.3.2. Independent variables. To predict the level of support for individual immigrants,we utilise categorical variables for experimental manipulations of domain of criminaloffense (0 = offenses against public, 1 = offenses against individual) and type of criminaloffense (0 = offenses against property, 1 = offenses against physical safety). The modelspredicting the severity of punishment further include citizenship of the person describedin the vignette (0 = Dutch citizen, 1 = immigrant).

3.4.4. ResultsTo investigate to what extent that minor criminal offenses affect the level of support forindividual immigrants, we first focus on those vignettes featuring potential immigrants.Table 5 presents the response distributions across experimental treatment groups forthe question asking whether the respondents would be willing to grant a residentpermit to the immigrant presented to them. The inspection of the Table suggests thatthe level of support for individual immigrants decreases for the potential immigrantswho have been accused of criminal offenses when compared to the support for theircounterparts with no criminal record. To investigate the extent to which domain andtype of criminal offenses affect the level of support for individual immigrants, wefurther conduct a logistic regression analysis.

Our findings from logistic regression models predicting the likelihood of rejecting resi-dent permit applications of individual immigrants are presented in Table 6 and they showthat the admissibility of immigrants is contingent upon the criminal offenses that theywere accused of. Our findings demonstrate that both the domain and the type of criminaloffenses affect admissibility of individual immigrants in the country.

As illustrated in Figure 2, the predicted probabilities of disapproving resident permitapplications of immigrants gradually increase as we move from the ‘no criminaloffense’ category to the categories of offenses against ‘public safety’, ‘public property’,

Table 5. Response distributions by experimental treatments (raw numbers, percentages).Approve Disapprove Do not know N

No criminal record 111(75.0)

19(12.8)

18(14.6)

148(100.0)

Public/property safety 94(61.8)

38(25.0)

20(13.2)

152(100.0)

Public/Physical safety 115(71.4)

36(22.4)

10(6.2)

161(100.0)

Individual/Property safety 85(52.8)

62(38.5)

14(8.7)

161(100.0)

Individual/Physical safety 57(37.5)

67(44.1)

28(18.4)

152(100.0)

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‘individual property’ and ‘individual safety’. While the predicted probability of disapprov-ing resident permit applications of the immigrants with no criminal charge records is 15per cent, those immigrants who have been accused of committing offenses against publicsafety and property are approximately two times more likely to be rejected for their resi-dent permit applications. The disapproval rates for those immigrants who have beenaccused of committing drunken driving and making exaggerated insurance claim offensesin the public safety and public property conditions are predicted as 24 and 29 per cent,respectively.

While the concerns about criminal offenses against public property and public safetyhave a considerable impact on the admissibility of individual immigrants in the country,the effect size of individual property and individual safety treatments are observed to beeven larger. When compared to the applications of immigrants with no criminal chargerecords, the resident permit applications placed by those immigrants who were accusedof offenses against individual property and physical safety are approximately four timesmore likely to be disapproved. The predicted level of support for individual immigrantswho have been accused of house squatting is 27 percentage points lower than that fortheir counterparts with no criminal charge records. Similarly, as we move from the ‘no

Table 6. Disapproval of extended residence permit applications by safety threat manipulations.B S.E. Exp(B)

Offenses againstPublic .859** (.314) 2.362Individual 1.450*** (.299) 4.261Physical Safety −.256 (.271) .774Interaction termsIndividual*Physical safety .733* (.366) 2.081Constant −1.765*** (.248)Nagelkerke’s R square .114Hosmere and Lemeshow test 1.000N 684

*p < .05, **p < .01, ***p < .001.

Figure 2. Predicted probabilities for rejecting resident permit applications of immigrants by safetythreat manipulations.

JOURNAL OF ETHNIC AND MIGRATION STUDIES 13

criminal offense’ condition to the ‘individual safety’ condition, the predicted probabil-ities of approving resident permit applications of individual immigrants decrease 39 per-centage points. Consequently, those immigrants who were accused of committing aslight bodily assault in the individual safety condition are observed to be the immigrantswho are most likely to be disapproved for their resident permit applications (54 percent).

