Kristina Bakkær Simonsen
Biographic Data
| ID | 333347 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Kristina Bakkær Simonsen |
| GIVEN NAMES | Kristina Bakkær |
| FAMILY NAME | Simonsen |
| SIGNATURE | SIMONSEN K B |
| AFFILIATIONS | Aarhus University |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-8049-7744 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 17 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 292 |
| WORKS AS AUTHOR | 17 |
| WORKS AS EDITOR | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2016 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 9 |
Setting the tone
Whether a topic is seen in a moral or moral-emotional light has significant political implications. Yet, we lack knowledge about the process of moralization: Who defines the way topics are communicated about? Where prior research has investigated the relative power of different actors to place a topic on the agenda or shape opinions, we study who sets the moral and moral-emotional tone of debate. To do so, we zoom in on immigration discourse in G…
Are pro-immigrant messages ineffective? Moralization as a rhetorical strategy for mainstream parties
This study contributes to understanding mainstream parties' room for maneuver in the immigration domain by exploring the impact of moralization as a rhetorical strategy. Research has found anti-immigrant messages to be more effective than pro-immigrant messages in shaping public opinion. However, a pre-registered survey experiment with Danish respondents reveals that moral rhetoric enhances policy support for pro-immigrant communication, renderin…
When Do Political Parties Moralize
Political communication on immigration is often highly moralized, with parties making claims to fundamental beliefs about right and wrong. Yet, what drives parties to use this rhetoric remains unexplored. Contributing to research on parties’ positional shifts on immigration, this study examines their strategic use of moral language in immigration discourse. To this end, we develop multilingual moral dictionaries to analyze parliamentary immigrati…
In the eye of the beholder
The concept of national boundaries has been employed extensively in the social sciences, with most research focusing on the host society's perspective. This study innovates by measuring immigrants’ perceptions of how boundaries of their host nation are drawn and examining how such perceptions impact their national identifications in a multinational context, more specifically in the province of Quebec in Canada. It relies on a stratified sample of…
I think I am a very strong woman”
Across Western European nations, politicians often problematize immigrants’ cultural values and question their fit with majority society. Within this discourse, immigrant women, especially those of Arabic origin, occupy a central place, since they are portrayed as un-agentic victims and reproducers of an oppressive culture that they pass on to their daughters. In this article, we study how, in a climate of suspicion and devaluation, these women m…
Moralizing Immigration
Morally charged rhetoric is commonplace in political discourse on immigration but scholars have not examined how it affects divisions over the issue among the public. To address this gap, we employ preregistered survey experiments in two countries where anti-immigration rhetoric has been prominent: the United States and Denmark. We demonstrate that exposure to moralized messages leads respondents to place greater moral weight on their existing im…
Who's a good citizen? Status and power in minority and majority youths' conceptions of citizenship
Citizenship has become the language through which several interconnected societal concerns are debated in Europe today. One of these concerns relates to youths' willingness and abilities to live up to dominant citizen ideals. The questioning of young adults' citizenship is particularly intense for youths with an ethnic minority background who are feared to hold values at odds with majority society. In this article, I ask how Danish youths define …
The Democratic Consequences of Anti-immigrant Political Rhetoric
Politics Feeds Back
Voting is a democratic virtue and an important mechanism for citizens to let their voices be heard. However, citizens do not participate in politics at equal levels, with consequences for their political power. While turnout gaps between different socioeconomic groups are well researched, the biggest gap in many Western European countries today has been overlooked: that between the children of immigrants (minority youths) and the majority populat…
Is civic nationalism necessarily inclusive? Conceptions of nationhood and anti‐Muslim attitudes in Europe
Despite the centrality of national identity in the exclusionary discourse of the European radical right, scholars have not investigated how popular definitions of nationhood are connected to dispositions toward Muslims. Moreover, survey‐based studies tend to conflate anti‐Muslim attitudes with general anti‐immigrant sentiments. This article contributes to research on nationalism and out‐group attitudes by demonstrating that varieties of national …
Inclusive or Exclusive? How Contact with Host Nationals May Change Immigrants' Boundary Perceptions and Foster Identity Compatibility
While immigrants may value their ethnic identities, the symbolic boundaries in many European nations are drawn in an exclusive manner, presenting ethnic identification as incompatible with host national belonging. Combining boundary drawing and contact theory, this article examines whether — in a context of exclusive boundary drawing — contact can lead to more inclusive boundary perceptions and foster identity compatibility. The analysis employs …
Inclusive or Exclusive? How Contact with Host Nationals May Change Immigrants' Boundary Perceptions and Foster Identity Compatibility
