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Immigration is among the most vividly discussed topics in Europe's national parliaments in recent years, often with a particular emphasis on the inflow of Muslims. This article examines the link between articulations of national political parties (political elite discourses) and natives' attitudes toward immigrants in Europe. It provides a nuanced view of this relationship by (i) distinguishing more (inclusionary) from less (exclusionary) immigration-friendly political elites and (ii) isolating natives' openness toward two specific groups: Muslim immigrants and ethnically similar immigrants. Combining the European Social Survey with party manifesto data and other sources, the analysis reveals that political elite discourses perform better in explaining natives' attitudes compared to national demographic or economic aspects. Native Europeans' attitudes toward Muslim immigrants are more hostile in countries where political elites are more exclusionary and more welcoming where political elites are more inclusionary. In contrast, Europeans' views on ethnically similar immigrants seem largely unaffected by exclusionary political elites. These findings suggest that political elites can play an important role in fostering or impeding immigrant integration by shaping public opinion, particularly toward more marginalized immigrant groups.

Immigration has been a vividly discussed topic in Europe in recent years, leading to an increased polarisation in many Western societies. This relates to rising immigration rates as well as to significant, dramatic events such as terrorist attacks and acts of xenophobic violence. A plethora of studies has investigated the impact of a country's actual immigration on individual attitudes towards migrants. However, the impact of national discourses about immigration has received significantly less attention in empirical-quantitative research. This imbalance is striking because research has shown that natives' perceptions of their country's ethnic composition are largely biased. Combining sociology and communication sciences, I argue that immigration related discourses influence exclusionary attitudes and ethnic resentment beyond actual demographic circumstances. This is because such discourses are potent activators of feelings of threat, especially regarding specific kinds of ethnic out-groups. I examine effects of mass media, political parties and public speakers on general as well as on group-specific attitudes. To this end, I analyse longitudinal, cross-national, and experimental data sources. The accumulated evidence supports my argument. General media salience affects general concerns about immigration. Moreover, specific kinds of discourses also have group-specific effects, depending on the overall tone and on the particular content. Furthermore, individual receptiveness to messages and discourses is crucial, as indicated by the fact that discourse effects are significantly stronger for certain individuals throughout all studies. This includes those with conservative ideology, lower education, or few daily experiences with foreigners. In sum, I argue that social scientists are well advised to pay attention to the discursive and political climate characterising a particular research setting. Moreover, analysing differentiated attitudinal measures allow a more nuanced understanding of the contextual processes that shape public opinion in a historical period.

AbstractThis study investigates the relationship between major Jihadist terror attacks and manifestations of ethno-religious hostility on social media. Analyzing approximately 4.5 million time-stamped Tweets from 1.2 million users across five European countries, the study focuses on content discussing migration and related topics in the weeks before and after ten significant terror attacks. The findings show a notable and robust increase in hostile Tweets after an attack. An interrupted time series analysis demonstrates a 10% point surge at the time of the attack, followed by a gradual decline. Accordingly, the impact of such attacks on online hostility diminishes approximately seven days after the event. Further analyses reveal that while attacks have the strongest effect on Tweets about Muslims and Islam, the attacks also increase hostility in Tweets about migration in general. We find that the overall attack effect is driven by both intra-user changes in Tweeting and changes in the composition of users posting after an attack. The findings underscore the importance of understanding the interplay between terrorist events and online discourse, shedding light on the dynamics of ethno-religious hostility in the digital realm.

While exclusionary national identities are widespread among Europeans, relatively few people vote for the far right in most countries. Thus, an exclusionary identity in many cases does not lead to voting for the most nativist types of parties. We explain this empirical puzzle by showing that these identities need to be activated to become behaviourally relevant. To this end, we analyse longitudinal comparative data of over 135,000 individuals across more than 26 years and 26 countries combining different survey programmes and manifesto data. We use latent class analysis to show that over half of respondents hold exclusionary conceptions of nationhood. Moreover, this type of national identity predicts voting far right. Using multi-level modelling and within-country estimators, we further demonstrate that this relationship is significantly stronger when a country's political elites across all parties become more exclusionary. Taking the activation hypothesis to the test in a European context, we conclude that the effect of national identity is conditional on its prior activation.

