Maureen A Eger
Biographic Data
| ID | 735206 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Maureen A Eger |
| GIVEN NAMES | Maureen A |
| FAMILY NAME | Eger |
| SIGNATURE | EGER M A |
| AFFILIATIONS | Umeå University |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-9023-7316 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 24 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 406 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 23 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 1 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2010 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 12 |
National identity, support for democracy, and the mediating role of civic beliefs and participation
This article explores the social mechanisms connecting national identity and support for democracy. Our investigation centers on the mediating role of civic beliefs and participation, employing data sourced from the European Value Survey (EVS 2017), which encompasses a total of 36 countries. First, our findings reveal a positive effect of voluntary (civic) national identity and support for democracy and a negative effect of non-voluntary (ethnic)…
What is the Liberalizing Potential of Higher Education? An Analysis of Academic Fields and Anti-Immigrant Sentiment Across 32 Countries
The link between educational attainment and attitudes towards out-groups stands out as one of the most consistent statistical associations in the social and political sciences. However, a recent analysis of survey data from the United States finds that the relationship between higher education and out-group prejudice depends on the content of education. In this Research Note, we replicate that study's analysis of tertiary-level academic majors wi…
Rally around the flag? Explaining changes in Swedish public opinion toward Nato membership after Russia's invasion of Ukraine
After Russia's invasion of Ukraine, Sweden changed its historic position of non-alignment and applied for membership in the NATO military alliance. This decision coincided with a shift in public opinion in favor of NATO membership, in what has been described as the largest and fastest shift in public opinion that has ever been measured in Swedish history. We examine two aspects of this 'rally around the flag effect' to explain this change, the ef…
Migration Stigma: Understanding Prejudice, Discrimination, and Exclusion
An introduction to the concept of “migration stigma,” along with new analytical frameworks to deepen understanding of the experiences of immigrants, their descendants, and native-born residents in immigrant-receiving societies. Due to economic crises, sociopolitical instability, and climate change, international migration is likely to persist if not increase in the future. Meanwhile, struggles to secure widespread acceptance of immigrant populati…
Scapegoating Immigrants in Times of Personal and Collective Crises: Results from a Czech Panel Study
According to scapegoat theory, individuals tend to attribute personal or social problems to an out-group (real or imagined). This self-serving bias protects the ego or social identity from responsibility while increasing prejudice towards the out-group blamed for feelings of frustration. In this research note, we test this theory using five waves of the Czech Household Panel Study (CHPS 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020), which captures the tail end o…
Unpacking the liberalizing potential of higher education: An analysis of academic majors, anti-Black prejudice, and opposition to immigration
In this article, we challenge the prevailing assumption about the impact of higher education on attitudes toward racial and ethnic minorities by examining whether educational effects are monolithic or manifold instead. Using data from the General Social Survey (1972-2021), we use a variety of measures of education (years, levels, sectors, and majors) to unpack the relationship between higher education and intergroup attitudes, specifically anti-i…
Speak English”: A Comment on English Language Instruction in an Era of Neo‐Nationalism
Previous research on neo‐nationalism has largely focused on the political arena, analyzing voters, parties, and policies. The scholarship featured in this special issue moves beyond the analysis of neo‐nationalism in contemporary politics to show how the ideology is enacted at the micro level. The stage for these dynamic interactions is educational settings related to the teaching of English. In this article, we comment on this new research that …
The Polarizing Effect of Anti-Immigrant Violence on Radical Right Sympathies in Germany
While radical right parties championing anti-immigrant platforms have made electoral gains throughout Europe, anti-immigrant sentiment—a key indicator of radical right support—has not dramatically increased during this same period. In this article, we seek to help make sense of this paradox by incorporating a contextual factor missing from previous studies: levels of anti-immigrant violence. Our key argument is that higher levels of collective vi…