Does citizenship always further Immigrants’ feeling of belonging to the host nation? A study of policies and public attitudes in 14 Western democracies
Immigrants' access to citizenship in their country of residence is increasingly debated in Western democracies. It is an underlying premise of these debates that citizenship and national belonging are closely linked, but at the same time there is considerable cross-country variation in how citizenship is approached in Western democracies. In the literature, these differences are typically understood to reflect varying degrees of openness to seein…
What It Means to (Not) Belong
Across Europe, the symbolic boundaries drawn against Muslim/Middle Eastern immigrants and their children are increasingly rigid and exclusive. While there is broad agreement in the literature that external symbolic boundaries matter for individuals’ self‐identifications, the process by which boundaries translate into experiences of (not) belonging is theoretically underdeveloped and empirically understudied. Through inductive analysis of in‐depth…
Ghetto–Society–Problem
This article examines the role of the ghetto in Danish political discourse. While ghetto studies have previously been conducted within the field of urban sociology, the article departs from this tradition in offering a discourse analytical perspective on the former Danish government's strategy against ghettoization ( The Ghetto Plan ). Integrating perspectives from the literature on nationalism with Laclau and Mouffe's discourse analytical framew…
Ripple effects
This article examines the perceived discrimination of immigrants – a group for whom experiences of discrimination can be damaging for their long‐term commitment and identification with the national core group. Taking its point of departure in the literature on national identity, the article argues that perceived discrimination should be strongest among immigrants in host national societies with an exclusive self‐image. This hypothesis is examined…
How the host nation's boundary drawing affects immigrants' belonging
Across Western democracies, the place for newcomers in the host society is debated, involving often a questioning of immigrants’ belonging to their new nation. This article argues that immigrants’ feeling of host national belonging depends on how the host nation imagines its community and its concomitant boundaries. Utilizing survey and country level data in multilevel regressions, immigrants’ belonging is found to vary significantly across the 1…
How the host nation's boundary drawing affects immigrants' belonging
Across Western democracies, the place for newcomers in the host society is debated, involving often a questioning of immigrants’ belonging to their new nation. This article argues that immigrants’ feeling of host national belonging depends on how the host nation imagines its community and its concomitant boundaries. Utilizing survey and country level data in multilevel regressions, immigrants’ belonging is found to vary significantly across the 1…
Is civic nationalism necessarily inclusive? Conceptions of nationhood and anti‐Muslim attitudes in Europe
Despite the centrality of national identity in the exclusionary discourse of the European radical right, scholars have not investigated how popular definitions of nationhood are connected to dispositions toward Muslims. Moreover, survey‐based studies tend to conflate anti‐Muslim attitudes with general anti‐immigrant sentiments. This article contributes to research on nationalism and out‐group attitudes by demonstrating that varieties of national …
What It Means to (Not) Belong
Across Europe, the symbolic boundaries drawn against Muslim/Middle Eastern immigrants and their children are increasingly rigid and exclusive. While there is broad agreement in the literature that external symbolic boundaries matter for individuals’ self‐identifications, the process by which boundaries translate into experiences of (not) belonging is theoretically underdeveloped and empirically understudied. Through inductive analysis of in‐depth…
Moralizing Immigration
Morally charged rhetoric is commonplace in political discourse on immigration but scholars have not examined how it affects divisions over the issue among the public. To address this gap, we employ preregistered survey experiments in two countries where anti-immigration rhetoric has been prominent: the United States and Denmark. We demonstrate that exposure to moralized messages leads respondents to place greater moral weight on their existing im…
Politics Feeds Back
Voting is a democratic virtue and an important mechanism for citizens to let their voices be heard. However, citizens do not participate in politics at equal levels, with consequences for their political power. While turnout gaps between different socioeconomic groups are well researched, the biggest gap in many Western European countries today has been overlooked: that between the children of immigrants (minority youths) and the majority populat…
Ripple effects
This article examines the perceived discrimination of immigrants – a group for whom experiences of discrimination can be damaging for their long‐term commitment and identification with the national core group. Taking its point of departure in the literature on national identity, the article argues that perceived discrimination should be strongest among immigrants in host national societies with an exclusive self‐image. This hypothesis is examined…
Does citizenship always further Immigrants’ feeling of belonging to the host nation? A study of policies and public attitudes in 14 Western democracies
Immigrants' access to citizenship in their country of residence is increasingly debated in Western democracies. It is an underlying premise of these debates that citizenship and national belonging are closely linked, but at the same time there is considerable cross-country variation in how citizenship is approached in Western democracies. In the literature, these differences are typically understood to reflect varying degrees of openness to seein…
