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Largely due to immigration, European societies have grown increasingly diverse. The current study seeks to determine how citizens characterize their experiences with this diversity and whether various types of intergroup exposure can influence immigration attitudes. This analysis takes a unique approach by comparing positive, negative, and neutral intergroup exposure characterizations, along with those reporting no exposure at all. Using internationally representative data from the 2014 European Social Survey, this paper demonstrates how these different characterizations predict citizens' immigration attitudes. Results indicate that positive and negative experiences have opposing effects that are roughly symmetrical in magnitude and both are more intense when experienced in high frequency. Neutral exposure is actually much more common than negative experiences and represents a net benefit compared to those with no exposure at all. The results present important implications for future research and highlight several encouraging patterns for diversity across Europe. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Because internal and international migration are typically conceptualized and measured separately, empirical evidence on the links between these two forms of population movement remains partial. This paper takes a step towards integration by establishing how internal and international migration precede one another in various sequenced relationships from birth to age 50 in 20 European countries. We apply sequence and cluster analysis to full retrospective migration histories collected as part of the Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe in 2008–09 and 2017, for individuals born between 1950 and 1965. The results show that nearly all international migrants engage in internal mobility at some point in their lives. However, individual migration trajectories are delineated by the order of internal and international moves, the duration and timing of stays abroad, and the extent to which individuals engage in return international migration. Institutional and economic conditions shape the diversity of migration experiences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper I attempt a novel interpretation of Brexit as a 'wicked problem'. Wicked problems are those which are unique and complex, full of internal contradictions, and defy solution, instead only creating other problems. After reviewing the lead-up to the 2016 Brexit referendum, particularly the role of immigration, the core of the paper takes the main criteria for the specification of a wicked problem and applies them to Brexit. Special attention is given to two propositions: that every wicked problem is a symptom of other problems; and that every attempted solution to a wicked problem produces irreversible consequences. Both are seen to apply to Brexit. In the conclusion, I explore 'wicked synergies' between Brexit and the coronavirus pandemic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite a rich literature on the factors influencing the public opinion on immigration, less is known about the top-down effects of political parties and policies on the public's preferences in this domain. We analyse in this paper the impact of political parties' positions and of immigration policies on citizens' attitudes toward immigration. We are interested in the effects of public policy understood both in terms of policy regime, that is, country specific regulations on immigration, and policy outcomes, such as the stocks of immigrant population. The results we obtain, based on data covering twenty-three European countries during the period 2002–2011, point to the existence of top-down influences on citizens' immigration attitudes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper argues that a two-tier system has evolved dividing intra-UK/EU marriages from extra-UK/EU marriages. For the former, marriage is a contract between two individuals overseen by a facilitating state. For the latter, marriage has become more of a legal status defined and controlled by an intrusive and obstructive state. I argue that this divergence in legislating regulation is steeped in an ethnicized imagining of ‘Britishness’ whereby the more noticeably ‘other’ migrants (by skin colour or religion) are perceived as a threat to the national character. The conceptualization of women as legally ‘disabled’ citizens (1870 Naturalisation Act) for whom a state must act as responsible patriarch, is a fundamental part of this imagining of the nation. The paper therefore examines the social (gendered and ethnicized) assumptions and political aims embedded within the legislation. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In the current paper, we investigate how the Lampedusa shipwreck disaster in October 2013 affected newspaper coverage in three European countries (Belgium, Germany, and Italy). Based on data from a quantitative comparative content analysis, we conclude that Lampedusa can be regarded a key event for immigration coverage, but only in Italy, where journalists devoted a considerable amount of attention to the disaster. We also find that the structure and the general tone of immigration coverage changed after the event. However, those changes were only short-termed and immigration coverage quickly returned to its routine level. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The number of immigrants moving to and settling in Europe has increased over the past decade, making migration one of the most topical and pressing issues in European politics. It is without a doubt that immigration has multiple impacts, in terms of economy, society and culture, on the European Union. It is fundamental to policy-makers to correctly evaluate people's attitudes towards immigration when designing integration policies. Of critical interest is to properly discriminate between subjects who are favourable towards immigration from those who are against it. Public opinions on migration are typically coded as binary responses in surveys. However, traditional methods, such as the standard logistic regression, may suffer from computational issues and are often not able to accurately model survey information. In this paper we propose an efficient Bayesian approach for modelling binary response data based on the generalized logistic regression. We show how the proposed approach provides an increased flexibility compared to traditional methods, due to its ability to capture heavy and light tails. The power of our methodology is tested through simulation studies and is illustrated using European Social Survey data on immigration collected in different European countries in 2016–2017. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Pre-arrival integration tests used by European countries suggest discriminatory measures subtly persist in immigration laws. This paper draws on a comparison across the Americas and Europe to identify and explain historical continuities and discontinuities in ‘assimilability’ admissions requirements. We attribute legal shifts at the turn of the twenty-first century to the institutionalised delegitimisation of biological racism and the rise of permanent settlement immigration to Europe. Efforts to reduce Muslim immigration largely motivate contemporary European policies, but these policies test putative individual capacity to integrate rather than inferring it from a racial group categorisation, as did historical precedents in the Americas. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Past research suggests that majority evaluations of welfare deservingness are structured along ethnic dividing lines. The fact that poverty and immigrant status are highly associated across Europe's increasingly ethnically diverse societies may thus lead majorities to withdraw support from welfare programs that transfer money to people who are different from themselves. Utilizing measures of general welfarism, most prior studies have not addressed the interplay between attitudes toward immigrants and support for specific welfare types that rely on different notions of entitlement and attract varying levels of take-up among natives and immigrants. Addressing this gap in the literature and focusing on the example of Germany, this paper asks to what extent anti-immigrant sentiment relates to native-born Germans’ attitudes toward the government's responsibility to care for three recipient groups: the unemployed, the old, and the sick. Anti-immigrant attitudes expressed as ethnic prejudice are associated with lowered support for government intervention to assist the unemployed, while support for old-age and sickness assistance does not appear to be related to levels of negative out-group sentiment. The results suggest that those who harbor ethnic prejudice are more likely to oppose aid that is predominantly means-tested, rather than universal or contribution-based, and that does benefit a large number of non-natives. The negative association between prejudice and support for unemployment assistance is independent of concerns with the economic viability of the welfare system in the face of immigration. This points to the relevance of negative affect beyond subjectively rational motives. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper measures the impact of immigration on migrants' involvement in associations across Europe. Using multilevel analysis on European Social Survey (ESS) data, we address three questions: Are immigrants likely to become members in voluntary associations? Does this likelihood change with the length of stay in the host country? Does the type of the association make a difference? The findings show that the likelihood of migrants participating in associations increases with the length of stay, while second-generation migrant participation is similar to that of the host society. The relation is stronger for expressive associations and weaker for instrumental-utilitarian ones, while religious organisations are more likely to attract new immigrants. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper discusses the relationships between the migratory policies of the EU countries with more experience of immigration and their national political cultures. It focuses on France, Germany and the United Kingdom. It then looks at Italy, a relatively new country of immigration, which, with 3,000,000 legal immigrants, has become the fourth country of immigration in Europe and the first in the Mediterranean basin. In its final part it highlights the incipient process of 'communitarisation' of the immigration policies of EU countries in the last decade. This process, which has already entailed a significant convergence of their migratory policies, is expected to continue after the recent enlargement of the European Union. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines new migration to Europe in the context of EU enlargement and debates about fortress Europe, framing the general agenda for the papers that follow in this special issue. We argue that the (normatively informed) image of fortress Europe is an inadequate account of migration and migration policy in Europe in three respects: the movement of family members, asylum-seekers and labour migrants has been substantially positive; enlargement itself generates dynamics of inclusion as much as exclusion; and there exists a significant component of intra-European circulatory migration. Against the fortress account, the article offers a market-driven analysis of new migration to Europe. In developing this account, we stress how existing theoretical accounts of immigration policy - dominated by a state-centred institutionalist and political focus - offer at best only partial explanations of the new European migration scenario. Both neo-liberal and older Marxian theories of the international immigration labour market need to be re-introduced to explain the selective, expansive and reconfiguring effect of market forces on European immigration policies. Our aim is to underline how new tendencies in East-West migration in Europe challenge and transform the traditional migrant trajectory from migrant to citizen that lies at the heart of state-centred accounts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on a study related to the factors which determine attitudes of immigrants in Europe. The study compares members of two different groups including the ethnic majority and ethnic minority populations in the European countries. The study finding concludes that variation of attitudes toward immigrants among ethnic minority populations is same as of ethnic majority populations.

