The Polarizing Effect of Anti-Immigrant Violence on Radical Right Sympathies in Germany

While radical right parties championing anti-immigrant platforms have made electoral gains throughout Europe, anti-immigrant sentiment—a key indicator of radical right support—has not dramatically increased during this same period. In this article, we seek to help make sense of this paradox by incorporating a contextual factor missing from previous studies: levels of anti-immigrant violence. Our key argument is that higher levels of collective violence targeting immigrants raise the salience of the immigrant/native boundary, which activates both positive and negative views of immigrants and makes these attitudes more cognitively accessible and politically relevant. This argument implies that exposure to violence against immigrants should strengthen existing prejudice (or empathy) toward immigrants and engender feelings of affinity (or antipathy) for radical right parties. Analyses of the German portion of the European Social Survey (ESS 2014 − 2019) and the Anti-Refugee Violence in Germany (ARVIG 2014 − 2017) datasets reveal a powerful interaction effect: exposure to higher levels of collective violence increased the probability of feeling closest to radical right parties among those who held neutral, negative, and extremely negative views of immigrants. However, these events were not associated with radical right sympathies among those holding pro-immigrant attitudes. We conclude that when violence against immigrants resonates with public opinion on immigrants, it opens new political opportunities for radical right parties. These findings should inform future research on the politicization of international migration, especially studies investigating how anti-immigrant attitudes translate into political outcomes.

Observing many researchers using the same data and hypothesis reveals a hidden universe of uncertainty

This study explores how researchers' analytical choices affect the reliability of scientific findings. Most discussions of reliability problems in science focus on systematic biases. We broaden the lens to emphasize the idiosyncrasy of conscious and unconscious decisions that researchers make during data analysis. We coordinated 161 researchers in 73 research teams and observed their research decisions as they used the same data to independently test the same prominent social science hypothesis: that greater immigration reduces support for social policies among the public. In this typical case of social science research, research teams reported both widely diverging numerical findings and substantive conclusions despite identical start conditions. Researchers' expertise, prior beliefs, and expectations barely predict the wide variation in research outcomes. More than 95% of the total variance in numerical results remains unexplained even after qualitative coding of all identifiable decisions in each team's workflow. This reveals a universe of uncertainty that remains hidden when considering a single study in isolation. The idiosyncratic nature of how researchers' results and conclusions varied is a previously underappreciated explanation for why many scientific hypotheses remain contested. These results call for greater epistemic humility and clarity in reporting scientific findings.

Suppression, Spikes, and Stigma: How COVID-19 Will Shape International Migration and Hostilities toward It

Border closures associated with COVID-19 constitute a response to an exogenous shock unrelated to migration. In this IMR Dispatch, we argue that the impact of policies initially implemented to halt movement and curb the spread of the disease will nonetheless have medium- and longer term consequences for international migration. Specifically, we argue that these initial border restrictions have set in motion demographic and sociological processes that are likely to culminate in greater support for restricting future migration. Based on demographic evidence, we posit that after extended suppression of migration, OECD countries and Russia will see a migration spike, akin to a “baby boom” for fertility rebounds. Drawing on sociological theory and research, we hypothesize that these spikes in migration will increase anti-immigrant sentiment among native-born residents in destination countries and mobilize political support for reintroducing restrictive migration policies — triggering a feedback loop. In an effort to help facilitate future research and empirical tests of our model, we identify key concepts, processes, and data sources for the analysis of the pandemic’s impact on international migration over time.

Politics and Prejudice: How Political Discussion With Peers Is Related to Attitudes About Immigrants During Adolescence

Research on prejudice has shown that with whom we surround ourselves matters for intergroup attitudes, but these studies have paid little attention to the content of those interactions. Studies on political socialization and deliberation have focused on the content of interaction by examining the transmission of norms as well as the direct consequences of political discussion on attitudes and behavior. However, this literature has not focused on prejudice as a potential consequence. In this study, we combine these approaches to examine if political discussions with peers during adolescence matter for prejudice. We rely on five waves of a Swedish panel of adolescents, ages 13-22. Results show an association between political discussion and prejudice over time, and that this relationship increases as adolescents grow older. Results also demonstrate that the effect of political discussions depends on the level of prejudice in one's peer network. Discussion with low prejudice friends is associated with lower levels of prejudice over time, while political discussion with high prejudice peers is not significantly related to attitudes.