Ghetto–Society–Problem
This article examines the role of the ghetto in Danish political discourse. While ghetto studies have previously been conducted within the field of urban sociology, the article departs from this tradition in offering a discourse analytical perspective on the former Danish government's strategy against ghettoization ( The Ghetto Plan ). Integrating perspectives from the literature on nationalism with Laclau and Mouffe's discourse analytical framew…
The Democratic Consequences of Anti-immigrant Political Rhetoric
Inclusive or Exclusive? How Contact with Host Nationals May Change Immigrants' Boundary Perceptions and Foster Identity Compatibility
While immigrants may value their ethnic identities, the symbolic boundaries in many European nations are drawn in an exclusive manner, presenting ethnic identification as incompatible with host national belonging. Combining boundary drawing and contact theory, this article examines whether — in a context of exclusive boundary drawing — contact can lead to more inclusive boundary perceptions and foster identity compatibility. The analysis employs …
Who's a good citizen? Status and power in minority and majority youths' conceptions of citizenship
Citizenship has become the language through which several interconnected societal concerns are debated in Europe today. One of these concerns relates to youths' willingness and abilities to live up to dominant citizen ideals. The questioning of young adults' citizenship is particularly intense for youths with an ethnic minority background who are feared to hold values at odds with majority society. In this article, I ask how Danish youths define …
Setting the tone
Whether a topic is seen in a moral or moral-emotional light has significant political implications. Yet, we lack knowledge about the process of moralization: Who defines the way topics are communicated about? Where prior research has investigated the relative power of different actors to place a topic on the agenda or shape opinions, we study who sets the moral and moral-emotional tone of debate. To do so, we zoom in on immigration discourse in G…
Are pro-immigrant messages ineffective? Moralization as a rhetorical strategy for mainstream parties
This study contributes to understanding mainstream parties' room for maneuver in the immigration domain by exploring the impact of moralization as a rhetorical strategy. Research has found anti-immigrant messages to be more effective than pro-immigrant messages in shaping public opinion. However, a pre-registered survey experiment with Danish respondents reveals that moral rhetoric enhances policy support for pro-immigrant communication, renderin…
When Do Political Parties Moralize
Political communication on immigration is often highly moralized, with parties making claims to fundamental beliefs about right and wrong. Yet, what drives parties to use this rhetoric remains unexplored. Contributing to research on parties’ positional shifts on immigration, this study examines their strategic use of moral language in immigration discourse. To this end, we develop multilingual moral dictionaries to analyze parliamentary immigrati…
In the eye of the beholder
The concept of national boundaries has been employed extensively in the social sciences, with most research focusing on the host society's perspective. This study innovates by measuring immigrants’ perceptions of how boundaries of their host nation are drawn and examining how such perceptions impact their national identifications in a multinational context, more specifically in the province of Quebec in Canada. It relies on a stratified sample of…
Ghetto–Society–Problem
This article examines the role of the ghetto in Danish political discourse. While ghetto studies have previously been conducted within the field of urban sociology, the article departs from this tradition in offering a discourse analytical perspective on the former Danish government's strategy against ghettoization ( The Ghetto Plan ). Integrating perspectives from the literature on nationalism with Laclau and Mouffe's discourse analytical framew…
Ripple effects
This article examines the perceived discrimination of immigrants – a group for whom experiences of discrimination can be damaging for their long‐term commitment and identification with the national core group. Taking its point of departure in the literature on national identity, the article argues that perceived discrimination should be strongest among immigrants in host national societies with an exclusive self‐image. This hypothesis is examined…
How the host nation's boundary drawing affects immigrants' belonging
Across Western democracies, the place for newcomers in the host society is debated, involving often a questioning of immigrants’ belonging to their new nation. This article argues that immigrants’ feeling of host national belonging depends on how the host nation imagines its community and its concomitant boundaries. Utilizing survey and country level data in multilevel regressions, immigrants’ belonging is found to vary significantly across the 1…
Does citizenship always further Immigrants’ feeling of belonging to the host nation? A study of policies and public attitudes in 14 Western democracies
Immigrants' access to citizenship in their country of residence is increasingly debated in Western democracies. It is an underlying premise of these debates that citizenship and national belonging are closely linked, but at the same time there is considerable cross-country variation in how citizenship is approached in Western democracies. In the literature, these differences are typically understood to reflect varying degrees of openness to seein…
What It Means to (Not) Belong