Jensen, Weibel and Vitus's article critically discusses contemporary Danish policies aimed at the elimination of ethnoracial discrimination, drawing on policy analyses and qualitative interviews with local and national authorities in Denmark. It illustrates how questions of discrimination and racism are marginalized and de-legitimized within the dominant integration discourse, resulting in the marginalization of anti-racism in policymaking. The side-stepping of racism is being naturalized in public policies through strategies of denial and by addressing discrimination as a product of ignorance and individual prejudice rather than as embedded in social structures. The authors examine how immigration, integration and (anti-)racism as concepts and phenomena are understood and addressed in Danish public policies and discourses. Despite denials of racism in Denmark, Jensen, Weibel and Vitus show that, based on re-definitions of identities and relations, it continues to exist and is evident in public debates and policies on immigration and integration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article addresses an understudied question in the comparative political economy of migration. How have trade unions shaped the attitudes of their members toward immigration? Unions are at the core of left-wing politics in most European countries, and support for immigration is usually a left-wing position. However, many of the core constituents of unions are those whose interests are most likely to be adversely affected by an increase in the supply of labour. The article shows that the pattern of European trade union leaders becoming supportive of open immigration policies has solidified over the past decade. It then provides evidence that this rhetoric has shaped the attitudes of union members and that the effect has become stronger over time. Finally, it shows that the effect is robust to the exclusion of countries where self-selection into unions on the basis of ideology is likely to be strongest. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

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This article introduces cultural gravity as a concept that serves to better disentangle the direction and magnitude of the effects from migration, which is controversial in recent literature. The aim is to test for cultural gravity effects on both the geographic concentration and human capital productivity of immigrants in the EU15 countries. Operationally, we proceed to construct an empirical cultural gravity measure and test it with the use of a composite cross-sectional database, comprising, inter alia, the World Value Survey and Eurostat Census data. After an initial exploration of relevant cultural data by means of multivariate statistical analysis, we present an extended formulation of a gravity model approached through logistic regression methods and a three-stage least-squares estimation. Our results clearly demonstrate the existence of a cultural gravity effect among immigrants. Finally, an interesting finding is that cultural gravity also plays a significant role in the context of the Culture-Based Development ( CBD) growth model. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article examines the rise of the one of the most extremist political parties in Europe, Golden Dawn. It sketches the historical trajectory of the Greek far right, examines the ideological, organisational and voter profile of Golden Dawn, and offers possible explanations for its breakthrough in the 2012 elections. The article shows how the economic crisis has brought a massive realignment of the Greek electorate away from mainstream parties, giving rise to anti-system and anti-immigrant sentiments. Golden Dawn's violent tactics have allowed the party to establish an anti-system and anti-immigrant profile and capitalise on these sentiments. The party's future will depend on its capacity to absorb organisationally any future tensions between party pragmatists and idealists. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Discussing new or recently reformed citizenship tests in the USA, Australia, and Canada, this article asks whether they amount to a restrictive turn of new world citizenship, similar to recent developments in Europe. I argue that elements of a restrictive turn are noticeable in Australia and Canada, but only at the level of political rhetoric, not of law and policy, which remain liberal and inclusive. Much like in Europe, the restrictive turn is tantamount to Muslims and Islam moving to the center of the integration debate. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Drawing upon results from the TIES survey on the second generation in eight European countries the authors propose a new perspective on integration or assimilation. The proposed comparative integration context theory argues that participation in social organizations and belonging to local communities across European cities is strongly dependent on the integration context. Differences in integration contexts include institutional arrangements in education, the labour market, housing, religion and legislation. Differences in the social and political context are especially important for social and cultural participation and belonging. The TIES data show high degrees of local involvement in the second generation and the dwindling centrality of single ethnic belongings - a reflection of the dramatically changing ethnic and (sub)cultural landscapes in cities in Europe. The article challenges established notions of 'newcomers' and 'natives', explores the 'remaking of the mainstream' and argues for the investigation of mobility pathways for a better understanding of integration or assimilation as on-going processes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]