Why are there so many of them? How Perceived Immigration and Anti-immigrant Attitudes affect Solidarity

Solidarity is intuitively valuable for living together in societies and is often seen as an inherently necessary component of a viable society. It is associated with several outcomes which are generally considered as desirable such as interindividual co-operation or lower transaction costs. This paper focuses on immigration as one determinant shaping solidarity within and across countries. It aims to contribute to the debate about how immigration influences societal coexistence by distinguishing between the actual and perceived extent of immigration. Relying on theories of group threat stating that solidarity may decrease when immigrants are considered as a threat to the composition and meaning of their national in-group, we focus on the interplay between attitudes and perceptions: We argue that perceived immigration in interaction with anti-immigrant attitudes is one channel through which variation in ethnic diversity affects levels of solidarity within a society. To test our hypothesis, we combine country level data with individual level data using two waves of the European Social Survey (2002 and 2014) as they allow to operationalise perceived migration as well as solidarity. Using multilevel analysis (individuals nested in country years nested in countries) allows for a cross-country longitudinal test of the hypothesized mechanism. Descriptive analyses reveal that actual and perceived migration are distinct concepts and do not follow the same pattern. Supportive of our hypothesis, preliminary results show a significant interaction: holding anti-immigrant attitudes in combination with perceiving high levels of immigration result in less social solidarity suggesting that perceptional elements are a crucial factor when it comes to the question how immigration affects solidarity.