Across Europe, the symbolic boundaries drawn against Muslim/Middle Eastern immigrants and their children are increasingly rigid and exclusive. While there is broad agreement in the literature that external symbolic boundaries matter for individuals’ self‐identifications, the process by which boundaries translate into experiences of (not) belonging is theoretically underdeveloped and empirically understudied. Through inductive analysis of in‐depth…
Inclusive or Exclusive? How Contact with Host Nationals May Change Immigrants' Boundary Perceptions and Foster Identity Compatibility
While immigrants may value their ethnic identities, the symbolic boundaries in many European nations are drawn in an exclusive manner, presenting ethnic identification as incompatible with host national belonging. Combining boundary drawing and contact theory, this article examines whether — in a context of exclusive boundary drawing — contact can lead to more inclusive boundary perceptions and foster identity compatibility. The analysis employs …
Inclusive or Exclusive? How Contact with Host Nationals May Change Immigrants' Boundary Perceptions and Foster Identity Compatibility
Is civic nationalism necessarily inclusive? Conceptions of nationhood and anti‐Muslim attitudes in Europe
Despite the centrality of national identity in the exclusionary discourse of the European radical right, scholars have not investigated how popular definitions of nationhood are connected to dispositions toward Muslims. Moreover, survey‐based studies tend to conflate anti‐Muslim attitudes with general anti‐immigrant sentiments. This article contributes to research on nationalism and out‐group attitudes by demonstrating that varieties of national …
The Democratic Consequences of Anti-immigrant Political Rhetoric
Politics Feeds Back
Voting is a democratic virtue and an important mechanism for citizens to let their voices be heard. However, citizens do not participate in politics at equal levels, with consequences for their political power. While turnout gaps between different socioeconomic groups are well researched, the biggest gap in many Western European countries today has been overlooked: that between the children of immigrants (minority youths) and the majority populat…
Moralizing Immigration
Morally charged rhetoric is commonplace in political discourse on immigration but scholars have not examined how it affects divisions over the issue among the public. To address this gap, we employ preregistered survey experiments in two countries where anti-immigration rhetoric has been prominent: the United States and Denmark. We demonstrate that exposure to moralized messages leads respondents to place greater moral weight on their existing im…
Who's a good citizen? Status and power in minority and majority youths' conceptions of citizenship
Citizenship has become the language through which several interconnected societal concerns are debated in Europe today. One of these concerns relates to youths' willingness and abilities to live up to dominant citizen ideals. The questioning of young adults' citizenship is particularly intense for youths with an ethnic minority background who are feared to hold values at odds with majority society. In this article, I ask how Danish youths define …
I think I am a very strong woman”
Across Western European nations, politicians often problematize immigrants’ cultural values and question their fit with majority society. Within this discourse, immigrant women, especially those of Arabic origin, occupy a central place, since they are portrayed as un-agentic victims and reproducers of an oppressive culture that they pass on to their daughters. In this article, we study how, in a climate of suspicion and devaluation, these women m…
Setting the tone
Whether a topic is seen in a moral or moral-emotional light has significant political implications. Yet, we lack knowledge about the process of moralization: Who defines the way topics are communicated about? Where prior research has investigated the relative power of different actors to place a topic on the agenda or shape opinions, we study who sets the moral and moral-emotional tone of debate. To do so, we zoom in on immigration discourse in G…
Are pro-immigrant messages ineffective? Moralization as a rhetorical strategy for mainstream parties
This study contributes to understanding mainstream parties' room for maneuver in the immigration domain by exploring the impact of moralization as a rhetorical strategy. Research has found anti-immigrant messages to be more effective than pro-immigrant messages in shaping public opinion. However, a pre-registered survey experiment with Danish respondents reveals that moral rhetoric enhances policy support for pro-immigrant communication, renderin…
When Do Political Parties Moralize
Political communication on immigration is often highly moralized, with parties making claims to fundamental beliefs about right and wrong. Yet, what drives parties to use this rhetoric remains unexplored. Contributing to research on parties’ positional shifts on immigration, this study examines their strategic use of moral language in immigration discourse. To this end, we develop multilingual moral dictionaries to analyze parliamentary immigrati…
In the eye of the beholder
The concept of national boundaries has been employed extensively in the social sciences, with most research focusing on the host society's perspective. This study innovates by measuring immigrants’ perceptions of how boundaries of their host nation are drawn and examining how such perceptions impact their national identifications in a multinational context, more specifically in the province of Quebec in Canada. It relies on a stratified sample of…
Political science (17 works) · Law (16 works) · Sociology (16 works) · Law (15 works) · Immigration (14 works) · Migration, Refugees, and Integration (13 works) · Politics (13 works) · Gender Studies (11 works) · Psychology (11 works) · Gender Studies (10 works)