Examining the Effects of Discriminatory Climates on Migrants’ Host Country Identification: The Mediating Role of (Un)met Expectations

It has been argued that migrant integration outcomes are negatively affected by discriminatory climates, which are environments in which individuals are made to feel unwelcome or excluded based on certain demographic features such as their ethnicity, religion, or nationality. Such discriminatory climates are different from discrimination generally in that they represent accumulations of unwelcoming opinions toward migrants that do not necessarily manifest themselves as concrete instances of personal discrimination, and as such warrant separate inquiry. However, empirical analyses of the potential effects of such climates on migrants’ attitudes and behavior are still relatively rare. To fill this gap in the literature, I examine data from the European Social Survey, particularly the responses of roughly 10000 migrants residing in 17 European countries over a period of seven years (2016-2022), as well as evidence from an original survey experiment among migrants in Germany, Ireland, the Netherlands, and the United Kingdom. Combining these two analyses allows me to generate results that are both generalizable and causal. In line with my theorizing, I find that discriminatory climates violate migrants’ expectations about life in their host country, which in turn reduces their identification with the host society. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.