Contrary to our expectations from Hypothesis 3 suggesting that the level of publicsupport for immigrants endangering public safety would be lower than that for thoseendangering individual safety, our findings clearly demonstrate that immigrantsposing safety threats at the individual level are less likely to elicit public supportthan their counterparts posing safety threats at the collective level. We find thatthe residence permit applications of those immigrants posing threats to individualsafety are approximately two times more likely to be rejected than those of theircounterparts posing safety threats to the society as a whole. Therefore, our findingssuggest that public support for individual immigrants is shaped to a larger extent byconcerns over safety at the individual level than by concerns over safety at the collec-tive level.

Inspection of the regression coefficients presented in Table 4 and the predicted prob-abilities illustrated in Figure 2 further reveals that there is a significant interactionbetween the type and the domain manipulations. The predicted mean levels of rejectingresident permit applications of individual immigrants indicate that natives are more con-cerned about offenses against property at the collective level. At the individual level,however, concerns over physical safety plays a larger role in shaping attitudes towardsimmigrants.

So far, our findings from experimental study 2 illustrated that natives’ views on theadmissibility of immigrants vary by the threats these immigrants pose to law and order.Next, we investigate whether the severity of punitive judgements of respondents differfor immigrant and native defendants.

Table 7 presents the mean levels of punishment recommended for the immigrant andnative defendants provided that they are found guilty of committing one of the four crim-inal offenses discussed. The higher values in the Table indicate harsher punitive attitudes,whereas lower values signify more lenient punitive attitudes. The inspection of the Tablesuggests that the severity of punishment demanded for the defendants varies depending onthe type and domain of the criminal offense as well as on the citizenship status of thedefendant. To disentangle the role of citizenship status, as well as the type and thedomain of the criminal offense in shaping punitive attitudes, we further run a multipleregression model predicting the severity of punishment demanded for the individualdescribed in the vignette provided that he is found guilty.

Table 7. Mean levels of severity of punishment by experimental treatments (means, SD).Immigrant defendant Native defendant

Property safety Physical safety Property safety Physical safety

Severity ofPunishment N

Severity ofPunishment N

Severity ofPunishment N

Severity ofPunishment N

Public safety 5.60 (2.15) 143 6.60 (1.87) 157 6.27 (2.08) 144 7.78 (1.84) 156Individual safety 4.28 (2.61) 159 6.77 (1.70) 145 4.31 (2.50) 157 6.76 (1.96) 144

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Table 8 presents the results of the regression analysis with experimental treatments andsignificant interaction terms. As the Table demonstrates, severity of the punishmentdemanded for offenses against public is found to be significantly higher than severity ofpunishment demanded for offenses against individuals. As illustrated in Figure 3, inalmost all experimental conditions, the predicted levels of punishment is higher foroffenses committed against public when compared to those corresponding offenses com-mitted against individuals. Only in those experimental conditions featuring immigrantdefendants committing offenses against physical safety, natives are found to be supportingslightly harsher punishment for defendants committing offenses against individuals thanfor those committing offenses against the general public. To put it briefly, our findingsdemonstrate that safety threats at the collective level are more likely to stimulate higherlevels of support for harsher punishment when compared to safety threats at the individuallevel.

Our findings further show that those defendants committing offenses against physicalsafety are evaluated as deserving harsher punishment when compared to their counter-parts committing offenses against public and individual property. In case of offensesagainst public safety, severity of punishment demanded for defendants are predicted tobe 1.25 points higher on an 11- point scale than for those offenses against public property.In a similar vein, the severity of punishment for those offenses committed against individ-ual physical safety are found to be approximately 2.45 points higher when compared to thedemanded punishment for those offenses against individual property.

