Tag: uncertainty

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We have no idea — same analysis, different results

In a recent paper, Akira Igarashi and James Laurence look at anti-immigrant attitudes in the UK and Japan. Like my 2019 paper in JEMS, they and how they highlight the limited research on non-Western countries, but they analysis they do is much more similar to what Sjoerdje van Heerden and I did in Urban Studies. Them like us relied on panel data to get a better handle on changing attitudes to immigrants. Them like us looked at the share of foreigners in the area (this relates to theoretical expectations that individual attitudes to immigrants reflect changes in the share of foreigners in the area; we refer to the same theories). We both used fixed-effect panel models. They find that “increasing immigration harms attitudes towards immigrant”, while we report that “a larger change in the proportion of immigrant residents is associated with more positive views on immigrants among natives” — yes, the exact opposite!

Need another example? Several studies examine the impact of sudden exposure to refugees on attitudes to immigrants and votes for radical-right parties. Such sudden exposure happened for example in Austria and Germany in 2015. In separate analyses, Andreas Steinmayr 2020 finds a clear increase in support for the radical-right, as we find in the work by Lukas Rudolph and Markus Wagner. Max Schaub, Johanna Gereke and Delia Baldassarri, by contrast “record null effects for all outcomes”. Same situation, same strategy to obtain the results.

We could now start the detective work, examining the small differences in modelling, ponder about the impact of how we define neighbourhoods, invoke possible differences between the countries (are the Netherlands an expectation, when the UK and Japan yield the same results? — not likely). Or we could admit how little we know, how much uncertainty there is in what we do, how vague our theories are in the social sciences that we can come to quite different conclusions in quite similar papers. I guess what we can see here is simply a scientific search for answers (it’s not like our research output would otherwise disagree so clearly). It’s probably also a call for more meta-level research: systematic analyses that synthesize what we do and don’t know, because even though individual papers sometimes contradict, we know quite a lot!

Heerden, Sjoerdje van, and Didier Ruedin. 2019. ‘How Attitudes towards Immigrants Are Shaped by Residential Context: The Role of Neighbourhood Dynamics, Immigrant Visibility, and Areal Attachment’. Urban Studies 56 (2): 317–34. https://doi.org/10.1177/0042098017732692.

Igarashi, Akira, and James Laurence. 2021. ‘How Does Immigration Affect Anti-Immigrant Sentiment, and Who Is Affected Most? A Longitudinal Analysis of the UK and Japan Cases’. Comparative Migration Studies 9 (1): 24. https://doi.org/10.1186/s40878-021-00231-7.

Rudolph, Lukas, and Markus Wagner. 2021. ‘Europe’s Migration Crisis: Local Contact and Out‐group Hostility’. European Journal of Political Research, May, 1475-6765.12455. https://doi.org/10.1111/1475-6765.12455.

Ruedin, Didier. 2019. ‘Attitudes to Immigrants in South Africa: Personality and Vulnerability’. Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies 45 (7): 1108–26. https://doi.org/10.1080/1369183X.2018.1428086.

Schaub, Max, Johanna Gereke, and Delia Baldassarri. 2020. ‘Strangers in Hostile Lands: Exposure to Refugees and Right-Wing Support in Germany’s Eastern Regions’. Comparative Political Studies, September, 001041402095767. https://doi.org/10.1177/0010414020957675.

Steinmayr, Andreas. 2020. ‘Contact versus Exposure: Refugee Presence and Voting for the Far-Right’. The Review of Economics and Statistics, May, 1–47. https://doi.org/10.1162/rest_a_00922.

Zschirnt, Eva, and Didier Ruedin. 2016. ‘Ethnic Discrimination in Hiring Decisions: A Meta-Analysis of Correspondence Tests 1990–2015’. Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies 42 (7): 1115–34. https://doi.org/10.1080/1369183X.2015.1133279.