Does Higher Education Have Liberalizing or Inoculating Effects? A Panel Study of Anti-Immigrant Sentiment before, during, and after the European Migration Crisis
Previous research has consistently shown a negative correlation between education and anti-immigrant sentiment. This association is most pronounced when distinguishing between adults with higher education and those without a tertiary degree. Yet it remains unclear whether educational attainment actually matters for attitudes, mainly due to a lack of longitudinal studies. This article investigates the so-called liberalizing effect of education on …
Identifying varieties of nationalism: A critique of a purely inductive approach
Most theoretical and empirical approaches to nationalism not only distinguish between ethnic and civic notions of national belonging but also differentiate national identity from national hubris, pride, and attachment. In this research note, we examine recently published research on nationalist sentiments in the United States that takes a different approach. The study in question, ‘Varieties of American Popular Nationalism' by Bonikowski and DiMa…
When I Was Growing Up: The Lasting Impact of Immigrant Presence on Native-Born American Attitudes towards Immigrants and Immigration
Scholarship, including seminal research on prejudice, identifies adolescence as a critical period for the development of attitudes. Yet most sociological research on prejudice, especially in the form of anti-immigrant sentiment, focuses on the relationship between contemporaneous social conditions and attitudes towards out-groups while neglecting the demographic context during one's impressionable years. Therefore, we design research to investiga…
Argumentum ad populum: A reply to Bonikowski and DiMaggio
Our reply to Bonikowski and DiMaggio (2021) is in three parts. First, we clarify the aim of our research note (Eger & Hjerm, 2021). Our original critique was based on a replication of their inductive analysis, and we evaluated their work using best practices for the methodology that they chose. Our argument is straightforward: If one is going to use inductive methods to say something meaningful about the real world, one needs to make sure that th…
Suppression, Spikes, and Stigma: How Covid-19 Will Shape International Migration and Hostilities toward It
Border closures associated with COVID-19 constitute a response to an exogenous shock unrelated to migration. In this IMR Dispatch, we argue that the impact of policies initially implemented to halt movement and curb the spread of the disease will nonetheless have medium- and longer term consequences for international migration. Specifically, we argue that these initial border restrictions have set in motion demographic and sociological processes …
A New Approach to the Study of Tolerance: Conceptualizing and Measuring Acceptance, Respect, and Appreciation of Difference
Previous empirical research on tolerance suffers from a number of shortcomings, the most serious being the conceptual and operational conflation of (in)tolerance and prejudice. We design research to remedy this. First, we contribute to the literature by advancing research that distinguishes analytically between the two phenomena. We conceptualize tolerance as a value orientation towards difference. This definition-which is abstract and does not c…
Politics and Prejudice: How Political Discussion With Peers Is Related to Attitudes About Immigrants During Adolescence
Research on prejudice has shown that with whom we surround ourselves matters for intergroup attitudes, but these studies have paid little attention to the content of those interactions. Studies on political socialization and deliberation have focused on the content of interaction by examining the transmission of norms as well as the direct consequences of political discussion on attitudes and behavior. However, this literature has not focused on …
From radical right to neo-nationalist
In this article, we investigate the ideology of the populist radical right (PRR) and the extent to which its political message has changed over time. In doing so, we also judge the usefulness of the PRR-tag. Like seminal scholarship on these parties, we contend that both economic and social positions are relevant for contemporary radical right parties. Further, we argue that contemporary parties’ stances are indicative of a nationalist ideology. …
Peer Attitudes and the Development of Prejudice in Adolescence
According to a number of psychological and sociological theories, individuals are susceptible to social influence from their immediate social environment, especially during adolescence. An important social context is the network of one's peers. However, data limitations, specifically a lack of longitudinal data with information about respondents' social networks, have limited previous analyses of the relationship between peers and prejudice over …