With a growing Muslim population, many European countries need to integrate Muslims into their societies. One aspect that can hinder successful integration are substantial differences in human values. This is because such values are consequential for attitudes as well as behavior. We compare basic human values between Muslim immigrants and non-Muslim natives in four European countries with distinct immigration histories and integration politics: Belgium, France, Germany, and Sweden. For most insightful comparisons, we contrast values of Muslim immigrants with those of Christian natives as well as those of non-religious natives. We employ data of more than 50,000 individuals based on the first eight waves of the European Social Survey. Our findings reveal significant differences in value priorities between Muslims, Christians and non-religious individuals in all four countries. Amongst other things, Muslim immigrants score particularly high in conservation values (security and tradition/conformity). At the same time, they also score higher in self-transcendence values (benevolence as well as universalism). While many of these findings are in line with theory and previous research, the higher score in universalism is unexpected. A potential explanation is the combination of religious traditionalism and discrimination experiences. In other words, religious traditions are associated with more conservative views, but being subject to marginalization can still result in an appreciation of equal opportunities. We find only limited support for differences in hedonism. Religiosity correlates with values of tradition/conformity for Muslim immigrants as well as for Christian natives. Thus, accounting for religiosity renders differences in these values between Muslims and other groups statistically insignificant. While most of these findings hold in all countries, differences are most pronounced in Sweden and lower in the other three countries, which is also true after accounting for differences in socio-economic status and ...

With a growing Muslim population, many European countries need to integrate Muslims into their societies. One aspect that can hinder successful integration are substantial differences in human values. This is because such values are consequential for attitudes as well as behavior. We compare basic human values between Muslim immigrants and non-Muslim natives in four European countries with distinct immigration histories and integration politics: Belgium, France, Germany, and Sweden. For most insightful comparisons, we contrast values of Muslim immigrants with those of Christian natives as well as those of non-religious natives. We employ data of more than 50,000 individuals based on the first eight waves of the European Social Survey. Our findings reveal significant differences in value priorities between Muslims, Christians and non-religious individuals in all four countries. Amongst other things, Muslim immigrants score particularly high in conservation values (security and tradition/conformity). At the same time, they also score higher in self-transcendence values (benevolence as well as universalism). While many of these findings are in line with theory and previous research, the higher score in universalism is unexpected. A potential explanation is the combination of religious traditionalism and discrimination experiences. In other words, religious traditions are associated with more conservative views, but being subject to marginalization can still result in an appreciation of equal opportunities. We find only limited support for differences in hedonism. Religiosity correlates with values of tradition/conformity for Muslim immigrants as well as for Christian natives. Thus, accounting for religiosity renders differences in these values between Muslims and other groups statistically insignificant. While most of these findings hold in all countries, differences are most pronounced in Sweden and lower in the other three countries, which is also true after accounting for differences in socio-economic status and religiosity between the three groups. This suggests that a combination of a country's history of diversity and national integration policies either encourages the convergence of values or leads to a solidification of value differences between groups. We discuss these political and social implications of our findings.

