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This article examines the relationship between (sub)national identity and attitudes towards immigrants in the multinational context of Belgium. We extend our previous studies by analysing a longer time period (1995–2020) and by making a strong case for the idea that measurement invariance testing and theoretical meaningfulness are closely intertwined. To examine whether and how the relationship between (sub)national identity and perceived ethnic threat has changed over time and between regions, we first test for metric invariance of the latent concepts. Using data from the Belgian National Election Studies, we illustrate that evaluating invariance of measurements is a necessary condition for comparative research, but also that measurement equivalence testing should be considered as an empirical guide showing researchers where substantial conclusions should potentially be revisited and theoretical validity rethought. Next, we verify whether the relationship between (sub)national identity and perceptions of ethnic threat across subnational units can be attributed to different conceptions of community membership -in terms of ethnic and/or civic citizenship conceptions- in Flanders and Wallonia. While we expected that a strong identification with Flanders would primarily be related to an ethnic citizenship representation, and as a result, stronger feelings of threat towards immigrants; we expected that a strong identification with Wallonia would primarily be related to a civic representation of the nation and therefore lower feelings of threat. Thanks to our thorough invariance testing strategy, the conceptualisation and measurement of (sub)national identity had to be adjusted in Wallonia, and the hypotheses had to be qualified.

Attitudes toward immigrants are typically investigated from the perspective of the dominant native majority group versus the subordinate ethnic minority group, but there are no apparent reasons why established minority groups would be exempt of negative attitudes towards new immigrant groups. This article investigates the roots of anti-immigrant attitudes among Belgians of Turkish and Moroccan descent. For that purpose, we analyze survey data from the Belgian Ethnic Minorities Elections Study 2014. Our results confirm that negative predispositions toward the arrival of new immigrants in general and Eastern Europeans in particular are also present among Turkish and Moroccan Belgians. Furthermore, we find that feelings of unfair treatment shape anti-immigrant attitudes in important ways. However, the direction of the relationship (positive vs. negative) depends crucially on the specific setting of unfair treatment. While perceived unfair treatment in the labor market arouses interminority hostility, experiences of unfair treatment by the government or in daily life lead to positive attitudes towards newcomers. Identification with the nation rather than with the ethnic group is significantly linked to more negative attitudes towards new immigrants in general (but not towards Eastern European immigrants). We furthermore find that the strength of the relationship between unfair treatment/identity and interminority attitudes depends on the particular immigrant group being evaluated.

AbstractIn this study we investigate the relationship between different definitions of national citizenship, sympathy for welfare recipients, and how this relation is mediated by attitudes towards immigrants. We make use of the 2008 wave of the Belgian Political Panel Survey 2006–11, in which over 4,800 18‐year‐old adolescents were questioned. The results demonstrate that an agreement with both ethnic and civic definitions of national citizenship is related to reduced sympathy for welfare recipients, although the association with an ethnic view on citizenship is clearly dominant. Furthermore, these relations are almost entirely of an indirect nature: ethnic and civic citizenship attitudes are associated with negative views on immigrants, which, in turn, is the key variable that is associated with reduced sympathy for welfare recipients.

Public and commercial news follow distinct logics. We evaluate this duality in television news coverage on immigration. First, by means of a large-scale content analysis of Flemish television news ( N = 1630), we investigate whether immigration coverage diverges between both broadcasters. Results show that, despite an overall negativity bias and relative homogeneity between the broadcasters, commercial news contains slightly more sensational and tabloid characteristics than public news. The latter promotes a more balanced view of immigration. These differences are stable over time. Second, using cross-sectional and panel data, we assess whether a preference for public versus commercial news is associated with an attitudinal gap in anti-immigrant attitudes. Findings demonstrate that individuals who prefer commercial news are more negative towards immigrants. We suggest that differences in news content may explain this attitudinal gap. In light of the debate around 'public value' offered by public service media across Europe, we tentatively conclude that public broadcasters have the potential to foster tolerance and provide balanced information by prioritizing a normative view over a market logic. The linkage between news coverage and the gap in attitudes between commercial and public news viewers warrants closer investigation in the future.

Research on the political development of adolescents is mainly focused on political engagement and attitudes. The more complex relationship between attitudes and voting behavior is less studied among citizens under the legal voting age. We investigate whether there is a link between social attitudes and voting propensities among Flemish adolescents, using data from the Parent-Child Socialization Study 2012. We observe attitude-vote consistency for three Flemish parties with a clear-cut ideological profile - the Green, radical rightist and Flemish Nationalist party. Findings show that adolescents' attitude-vote consistency is reinforced by their level of political sophistication. The correspondence between social attitudes and vote choice, however, is not impressive and significantly lower than among experienced adults, leaving room for other influential factors. [Copyright Elsevier Ltd.]

This study explores how researchers' analytical choices affect the reliability of scientific findings. Most discussions of reliability problems in science focus on systematic biases. We broaden the lens to emphasize the idiosyncrasy of conscious and unconscious decisions that researchers make during data analysis. We coordinated 161 researchers in 73 research teams and observed their research decisions as they used the same data to independently test the same prominent social science hypothesis: that greater immigration reduces support for social policies among the public. In this typical case of social science research, research teams reported both widely diverging numerical findings and substantive conclusions despite identical start conditions. Researchers' expertise, prior beliefs, and expectations barely predict the wide variation in research outcomes. More than 95% of the total variance in numerical results remains unexplained even after qualitative coding of all identifiable decisions in each team's workflow. This reveals a universe of uncertainty that remains hidden when considering a single study in isolation. The idiosyncratic nature of how researchers' results and conclusions varied is a previously underappreciated explanation for why many scientific hypotheses remain contested. These results call for greater epistemic humility and clarity in reporting scientific findings.