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Out now: Politicising Immigration in Times of Crisis — or how to measure the impact of a crisis when we don’t agree when the crisis was

I’m happy to announce a new publication in JEMS on politicizing immigration in times of crisis. Especially so, as it is the ‘first one’ for two of my excellent co-authors!

The basic setup is quite simple, we look at data on the politicization of immigration — our update on the SOM project. It’s a broad understanding of politicization, looking at how different actors (broadly defined) talk about immigration and immigrant integration. We use claims-analysis using printed newspapers as the basis, which allows us to compare the situation over time. We then examine how the nature of politicization differs during times of crisis compared to non-crisis periods.

We have N=2,853 claims to examine, the oil crisis of the 1970s and the financial crisis of the late 2000s as two external crises not directly related to immigration. Theoretical considerations provide us with expectations of how claims-making during periods of crisis differs qualitatively: we look at salience (how many claims are made), polarization (the positions taken in claims), actor diversity (who makes the claims), and frames (how claims are justified).

And then you sit down to define the crisis periods… we started with discussions in the team, soon realizing that we don’t agree. Then we went to the literature, trying to find a more authoritative definition of when these crises started and ended. And then we fully embraced uncertainty: basically there is no agreement on when these crises stared or ended. The solution is also relatively simple: we just used all the possible definitions (a bit of combinatorics there…) and run separate regression models. 7,524 of them to be precise. The nice thing with that is that you really have to embrace uncertainty, and that graphs really are more intuitive than any arbitrary measure of central tendency.

Yes, you get things that are fairly obvious (we can quibble about effect size):

Sample effect size; grey dashed line on right indicates zero; blue dashed line on the left indicates the median coefficient across all the regression models.

and you get things that are simply unclear, with values around zero quite credible, but would you bet against en effect size of +0.05 or -0.05?

Sample effect size; grey dashed line on left indicates zero; blue dashed line on the right indicates the median coefficient across all the regression models.

What I really like about this kind of presentation is that it naturally embraces our uncertainty about the state of things. Yes, “crisis” is vague as a concept, yes, it is difficult to operationalize it (otherwise we would not run 7,524 regression models), but we still can discern systematic patterns of how the politicization of migration in times of crisis differs from non-crisis moments.

Bitschnau, Marco, Leslie Ader, Didier Ruedin, and Gianni D’Amato. 2021. “Politicising Immigration in Times of Crisis: Empirical Evidence from Switzerland.” Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies. Online First. doi: 10.1080/1369183X.2021.1936471. [ Open Access]

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New Publication: Decision-Making Under Uncertainty

I’m happy to announce a new publication, coming out of the Swiss Subsaharan African Migration Network. My direct contribution to this thematic issue was the introduction, where I examine common strands of the articles in the issue. As hinted at in the title, the focus is on decision-making under uncertainty — and migration decisions are the example to explore these issues.

When I write about ‘migrants’ here, let’s be clear that there is enormous heterogeneity in this ‘group’: different motivations, different aspirations, different capabilities, and different strategies to deal with the uncertainty inherent in migration decisions.

We do not observe naïve and gullible migrants ignorant of the risks and dangers of irregular migration, nor do we find masses of ‘victims’ tricked by fraudsters and smugglers. Instead, we observe individuals with aspirations, navigating a world characterized by limitations and boundaries. Information is patchy, but this has as much to do with the changing circumstances and opportunities—each risky to some extent. Under these circumstances, migrants show great flexibility to reach their goals, drawing on heuristics and narratives as is common in decision-making under limited information.

p.183

When thinking about migration decisions, it’s better to think about a chain of linked decisions — a chain where circumstances can and do change. In these circumstances, occasionally we also observe what I called “migration velleity” rather than ambition.

Ruedin, Didier. 2021. ‘Decision-Making Under Uncertainty: African Migrants in the Spotlight’. Social Inclusion 9 (1): 182–186. https://doi.org/10.17645/si.v9i1.4076. Open Access.

