Norm Hierarchies, Good Citizenship, and Native-Immigrant Conflict in Europe

• In Event: New Directions in Immigration Research

Abstract

Conflict over “ways of life” is at the heart of opposition to multiculturalism in Europe. Beliefs about the extent to which natives and immigrants have different norms and values have been shown to drive anti-immigrant sentiment. Yet previous studies have not established which norms and which values matter more than others in shaping native-immigrant conflict. We present a simple, cost-effective, and easily scalable experimental design that can produce data on norm hierarchies across countries by measuring public attitudes toward violations of civic norms of democratic citizenship. We then ask whether these norm hierarchies—which reveal nations’ internalized concepts of good citizenship—are applied evenly to assess public behavior by natives and immigrants. We present pilot project data from seven European countries. Our results can inform the design of country-specific curricula for citizenship classes that facilitate immigrant integration while reflecting actual –rather than perceived—differences between natives’ and immigrants’ values

Authors

• Nicholas Sambanis, Yale University

• Krzysztof Krakowski, King’s College London

• Eleni Kyrkopoulou, Yale University