Furthermore, contrary to our expectations from Hypothesis 4, the severity of punish-ment demanded for immigrant defendants is found not to be higher than the punishmentdemanded for their native counterparts. Inspection of Figure 3 illustrating the predictedlevels of punishment by experimental treatments reveals that the predicted levels of pun-ishment are similar for native and immigrant defendants in the cases of offenses againstindividuals; whereas, in a sharp contrast to our expectations, the severity of punishmentdemanded for the native defendants are noticeably higher for those offenses againstpublic safety and public property.

To summarise, our findings from the second experimental study demonstrate that citi-zens’ views on immigrants’ admissibility and deservingness of punishment vary by the typeand domain of the threats that immigrants pose to law and order. Our findings illustratethat concerns about criminal offenses against individual property and safety have a

Table 8. Severity of punishment by safety threat and origin ofdefendant manipulations.

B S.E.

OffenderImmigrant −.934*** (.173)Offenses againstIndividual −2.103*** (.211)Safety 1.251*** (.173)

Interaction termsImmigrant*Safety .923*** (.244)Individual*Safety 1.219*** (.244)Constant 6.403*** (.152)Adjusted R square .233N 1205

*p < .05, **p < .01, ***p < .001.

JOURNAL OF ETHNIC AND MIGRATION STUDIES 15

considerable impact on the admissibility of individual immigrants in the country, whereasconcerns about criminal offenses against public property and safety affect the admissibilityrates of immigrants to a lesser extent. Our findings further indicate that when compared totheir native counterparts, immigrant defendants are evaluated as deserving similar punish-ment for offenses against individuals, whereas, they are evaluated markedly more lenientlyfor offenses against the public.

4. Discussion

In this study, we investigated the extent to which public support for individual immigrants isaffected by the considerations about economic prospects and criminality of potential immi-grants. Byutilising anovel experimental design,wemanipulated economic and criminal back-ground characteristics of immigrants, making them appear more or less likely to be aneconomic burden and to pose various safety threats to the host society. Our findings demon-strate that public support for individual immigrants is highly influenced by the considerationsabout both economic and safety costs of admitting individual immigrants in the country.

Regarding economic threat perceptions, our findings reveal that considerations abouteconomic prospects of potential immigrants play a crucial role in shaping publicsupport for individual immigrants. We find that natives’ willingness to admit individualimmigrants in the country significantly decreases when the immigrants are presented aspotential recipients of welfare benefits. Those immigrants with unemployment prospectswho are presented as potential recipients of welfare benefits are considerably less wel-comed when compared to their counterparts with paid- and self-employment prospects.Our findings from economic prospect manipulations demonstrate that the concernsover welfare costs of immigration is more critical in explaining public support for individ-ual immigrants when compared to the concerns over adverse effects of immigrants onlabour and self-employment market competition.

While the economic prospects of immigrants have a considerable impact on the admis-sibility of individual immigrants, our results demonstrate that safety concerns are stronger

Figure 3. Predicted probabilities for severity of punishment by safety threat and origin of defendantmanipulations.

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predictors of public support for individual immigrants. We find that citizens’ views onadmissibility of individual immigrants are predominantly shaped by considerationsabout law compliance and criminality of potential immigrants. Public support for non-law-abiding individual immigrants is found to be profoundly lower when compared totheir law-abiding counterparts. In particular, public support for individual immigrantsis found to be sensitive to the domain and type of minor safety threats that the individualimmigrants pose. We find that concerns about criminal offenses against individual prop-erty and safety have a considerable impact on the admissibility of individual immigrants inthe country, whereas concerns about criminal offenses against public property and safetyaffect the admissibility rates of immigrants to a lesser extent. As far as the role of minorcriminal offenses in shaping public attitudes towards immigrants are concerned, our find-ings indicate that considerations about safety at the collective level and, to a larger extent,at the individual level are crucial in explaining public support for individual immigrants.Furthermore, the comparison of the disapproval rates for those immigrants described asnon-law-abiding with those for the immigrants presented as committing minor criminaloffenses suggests that although concerns over minor criminal offenses cannot fullyaccount for the immigration induced safety threat perceptions, they nevertheless play aconsiderable role in shaping public attitudes towards individual immigrants.

