The role of intergroup contact in political reactions to immigration: Quantitative analyses from across Europe – ImmCon

The first part of the project uses sub-national data from countries in Europe and beyond to examine the correlation between immigration, import competition, and voting for extreme and “populist” parties.
In the second part of our project, three national studies will focus on one of the most important places where immigrants come into close contact with native populations: Schools. We will test the impact of contact in schools by exploiting unique administrative data from Finland, Denmark and the UK. In each country we will construct measures of cohort immigrant exposure for the entire population of public-school children over several years. We will then link this to survey data in the UK, registry data in Denmark, and a combination of the two in Finland to enable us to analyse the impact of contact in schools on a range of outcomes. We will exploit variation in inter-ethnic exposure across cohorts within schools to avoid the influence of cofounding variables such as neighbourhood composition. We will carry out the analysis in the three countries in order to compare relationships as well as to use measures that are only present in one of the two countries. In the UK, for instance, we will be able to link school data to information on parents’ friendships and feelings of ethnic identity, while in Denmark we will be able to detect impacts on the propensity to stand for local elections. In Finland, we can take advantage of detailed survey data among school children to better understand the mechanisms through which contact impacts long term outcomes.
The third part of the project will then focus on two European countries that have seen important increases in voting shares for far-right parties, namely France and Italy. In both countries we will leverage detailed administrative data to study the impact of immigrant arrival on voting behaviour.

The fourth part of the project explores the impact of contact with immigrants in the context of voluntary service. We have worked with the NGO Unis-Cité to produce a report (based on two masters dissertations) analysing their administrative data. We also have begun discussions with the “Service National Universel” (SNU) to undertake a similar study with them, which could potentially have a large policy impact.

The project described in Task 1 shows very interesting preliminary results. It is shown that exposure to immigration and to import competition i) affect populist votes in ways that strongly depend on their ‘skill content’ (high or low-skill) and ii) differently for immigration than for trade. More precisely, exposure to imports of goods which are intensive in low-skill labor tend to increase populist right-wing voting without affecting populist left-wing voting, while exposure to low-skill immigration generates a transfer of votes from left-wing to right-wing populism.
On task 2, results currently suggest that (quasi-random) childhood interracial contact has important implications in several domains on adult behavior. In Finland, we find that contact with immigrants leads to a greater propensity to marry an immigrant as, while in Denmark we find that managers who had greater contact with immigrants in school hire more immigrants. Finally, in the US, we show that white people who went to school with more black children go on to live in residential areas with more black people later on, reducing residential segregation.
For the French part of task 3, the main result is that the opening of a refugee center is shown to reduce far-right voting. This comes partly from a distortion in population movements (specifically, potential far-right voters avoid moving to the municipalities where a refugee center opened) as well as from more positive attitudes from stayers (confirming the contact hypothesis in the French context for refugees).
On task 4, findings suggest that civic service volunteers in groups with greater numbers of immigrants tend to end their volunteering with a greater level of confidence and civic engagement.

The future prospects of the project are exciting as we continue to generate results and develop the projects outlined above.

We have so far, at this interim point, produced several working papers which have been presetned in multiple international forums.

Immigration has become a central and persistent issue in the political discourse and public debate of many European societies. Some evidence suggests that the popularity of anti-immigrant parties has been partly driven by recent waves of immigrant arrivals. Other evidence, however, suggests that in areas where natives are more likely to come into contact with immigrants, greater immigration has reduced support for the far-right. The contrasting evidence makes it crucial to understand when and how contact with immigrants can generate political division, and when it may foster greater integration.

The overall objective of this project is to better understand how contact with immigrants can change attitudes and political behaviour in Europe. An important literature in social science and psychology has demonstrated that, at least in controlled settings, contact between majority and minority groups can reduce prejudice and encourage interethnic relationships. Yet the effectiveness of contact outside of controlled environments is much less well understood, with large uncertainty as to how policy can be designed to facilitate positive contact. This project therefore aims to help fill this evidence gap and hence guide policy makers in how to encourage social integration.

To achieve our objectives, we will undertake analyses using a variety of econometric methodologies at differing spatial scales. We will begin the project by using comparable data from eight European countries to examine the relationship between immigrant populations and voting. We will then dig deeper by undertaking analyses using unique national administrative data in four European countries: Denmark, the United Kingdom, France and Italy. Finally, we will work with partners in three European countries to test specific ways in which contact with immigrants may impact the attitudes and behaviour of small groups of young people. Together, these different projects will aid to provide a more comprehensive understanding of the role of intergroup contact in political reactions to immigration.

The project aims to help lift two important scientific barriers that have limited work on this topic. A first major barrier has been a lack of data on both contact with immigrants and the potential long-term impacts of this contact. We aim to lift this barrier by using various administrative datasets, matching them with other data and collecting new data in carefully targeted settings. This will allow us to look at instances of contact that are currently understudied as well as investigate the impact on outcomes on which little evidence exists. A second important barrier has been the non-random nature of contact with immigrants that typically makes it difficult to study causal impacts. We aim to lift this barrier by focusing on several situations where contact is influenced by factors which are plausibly random, including one experiment where we will deliberately introduce purely random variation. Lifting this barrier will allow us to better identify the potential impact of policies which increase contact with immigrants.

Our project advances the state of the art relating to contact with immigrants in two important ways. First, we will study the impact of contact on a set of important outcomes on which there is currently little well-identified evidence. This includes novel tests of implicit prejudice, behaviour in incentivized games, voting, labour market discrimination and residential segregation. Second, we will carefully examine ways in which the type and duration of contact matters, where existing evidence is also scarce. Overall, this will produce important lessons for policy makers from relevant settings that will aid in designing institutions and interventions which will encourage positive with immigrants.