Immigration and the welfare state: A cross-regional analysis of European welfare attitudes
A growing body of research connects diversity to anti-welfare attitudes and lower levels of social welfare expenditure, yet most evidence comes from analyses of US states or comparisons of the United States to Europe. Comparative analyses of European nation-states, however, yield little evidence that immigration – measured at the country-level – reduces support for national welfare state programs. This is not surprising, given that research sugge…
The political consequences of contemporary immigration
This article synthesizes research on political outcomes associated with increasing immigration, with an emphasis on cross‐national studies of European countries, where immigration is a relatively newer phenomenon compared to the United States and other traditional immigrant destinations. We begin with explanations of and research on anti‐immigrant sentiment, not a political phenomenon in itself but considered an important precursor to other relev…
Immigrant presence, group boundaries, and support for the welfare state in Western European societies
The intersection of group dynamics and socioeconomic status theories is applied as a framework for the puzzling relationship of immigration and support for the welfare state in Western Europe. Group dynamics theories suggest that how individuals define their group boundaries moderates the impact of immigration on support for the welfare state. Immigrant presence should have the strongest effects for those with exclusive national group boundaries;…
Immigration or Welfare? The Progressive's Dilemma Revisited
Previous cross-national research on the link between immigration and the welfare state has focused exclusively on the relationship between the size of a country's foreign-born population and support for redistribution, neglecting that people vary in their responses to immigration. In this article, the authors revisit the progressive's dilemma by testing its theoretical proposition-that immigration and welfare are incompatible-in two novel ways. F…
Neo-nationalism in Western Europe
The increasing popularity of radical right parties in Western Europe has received widespread attention. Despite a rather large literature on parties with explicitly anti-immigrant platforms, there ...
Family Life in Context: Men and Women's Perceptions of Fairness and Satisfaction Across Thirty Countries
Existing scholarship contends that satisfaction with family life is relative: that what individuals expect out of their marriages in terms of housework and possibly more generally depends on what is typical in that country. These expectations are derived from a relative deprivation framework, which claims that individuals engage in social comparison with similar others and experience dissatisfaction or other forms of psychological distress if the…
Even in Sweden: The Effect of Immigration on Support for Welfare State Spending
While the politics of globalization and welfare state retrenchment have garnered much attention in recent years, scholarly research on public support for welfare state expenditure is comparatively sparse. Furthermore, new pressures, specifically international immigration and resulting ethnic heterogeneity, add a new challenge to the welfare state. In this article, I analyse support for social welfare expenditure in Sweden—the country that spends …
Even in Sweden: The Effect of Immigration on Support for Welfare State Spending
While the politics of globalization and welfare state retrenchment have garnered much attention in recent years, scholarly research on public support for welfare state expenditure is comparatively sparse. Furthermore, new pressures, specifically international immigration and resulting ethnic heterogeneity, add a new challenge to the welfare state. In this article, I analyse support for social welfare expenditure in Sweden—the country that spends …
Immigration and the welfare state: A cross-regional analysis of European welfare attitudes
A growing body of research connects diversity to anti-welfare attitudes and lower levels of social welfare expenditure, yet most evidence comes from analyses of US states or comparisons of the United States to Europe. Comparative analyses of European nation-states, however, yield little evidence that immigration – measured at the country-level – reduces support for national welfare state programs. This is not surprising, given that research sugge…
Neo-nationalism in Western Europe
The increasing popularity of radical right parties in Western Europe has received widespread attention. Despite a rather large literature on parties with explicitly anti-immigrant platforms, there ...
