Marcel Coenders

A substantial portion of Europeans opposes granting welfare benefits to immigrants (welfare chauvinism) and to longer-established ethnic minorities (welfare ethnocentrism). We aim to explain welfare chauvinism and welfare ethnocentrism by introducing autochthony as a novel determinant. Autochthony is the general belief in entitlements for firstcomers. Using a representative sample of British (N = 3,516) and Dutch (N = 1,241) natives, we find that autochthony indeed predicts higher welfare chauvinism, even after taking into account a great range of existing explanations. Moreover, an experiment among British natives showed that autochthony not only explains welfare chauvinism towards immigrants but also welfare ethnocentrism towards established ethnic minorities and Muslims. However, autochthony did not explain welfare ethnocentrism towards black Britons. Our findings indicate that the argument “we were here first” can help to shed light on welfare attitudes that are of growing importance in diverse Western societies.

With increasing ethnic diversity in Western European cities, more and more inhabitants without a migration background find themselves a local minority in majority-minority neighbourhoods, where less than half of the inhabitants have no migration background. We investigate whether this affects how they define national identity. We compare Dutch inhabitants without a migration background in majority-minority neighbourhoods in Amsterdam and Rotterdam to a representative sample of the overall Dutch population without a migration background and investigate how people describe what they see as truly Dutch. We find that national identity content is seen in the same way by both groups. The majority views Dutch identity as mostly achievable but does attach some importance to ascriptive characteristics. A smaller class of people is more restrictive and attaches quite some importance to both ascriptive and achievable characteristics. The smallest class considers Dutch identity achievable and not ascriptive at all. All three national identity content classes involve drawing boundaries around the nation-state, but with different degrees of permeability. Our finding that these patterns are almost identical, both in majority-minority neighbourhoods as in the overall population, suggests an important role of national public discourse on national identity formation.

This article examines discrimination against black and Muslim minority groups in 20 Western labor markets. We analyze the outcomes of 94 field experiments, conducted between 1973 and 2016 and representing ∼240,000 fictitious job applications. Using meta-analysis, we find that black minority groups are more strongly discriminated against than non-black minority groups. The degree of discrimination of black minority groups varies cross-nationally, whereas Muslim minority groups are equally discriminated across national contexts. Unexpectedly, discrimination against black minority groups in the United States is mostly lower than in European countries. These findings suggest that racial–ethnic discrimination in hiring can be better understood by taking a multigroup and cross-country perspective.

In this contribution the focus is on nationalism, i.e. the view that one’s own country and people are unique and superior, implying a negative comparison with regard to other national groups and countries. The research questions we set out to answer are: (1) what are the cross-national differences and trends in nationalism across Europe? (2) Which individual and national characteristics can explain these differences and changes in nationalism in European countries? We use high-quality cross-national data from 20 countries from the ‘National Identity’ modules of the International Social Survey Programme, collected in 1995, 2003 and 2013. Considerable differences between countries were found; however, within countries the level of nationalism remained rather stable over the period from 1995 to 2013.

Institutions of Inclusion and Exclusion

This paper examines discrimination against job candidates of Moroccan origin in Spain and the Netherlands. By drawing on insights from group threat theory, we specifically examine how latent ethnic conflicts regarding economic goods or cultural values at the regional level affect discrimination rates of Moroccan minorities in both countries. To this aim, we make use of a cross-nationally standardised field experiment with fictitious candidates applying for real job vacancies in Spain and the Netherlands (n = 3681). We find higher levels of discrimination against job applicants of Moroccan origin in the Netherlands. Whereas job candidates of Moroccan origin are six percentage points less likely to receive a positive response from an employer in Spain, the predicted ethnic gap in call-back rates is fourteen percentage points in the Netherlands. Furthermore, while regional differences in discrimination are not related to regional unemployment figures, we do find some evidence that in the Netherlands a larger share of Moroccans in the region exacerbates discrimination against Moroccan minorities. Altogether, the findings point to the need to give greater weight to the impact of widespread negative beliefs about ethnic minorities and how these beliefs can have a profound adverse impact on the integration of disadvantaged ethnic groups within the labour market.

A considerable portion of European citizens are in favour of limited or conditional access for migrants to welfare provisions. Previous studies found that this welfare chauvinism is stronger among citizens with less favourable economic positions. This study seeks to explain the relationship between economic risk, both objective and subjective, and welfare chauvinism by looking at two distinct mechanisms: the traditional economic explanation of economic egalitarianism and the cultural explanation of ethnic threat. Given the lack of longitudinal studies, we also examine whether changes in economic risk, economic egalitarianism and threat can explain changes in welfare chauvinism over time. Using a four-wave panel-study (2013–2015) collected in Great Britain and the Netherlands, these relationships were studied both cross-sectionally and longitudinally. The longitudinal mediation model was tested by making use of parallel process latent growth curve modelling. In both Great Britain and the Netherlands, economic egalitarianism and ethnic threat explained the link between economic risk and welfare chauvinism. Furthermore, in both countries, an increase over time in perceptions of ethnic threat was found to be the driving force behind an increase in welfare chauvinism, irrespective of changes in economic egalitarianism.

This chapter describes and explains the differences in people's attitudes concerning chauvinism and patriotism in a large number of countries. In order to investigate differences in chauvinism and patriotism between countries as well as between individuals within countries, the chapter analyses theoretical propositions from two different theoretical frameworks: ethnic competition theory and localism theory. According to ethnic competition theory, cross-national variations in nationalist attitudes are related to cross-national differences in the level of actual or perceived competition. Ethnic competition theory thus presumes a two-step causal link: actual ethnic competition induces perceived ethnic threat, which in turn increases chauvinism and patriotism. Individual perceptions of ethnic threat were not often operationalized and measured, but indirectly indicated by means of individual or contextual background variables, and the relative size of the ethnic minority group. Consequently, the relationship between actual competition, perceived threat, and ethnic attitudes has not often been tested explicitly.