Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/295431 
Year of Publication: 
2012
Series/Report no.: 
CReAM Discussion Paper Series No. 33/12
Publisher: 
Centre for Research & Analysis of Migration (CReAM), Department of Economics, University College London, London
Abstract: 
Different disciplines within the social sciences have produced large theoretical and empirical literatures to explain the determinants of anti-immigration attitudes. We bring together these literatures in a unified framework and identify testable hypothesis on what characteristics of the individual and of the local environment are likely to have an impact on anti-immigration attitudes. While most of the previous literature focuses on the explanation of attitudes at the individual level, we focus on the impact on regional characteristics (the local context). Our aim is to explain why people living in different regions differ in terms of their attitudes towards immigration. We isolate the impact of regions from regressions using individual-level data and explain this residual regional heterogeneity in attitudes with aggregate level indicators of regional characteristics. We find that regions with a higher percentage of immigrants born outside the EU and a higher unemployment rate among the immigrant population show a higher probability that natives express negative attitudes to immigration. Regions with a higher unemployment rate among natives however, show less pronounced anti-immigrant attitudes.
Subjects: 
Anti-immigration attitudes
Regional characteristics
Europe
JEL: 
F22
J15
J61
R19
Document Type: 
Working Paper

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