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(Last) Call for Papers: The impact of Black Lives Matter and Covid-19 on Public Attitudes to Immigrants

Deadline 1 February 2021 — Call for Papers: The impact of Black Lives Matter and Covid-19 on Public Attitudes to Immigrants
ECPR General Conference, 31 August- 3 September 2021, University of Innsbruck

When it comes to attitudes to immigrants and their rights, 2020 has seen two major events: the Black Lives Matter protests in the US triggered by the killing of George Floyd, and the global Covid-19 pandemic. In this panel, we seek innovative empirical contributions that study how these events affected social norms and in turn affected attitudes to immigrants or related discrimination. On the one hand, the pandemic a priori heightens distinctions between in-groups and out-groups, which leads to more negative attitudes. The crisis may further create a fertile ground for xenophobia and nationalist tendencies due to increased feelings of fear, threat, uncertainty, and anxiety, which may result in discriminating behaviour. What is more, scapegoating of immigrants and health-related negative stereotypes may surface during the health crisis. On the other hand, the media coverage of Black Lives Matter increased awareness of structural racism and spread the perspective of racial and ethnic minorities. As a result of this, European respondents may have developed more nuanced attitudes to minority groups, and the salience of the news coverage may have led to extended contact and perspective taking that reduce negative stereotypes and will lead to more positive attitudes. We expect temporal and geographic variation to yield insightful comparisons, while experimental studies can reveal likely mechanisms how these major events affected attitudes and discrimination. We also welcome experimental and observational papers explicitly accounting for the intersectionality of categories of difference, e.g. ethnicity, race, religiosity or gender, in triggering prejudice and discrimination.

Panel chairs: Didier Ruedin (University of Neuchâtel, didier.ruedin@unine.ch), Anita Manatschal (University of Neuchâtel, anita.manatschal@unine.ch)

Conference: https://ecpr.eu/GeneralConference

Submit your abstract (max 250 words) online at: http://neuchatel.eu.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_50YdsmYRd5bwZWB no later than 1 February 2021.

Call as PDF

Posted on

Call for Papers: The impact of Black Lives Matter and Covid-19 on Public Attitudes to Immigrants

Call for Papers: The impact of Black Lives Matter and Covid-19 on Public Attitudes to Immigrants
ECPR General Conference, 31 August- 3 September 2021, University of Innsbruck

When it comes to attitudes to immigrants and their rights, 2020 has seen two major events: the Black Lives Matter protests in the US triggered by the killing of George Floyd, and the global Covid-19 pandemic. In this panel, we seek innovative empirical contributions that study how these events affected social norms and in turn affected attitudes to immigrants or related discrimination. On the one hand, the pandemic a priori heightens distinctions between in-groups and out-groups, which leads to more negative attitudes. The crisis may further create a fertile ground for xenophobia and nationalist tendencies due to increased feelings of fear, threat, uncertainty, and anxiety, which may result in discriminating behaviour. What is more, scapegoating of immigrants and health-related negative stereotypes may surface during the health crisis. On the other hand, the media coverage of Black Lives Matter increased awareness of structural racism and spread the perspective of racial and ethnic minorities. As a result of this, European respondents may have developed more nuanced attitudes to minority groups, and the salience of the news coverage may have led to extended contact and perspective taking that reduce negative stereotypes and will lead to more positive attitudes. We expect temporal and geographic variation to yield insightful comparisons, while experimental studies can reveal likely mechanisms how these major events affected attitudes and discrimination. We also welcome experimental and observational papers explicitly accounting for the intersectionality of categories of difference, e.g. ethnicity, race, religiosity or gender, in triggering prejudice and discrimination.

Panel chairs: Didier Ruedin (University of Neuchâtel, didier.ruedin@unine.ch), Anita Manatschal (University of Neuchâtel, anita.manatschal@unine.ch)

Conference: https://ecpr.eu/GeneralConference

Submit your abstract (max 250 words) online at: http://neuchatel.eu.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_50YdsmYRd5bwZWB no later than 1 February 2021.

Call as PDF