Tag: attitudes

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Out now — No Sign of Increased Ethnic Discrimination during a Crisis: Evidence from the Covid-19 Pandemic

At the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic, there’s been an increase in hate-crime again Asians in many countries around the world. Some identified more negative attitudes against immigrants — a classic case of what is known as scapegoating.

In this article, just out at the Socio-Economic Review, we wanted to know if scapegoating and discrimination of minorities is a defining feature of crises. That’s what social theory argues. In the present case, we wanted to know if ethnic discrimination increased, too — the actual (and consequential) behaviour where minorities are invited less often to view apartments they want to rent. To do so, we replicated a field experiment in the Swiss housing market at the beginning of the pandemic.

Overall, we find no evidence of increased discrimination against the most important immigrant groups in Switzerland. When digging deeper, we found that uncertainty in the housing market was important. Rather than excluding immigrants more often, proprietors and rental agencies seem to have changed their selection behaviour and focus on different signals or markers of solvency and reliability: Instead of ethnicity/minority status, now immigrants with highly skilled jobs were at an advantage.

We conclude that crises do not necessarily increase discriminatory behaviour in market situations.

Auer, Daniel, Didier Ruedin, and Eva Van Belle. 2023. ‘No Sign of Increased Ethnic Discrimination during a Crisis: Evidence from the Covid-19 Pandemic’. Socio-Economic Review. DOI: 10.1093/ser/mwac069

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Why PR systems may be good for the representation of women

Here’s an old note from my book on political representation that explores why PR systems may be good for the representation of women.

Proportional representation (PR) systems are often touted as beneficial to the inclusion of women as political representatives [almost all of this work uses a binary approach to gender]. In the literature, the argument is typically that PR systems mean larger districts, which is good for the inclusion of “minorities”. What we should be focusing on is the probability that a vote goes to a woman. There are, however, a couple of assumptions that are rarely spelled out, notably that there are few female contenders.

Situation 1 illustrates the assumption (or empirical reality) that men more likely at the top of the ballots, thus more likely to be elected. In majoritarian systems and systems with very small district size, only the top candidates are picked. So there is no inherent advantage for PR systems, but an effect that is dependent on women being selected for top positions.

Situation 2 illustrates that in a larger district, we simply reach further down the list, thus (under the same assumption that women are less likely at the top of the ballot) we are more likely to pick a woman — like any other candidate who is more likely to be further down the list.

Situation 3 shows that having more parties — a feature of many PR systems — is equivalent to having smaller districts: Assuming that all parties tend to be more likely to put men at the top of the ballot, we are no longer reaching down the lists as much (each party gets fewer votes).

So, it’s not PR as such, but district size combined with candidate selection/candidate placement that matters for the political representation of women.

Ruedin, Didier. 2013. Why Aren’t They There? The Political Representation of Women, Ethnic Groups and Issue Positions in Legislatures. Colchester: ECPR Press.

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The association between attitudes and political representation under different electoral systems

It’s been a while since Maria Sobolewska suggested to me, that perhaps the association between public attitudes and political representation may be different under different electoral systems (PR versus majoritarian). The intuition here is that institutions always work in a particular context. To some extent, my work acknowledged this by leaving out unfree countries because the expected dynamics are different — but there indeed is more to it.

I have shown that there is a strong association between positive attitudes to minorities and the inclusion of minorities in political offices.

If we look at the interaction between attitudes and electoral system, we find that this association is much stronger under majoritarian/MMM systems. Although I’m not sure that we should read much into the blue line here (PR/MMP systems) because the ethnic representation score does not vary that much.

At the same time, looking at gender representation, we find a strong association between attitudes in the population and gender representation scores.

Maybe someone wants to dig deeper here? Possibly a consideration of why PR systems may be good for minorities could complement this.

Ruedin, Didier. 2009. “Ethnic Group Representation in a Cross-National Comparison.” The Journal of Legislative Studies 15(4):335–54. doi: 10.1080/13572330903302448.

Ruedin, Didier. 2012. “The Representation of Women in National Parliaments: A Cross-National Comparison.” European Sociological Review 28(1):96–109. doi: 10.1093/esr/jcq050.

Ruedin, Didier. 2013. Why Aren’t They There? The Political Representation of Women, Ethnic Groups and Issue Positions in Legislatures. Colchester: ECPR Press.

Ruedin, Didier. 2020. “Ethnic and Regional Minorities.” Pp. 211–28 in Handbook of Political Representation in Liberal Democracies, edited by R. Rohrschneider and J. J. Thomassen. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

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New project: The long-term impact of refugees on the local population

Today, we’re starting a new project, funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation. Working with Natalia Malancu, Bruno Lanz, Marco Pecoraro, and Philippe Wanner, we will assess the long-term impact of refugees on the labour market, health, reproductive behaviour, well-being, and attitudinal outcomes of the resident population. By looking at past refugee flows, we hope to better understand the likely impact of the rapid arrival of many refugees.

From a purely economic point of view, migration is an efficient means to allocate workers to employers. Indeed, for centuries migration was not only sought by individuals seeking to improve their lives, but also actively encouraged by employers and countries: guest-worker programmes, recruitment drives abroad, or the purported ‘war for talents’ all demonstrate that migration can be encouraged for economic reasons.

By contrast, refugees are driven away from their countries and do not primarily migrate for economic reasons. Fleeing desolate situations and conflict in the country of origin, refugees do not necessarily have the skills and experience to meet economic demands, unlike voluntary migration for economic reasons. Because refugees tend to leave their countries with comparatively little preparation – they flee in reaction to an immediate threat – their economic and social integration (e.g. lack of language) may constitute a further challenge. In the country of destination, some may resist the arrival of refugees — worried about wage dumping, costs of social benefits, tax increases, overpopulation, or a threat to local culture and traditions.

Whilst we know about the potential impact of immigrants and refugees theoretically, and despite an important literature on the economic and attitudinal effects of immigration on the mainstream society, we do not understand well how forced migration and refugees affect the resident population, particularly in Europe. We lack good evidence of the likely long-term impact and how to best handle the integration of immigrants and refugees. In the project, we will focus on three major areas: labour market effects of refugees, effects of refugee arrival on the health, reproductive behaviour and well-being of the resident population, and the implications of refugees on attitudes to immigration. The big bet of the project is that by studying past patterns of rapid arrival of refugees (from former Yugoslavia), we’re in a better position to understand the impact of more recent refugee flows.