Peer Attitudes and the Development of Prejudice in Adolescence
According to a number of psychological and sociological theories, individuals are susceptible to social influence from their immediate social environment, especially during adolescence. An important social context is the network of one's peers. However, data limitations, specifically a lack of longitudinal data with information about respondents' social networks, have limited previous analyses of the relationship between peers and prejudice over …
A New Approach to the Study of Tolerance: Conceptualizing and Measuring Acceptance, Respect, and Appreciation of Difference
Previous empirical research on tolerance suffers from a number of shortcomings, the most serious being the conceptual and operational conflation of (in)tolerance and prejudice. We design research to remedy this. First, we contribute to the literature by advancing research that distinguishes analytically between the two phenomena. We conceptualize tolerance as a value orientation towards difference. This definition-which is abstract and does not c…
Immigrant presence, group boundaries, and support for the welfare state in Western European societies
The intersection of group dynamics and socioeconomic status theories is applied as a framework for the puzzling relationship of immigration and support for the welfare state in Western Europe. Group dynamics theories suggest that how individuals define their group boundaries moderates the impact of immigration on support for the welfare state. Immigrant presence should have the strongest effects for those with exclusive national group boundaries;…
Immigration or Welfare? The Progressive's Dilemma Revisited
Previous cross-national research on the link between immigration and the welfare state has focused exclusively on the relationship between the size of a country's foreign-born population and support for redistribution, neglecting that people vary in their responses to immigration. In this article, the authors revisit the progressive's dilemma by testing its theoretical proposition-that immigration and welfare are incompatible-in two novel ways. F…
From radical right to neo-nationalist
In this article, we investigate the ideology of the populist radical right (PRR) and the extent to which its political message has changed over time. In doing so, we also judge the usefulness of the PRR-tag. Like seminal scholarship on these parties, we contend that both economic and social positions are relevant for contemporary radical right parties. Further, we argue that contemporary parties’ stances are indicative of a nationalist ideology. …
Does Higher Education Have Liberalizing or Inoculating Effects? A Panel Study of Anti-Immigrant Sentiment before, during, and after the European Migration Crisis
Previous research has consistently shown a negative correlation between education and anti-immigrant sentiment. This association is most pronounced when distinguishing between adults with higher education and those without a tertiary degree. Yet it remains unclear whether educational attainment actually matters for attitudes, mainly due to a lack of longitudinal studies. This article investigates the so-called liberalizing effect of education on …
Suppression, Spikes, and Stigma: How Covid-19 Will Shape International Migration and Hostilities toward It
Border closures associated with COVID-19 constitute a response to an exogenous shock unrelated to migration. In this IMR Dispatch, we argue that the impact of policies initially implemented to halt movement and curb the spread of the disease will nonetheless have medium- and longer term consequences for international migration. Specifically, we argue that these initial border restrictions have set in motion demographic and sociological processes …
Identifying varieties of nationalism: A critique of a purely inductive approach
Most theoretical and empirical approaches to nationalism not only distinguish between ethnic and civic notions of national belonging but also differentiate national identity from national hubris, pride, and attachment. In this research note, we examine recently published research on nationalist sentiments in the United States that takes a different approach. The study in question, ‘Varieties of American Popular Nationalism' by Bonikowski and DiMa…
Family Life in Context: Men and Women's Perceptions of Fairness and Satisfaction Across Thirty Countries
Existing scholarship contends that satisfaction with family life is relative: that what individuals expect out of their marriages in terms of housework and possibly more generally depends on what is typical in that country. These expectations are derived from a relative deprivation framework, which claims that individuals engage in social comparison with similar others and experience dissatisfaction or other forms of psychological distress if the…
The Polarizing Effect of Anti-Immigrant Violence on Radical Right Sympathies in Germany
While radical right parties championing anti-immigrant platforms have made electoral gains throughout Europe, anti-immigrant sentiment—a key indicator of radical right support—has not dramatically increased during this same period. In this article, we seek to help make sense of this paradox by incorporating a contextual factor missing from previous studies: levels of anti-immigrant violence. Our key argument is that higher levels of collective vi…