Our findings further show that the domain of criminal offense also plays a significantrole in shaping punitive attitudes towards immigrant and native defendants. We find thatrespondents are willing to punish those immigrants who pose threats to physical safetyand property of individuals equally severely as their native counterparts. In case ofpublic offenses, on the other hand, immigrant defendants are evaluated considerablymore leniently than native defendants. While a thrust of earlier research on the punitivejudgements for criminal offenses suggests that those defendants of non-native origin aremore likely to be punished more severely, our findings are in disagreement with thosestudies. Previous research on the relationship between the punitive attitudes and thesocial category of the defendant suggests that in-group defendants can at times bejudged more negatively than out-group defenders for their norm-deviant behaviours, aphenomenon known as the ‘black sheep effect’ (Marques, Yzerbyt, and Leyens 1988).The black sheep effect is likely to occur only in situations where full responsibility ofthe offender cannot be plausibly denied (Van Prooijen 2009), and it serves the functionof communicating moral condemnation of norm-deviant behaviour and solidifying thesupport for the group norms (Gollwitzer, Keller, and Braun 2012). Previous studies docu-ment that while in-group subjects are given the benefit of the doubt and judged less nega-tively than out-group suspects when the evidence establishing their misconduct is weak,they are attributed more guilt (Kerr et al. 1995), aroused feelings of anger to a greaterextent and recommended to be punished more severely (Van Prooijen 2006) than theirout-group counterparts when the evidence establishing their involvement in deviantbehaviour is strong. As far as the experimental design of the current study is concerned,we speculate that the presentation of strong evidence in the form of asking respondents toassume that the person described to them in the vignette text is actually guilty of theoffense in regard might have led this black sheep effect to be observed. However, westill cannot rule out the ‘patronising leniency’ explanations suggesting that the in-groupmembers might refrain from imposing harsh retributive sanctions on out-group offenderswith the reservation that they might be conceived as discriminating against the out-group

JOURNAL OF ETHNIC AND MIGRATION STUDIES 17

members (Gollwitzer, Keller, and Braun 2012). Therefore, future research should try todisentangle contextual factors shaping the punitive attitudes towards native and immi-grant defendants.

It should be noted that the current study investigates the impact of considerations abouteconomic prospects and criminality on public support for individual immigrants, and ourresearch design does not allowus to experimentally test the differences between assessmentsof individual immigrants and immigrant groups. Therefore, future research should try tovalidate the findings of the current study by utilising experimental manipulations for immi-grant groups, and investigate whether the findings of the current study also apply to theevaluations of immigrant groups. Furthermore, the current study’s empirical domain isrestricted to the Netherlands. Although previous research on impact of individuatingcues on public support for individual immigrants demonstrated that individuating cuesaffect public sentiments similarly in various settings, future research should also investigatewhether the findings of the study are generalisable to other countries.

To conclude, the current study clearly illustrates that the concerns over economic pro-spects and criminality of individual immigrants are significant predictors of support forindividual immigrants. Hence, further research adopting the group conflict theory perspec-tive should not only focus on the economic considerations but also focusmore on the crimeaspect of immigration when investigating the public sentiments towards immigrants.

Notes

1. Panel Component of the ESS is a developmental project aiming at facilitating the biannualcross-sectional ESS.

2. The comparison of initial and final samples in terms of key demographic variables suggeststhat the differences in the age, gender and residential composition of the two samples are notstatistically significant, whereas panel attrition rate is observed to be slightly higher amongless educated respondents. However, the differences in mean levels of completed years offormal schooling for the initial and final samples found to be not substantial (13.40 and13.89, respectively).

3. Number of respondents in experimental groups ranged between 70 and 108. Post hoc statisti-cal power analyses indicate that our samples are sufficient for detecting medium and largeeffect sizes with statistical power of .80 (α = .05). For a discussion of effect sizes, please seeCohen (1977).

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Funding

This work was supported by Dutch Research Foundation (NWO) under Grant 471-09-003.

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