With a growing Muslim population, many European countries need to integrate Muslims into their societies. One aspect that can hinder successful integration are substantial differences in human values. This is because such values are consequential for attitudes as well as behavior. We compare basic human values between Muslim immigrants and non-Muslim natives in four European countries with distinct immigration histories and integration politics: Belgium, France, Germany, and Sweden. For most insightful comparisons, we contrast values of Muslim immigrants with those of Christian natives as well as those of non-religious natives. We employ data of more than 50,000 individuals based on the first eight waves of the European Social Survey. Our findings reveal significant differences in value priorities between Muslims, Christians and non-religious individuals in all four countries. Amongst other things, Muslim immigrants score particularly high in conservation values (security and tradition/conformity). At the same time, they also score higher in self-transcendence values (benevolence as well as universalism). While many of these findings are in line with theory and previous research, the higher score in universalism is unexpected. A potential explanation is the combination of religious traditionalism and discrimination experiences. In other words, religious traditions are associated with more conservative views, but being subject to marginalization can still result in an appreciation of equal opportunities. We find only limited support for differences in hedonism. Religiosity correlates with values of tradition/conformity for Muslim immigrants as well as for Christian natives. Thus, accounting for religiosity renders differences in these values between Muslims and other groups statistically insignificant. While most of these findings hold in all countries, differences are most pronounced in Sweden and lower in the other three countries, which is also true after accounting for differences in socio-economic status and religiosity between the three groups. This suggests that a combination of a country's history of diversity and national integration policies either encourages the convergence of values or leads to a solidification of value differences between groups. We discuss these political and social implications of our findings.

AbstractWhile exclusionary national identities are widespread among Europeans, relatively few people vote for the far right in most countries. Thus, an exclusionary identity in many cases does not lead to voting for the most nativist types of parties. We explain this empirical puzzle by showing that these identities need to be activated to become behaviourally relevant. To this end, we analyse longitudinal comparative data of over 135,000 individuals across more than 26 years and 26 countries combining different survey programmes and manifesto data. We use latent class analysis to show that over half of respondents hold exclusionary conceptions of nationhood. Moreover, this type of national identity predicts voting far right. Using multi‐level modelling and within‐country estimators, we further demonstrate that this relationship is significantly stronger when a country's political elites across all parties become more exclusionary. Taking the activation hypothesis to the test in a European context, we conclude that the effect of national identity is conditional on its prior activation.

Abstract
News media have transformed over the last decades, there being increasing numbers of online news suppliers and an increase in online news consumption. We examine how reporting on immigration differs between popular German online and print media over three crucial years of the so-called immigration crisis from 2015 to 2017. This study extends knowledge on the framing of the crisis by examining a period covering the start, peak, and time after the intake of refugees. Moreover, we establish whether online and print reporting differs in terms of both frame occurrence and variability. The period of the crisis provided an ideal test to see whether the focus of media reporting differed between online and print sources. Employing a most- similar- cases design based on (autonomous) online and print versions of three major German news outlets, we extract the dominant frames in almost 18,500 articles using algorithm-based topic modelling. While results indicate that many frames are more visible in either online or print media, these differences often do not follow theoretical expectations. Furthermore, online media are dominated by particular frames and, hence, show less diversity than print media. However, important key events happening during our period of investigation do not affect overall diversity of frames.

Based on an innovative design, combining a multi-factorial survey experiment with a longitudinal perspective, we examine changes in the public acceptance of immigrants in Germany from the beginning of the so-called 'migration crisis' to after the sexual assaults of New Year's Eve (NYE) 2015/2016. In contrast to previous studies investigating similar research questions, our approach allows to differentiate changes along various immigrant characteristics. Derived from discussions making up the German immigration discourse during this time, we expect reduced acceptance especially of those immigrants who were explicitly connected to the salient events, like Muslims and the offenders of NYE. Most strikingly, we find that refugees were generally highly accepted and even more so in the second wave, whereas the acceptance of immigrants from Arab or African countries further decreased. Moreover, female respondents' initial preference for male immigrants disappeared. Contrary to our expectations, we find no changes in the acceptance of Muslims. We conclude that (i) public opinion research is well advised to match the particular political and social context under investigation to a fitting outcome variable to adequately capture the dynamics of anti-immigrant sentiment and that (ii) the vividly discussed upper limits for refugees seem to be contrary to public demands according to our data.