The political consequences of contemporary immigration
This article synthesizes research on political outcomes associated with increasing immigration, with an emphasis on cross‐national studies of European countries, where immigration is a relatively newer phenomenon compared to the United States and other traditional immigrant destinations. We begin with explanations of and research on anti‐immigrant sentiment, not a political phenomenon in itself but considered an important precursor to other relev…
When I Was Growing Up: The Lasting Impact of Immigrant Presence on Native-Born American Attitudes towards Immigrants and Immigration
Scholarship, including seminal research on prejudice, identifies adolescence as a critical period for the development of attitudes. Yet most sociological research on prejudice, especially in the form of anti-immigrant sentiment, focuses on the relationship between contemporaneous social conditions and attitudes towards out-groups while neglecting the demographic context during one's impressionable years. Therefore, we design research to investiga…
Argumentum ad populum: A reply to Bonikowski and DiMaggio
Our reply to Bonikowski and DiMaggio (2021) is in three parts. First, we clarify the aim of our research note (Eger & Hjerm, 2021). Our original critique was based on a replication of their inductive analysis, and we evaluated their work using best practices for the methodology that they chose. Our argument is straightforward: If one is going to use inductive methods to say something meaningful about the real world, one needs to make sure that th…
Unpacking the liberalizing potential of higher education: An analysis of academic majors, anti-Black prejudice, and opposition to immigration
In this article, we challenge the prevailing assumption about the impact of higher education on attitudes toward racial and ethnic minorities by examining whether educational effects are monolithic or manifold instead. Using data from the General Social Survey (1972-2021), we use a variety of measures of education (years, levels, sectors, and majors) to unpack the relationship between higher education and intergroup attitudes, specifically anti-i…
Politics and Prejudice: How Political Discussion With Peers Is Related to Attitudes About Immigrants During Adolescence
Research on prejudice has shown that with whom we surround ourselves matters for intergroup attitudes, but these studies have paid little attention to the content of those interactions. Studies on political socialization and deliberation have focused on the content of interaction by examining the transmission of norms as well as the direct consequences of political discussion on attitudes and behavior. However, this literature has not focused on …
Rally around the flag? Explaining changes in Swedish public opinion toward Nato membership after Russia's invasion of Ukraine
After Russia's invasion of Ukraine, Sweden changed its historic position of non-alignment and applied for membership in the NATO military alliance. This decision coincided with a shift in public opinion in favor of NATO membership, in what has been described as the largest and fastest shift in public opinion that has ever been measured in Swedish history. We examine two aspects of this 'rally around the flag effect' to explain this change, the ef…
Scapegoating Immigrants in Times of Personal and Collective Crises: Results from a Czech Panel Study
According to scapegoat theory, individuals tend to attribute personal or social problems to an out-group (real or imagined). This self-serving bias protects the ego or social identity from responsibility while increasing prejudice towards the out-group blamed for feelings of frustration. In this research note, we test this theory using five waves of the Czech Household Panel Study (CHPS 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020), which captures the tail end o…
Even in Sweden: The Effect of Immigration on Support for Welfare State Spending
While the politics of globalization and welfare state retrenchment have garnered much attention in recent years, scholarly research on public support for welfare state expenditure is comparatively sparse. Furthermore, new pressures, specifically international immigration and resulting ethnic heterogeneity, add a new challenge to the welfare state. In this article, I analyse support for social welfare expenditure in Sweden—the country that spends …
Family Life in Context: Men and Women's Perceptions of Fairness and Satisfaction Across Thirty Countries
Existing scholarship contends that satisfaction with family life is relative: that what individuals expect out of their marriages in terms of housework and possibly more generally depends on what is typical in that country. These expectations are derived from a relative deprivation framework, which claims that individuals engage in social comparison with similar others and experience dissatisfaction or other forms of psychological distress if the…
Neo-nationalism in Western Europe
The increasing popularity of radical right parties in Western Europe has received widespread attention. Despite a rather large literature on parties with explicitly anti-immigrant platforms, there ...
The political consequences of contemporary immigration
This article synthesizes research on political outcomes associated with increasing immigration, with an emphasis on cross‐national studies of European countries, where immigration is a relatively newer phenomenon compared to the United States and other traditional immigrant destinations. We begin with explanations of and research on anti‐immigrant sentiment, not a political phenomenon in itself but considered an important precursor to other relev…
Immigrant presence, group boundaries, and support for the welfare state in Western European societies
The intersection of group dynamics and socioeconomic status theories is applied as a framework for the puzzling relationship of immigration and support for the welfare state in Western Europe. Group dynamics theories suggest that how individuals define their group boundaries moderates the impact of immigration on support for the welfare state. Immigrant presence should have the strongest effects for those with exclusive national group boundaries;…
Immigration or Welfare? The Progressive's Dilemma Revisited
Previous cross-national research on the link between immigration and the welfare state has focused exclusively on the relationship between the size of a country's foreign-born population and support for redistribution, neglecting that people vary in their responses to immigration. In this article, the authors revisit the progressive's dilemma by testing its theoretical proposition-that immigration and welfare are incompatible-in two novel ways. F…
Immigration and the welfare state: A cross-regional analysis of European welfare attitudes
A growing body of research connects diversity to anti-welfare attitudes and lower levels of social welfare expenditure, yet most evidence comes from analyses of US states or comparisons of the United States to Europe. Comparative analyses of European nation-states, however, yield little evidence that immigration – measured at the country-level – reduces support for national welfare state programs. This is not surprising, given that research sugge…
From radical right to neo-nationalist
In this article, we investigate the ideology of the populist radical right (PRR) and the extent to which its political message has changed over time. In doing so, we also judge the usefulness of the PRR-tag. Like seminal scholarship on these parties, we contend that both economic and social positions are relevant for contemporary radical right parties. Further, we argue that contemporary parties’ stances are indicative of a nationalist ideology. …
Peer Attitudes and the Development of Prejudice in Adolescence
According to a number of psychological and sociological theories, individuals are susceptible to social influence from their immediate social environment, especially during adolescence. An important social context is the network of one's peers. However, data limitations, specifically a lack of longitudinal data with information about respondents' social networks, have limited previous analyses of the relationship between peers and prejudice over …
Politics and Prejudice: How Political Discussion With Peers Is Related to Attitudes About Immigrants During Adolescence
Research on prejudice has shown that with whom we surround ourselves matters for intergroup attitudes, but these studies have paid little attention to the content of those interactions. Studies on political socialization and deliberation have focused on the content of interaction by examining the transmission of norms as well as the direct consequences of political discussion on attitudes and behavior. However, this literature has not focused on …
A New Approach to the Study of Tolerance: Conceptualizing and Measuring Acceptance, Respect, and Appreciation of Difference
Previous empirical research on tolerance suffers from a number of shortcomings, the most serious being the conceptual and operational conflation of (in)tolerance and prejudice. We design research to remedy this. First, we contribute to the literature by advancing research that distinguishes analytically between the two phenomena. We conceptualize tolerance as a value orientation towards difference. This definition-which is abstract and does not c…
Argumentum ad populum: A reply to Bonikowski and DiMaggio
Our reply to Bonikowski and DiMaggio (2021) is in three parts. First, we clarify the aim of our research note (Eger & Hjerm, 2021). Our original critique was based on a replication of their inductive analysis, and we evaluated their work using best practices for the methodology that they chose. Our argument is straightforward: If one is going to use inductive methods to say something meaningful about the real world, one needs to make sure that th…
Suppression, Spikes, and Stigma: How Covid-19 Will Shape International Migration and Hostilities toward It
Border closures associated with COVID-19 constitute a response to an exogenous shock unrelated to migration. In this IMR Dispatch, we argue that the impact of policies initially implemented to halt movement and curb the spread of the disease will nonetheless have medium- and longer term consequences for international migration. Specifically, we argue that these initial border restrictions have set in motion demographic and sociological processes …
Does Higher Education Have Liberalizing or Inoculating Effects? A Panel Study of Anti-Immigrant Sentiment before, during, and after the European Migration Crisis
Previous research has consistently shown a negative correlation between education and anti-immigrant sentiment. This association is most pronounced when distinguishing between adults with higher education and those without a tertiary degree. Yet it remains unclear whether educational attainment actually matters for attitudes, mainly due to a lack of longitudinal studies. This article investigates the so-called liberalizing effect of education on …
Identifying varieties of nationalism: A critique of a purely inductive approach
Most theoretical and empirical approaches to nationalism not only distinguish between ethnic and civic notions of national belonging but also differentiate national identity from national hubris, pride, and attachment. In this research note, we examine recently published research on nationalist sentiments in the United States that takes a different approach. The study in question, ‘Varieties of American Popular Nationalism' by Bonikowski and DiMa…
When I Was Growing Up: The Lasting Impact of Immigrant Presence on Native-Born American Attitudes towards Immigrants and Immigration
Scholarship, including seminal research on prejudice, identifies adolescence as a critical period for the development of attitudes. Yet most sociological research on prejudice, especially in the form of anti-immigrant sentiment, focuses on the relationship between contemporaneous social conditions and attitudes towards out-groups while neglecting the demographic context during one's impressionable years. Therefore, we design research to investiga…
Speak English”: A Comment on English Language Instruction in an Era of Neo‐Nationalism
Previous research on neo‐nationalism has largely focused on the political arena, analyzing voters, parties, and policies. The scholarship featured in this special issue moves beyond the analysis of neo‐nationalism in contemporary politics to show how the ideology is enacted at the micro level. The stage for these dynamic interactions is educational settings related to the teaching of English. In this article, we comment on this new research that …
The Polarizing Effect of Anti-Immigrant Violence on Radical Right Sympathies in Germany
While radical right parties championing anti-immigrant platforms have made electoral gains throughout Europe, anti-immigrant sentiment—a key indicator of radical right support—has not dramatically increased during this same period. In this article, we seek to help make sense of this paradox by incorporating a contextual factor missing from previous studies: levels of anti-immigrant violence. Our key argument is that higher levels of collective vi…
Migration Stigma: Understanding Prejudice, Discrimination, and Exclusion
An introduction to the concept of “migration stigma,” along with new analytical frameworks to deepen understanding of the experiences of immigrants, their descendants, and native-born residents in immigrant-receiving societies. Due to economic crises, sociopolitical instability, and climate change, international migration is likely to persist if not increase in the future. Meanwhile, struggles to secure widespread acceptance of immigrant populati…
Scapegoating Immigrants in Times of Personal and Collective Crises: Results from a Czech Panel Study
According to scapegoat theory, individuals tend to attribute personal or social problems to an out-group (real or imagined). This self-serving bias protects the ego or social identity from responsibility while increasing prejudice towards the out-group blamed for feelings of frustration. In this research note, we test this theory using five waves of the Czech Household Panel Study (CHPS 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020), which captures the tail end o…
Unpacking the liberalizing potential of higher education: An analysis of academic majors, anti-Black prejudice, and opposition to immigration
In this article, we challenge the prevailing assumption about the impact of higher education on attitudes toward racial and ethnic minorities by examining whether educational effects are monolithic or manifold instead. Using data from the General Social Survey (1972-2021), we use a variety of measures of education (years, levels, sectors, and majors) to unpack the relationship between higher education and intergroup attitudes, specifically anti-i…
National identity, support for democracy, and the mediating role of civic beliefs and participation
This article explores the social mechanisms connecting national identity and support for democracy. Our investigation centers on the mediating role of civic beliefs and participation, employing data sourced from the European Value Survey (EVS 2017), which encompasses a total of 36 countries. First, our findings reveal a positive effect of voluntary (civic) national identity and support for democracy and a negative effect of non-voluntary (ethnic)…
What is the Liberalizing Potential of Higher Education? An Analysis of Academic Fields and Anti-Immigrant Sentiment Across 32 Countries
The link between educational attainment and attitudes towards out-groups stands out as one of the most consistent statistical associations in the social and political sciences. However, a recent analysis of survey data from the United States finds that the relationship between higher education and out-group prejudice depends on the content of education. In this Research Note, we replicate that study's analysis of tertiary-level academic majors wi…
Rally around the flag? Explaining changes in Swedish public opinion toward Nato membership after Russia's invasion of Ukraine
After Russia's invasion of Ukraine, Sweden changed its historic position of non-alignment and applied for membership in the NATO military alliance. This decision coincided with a shift in public opinion in favor of NATO membership, in what has been described as the largest and fastest shift in public opinion that has ever been measured in Swedish history. We examine two aspects of this 'rally around the flag effect' to explain this change, the ef…
Political science (22 works) · Sociology (19 works) · Law (16 works) · Psychology (14 works) · Immigration (13 works) · Law (13 works) · Politics (13 works) · Economics (10 works) · Social Psychology (10 works) · Migration, Refugees, and Integration (9 works)