The Monkey Cage

This New York Times article discusses the current politics of immigration in Italy — in particular, new measures to crack down on illegal immigrants, who are believed to increase the crime rate. In a 2002 survey, respondents in Italy and 19 other European nations were asked whether immigration tended to improve or worsen crime. In a 2005 survey, this same item was asked of an American sample. Respondents gave their answers along a 0-10 scale. Here are the percent who gave an answer on the “worsen crime” side of the scale:

In almost every country, a majority of respondents believed that immigrants worsened crime. Interestingly, both Americans and Italians were less likely to say this than were respondents in most other nations. Forty-eight percent of Americans said that immigration worsened crime, as did 61% of Italians. These surveys also asked about the consequences of immigration for the government revenue and services and for national culture. On average, respondents were more concerned about the consequences for crime than for these other areas. Jack Citrin and I discuss these and other results in this paper.

The measures recently proposed in Italy have garnered the support of a majority of Italians:

Do you support or oppose each of these measures?

Allowing citizens from other EU countries to stay in Italy for more than three months only if they have enough income and inform the authorities of their whereabouts, and provide their name and address: 63% support.

Expropriating the houses that are rented to illegal immigrants: 58% support.

Allowing immigrants to reunite with their relatives only after a DNA test has been performed: 56% support.

More survey data are here (US only) and here (US and abroad).

Here is a study by Rubén G. Rumbaut and colleagues about crime among immigrants in the United States. One of its findings is this:

The finding that incarceration rates are much lower among immigrant men than the national norm, despite their lower levels of education and greater poverty, but increase significantly over time in the United States for those who arrived as children and especially among the second generation, suggests that the process of “Americanization” can lead to downward mobility and greater risk of involvement with the criminal justice system for a significant minority of this population.

Posted by John Sides at 09:35 PM | Permalink | Comments (7)

Given the recent violence against immigrants in Johannesburg, Capetown, and elsewhere in South Africa (see accounts here, here, and here), some may be interested in research on migration in Africa and South Africa in particular.

One resource is the Forced Migration Studies Program at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg. (It’s director, Loren Landau, is a friend from graduate school.) See, for example, their response (pdf) to the recent violence, which undercuts the government’s claim that this violence was “a totally unexpected phenomenon.” See also these papers on migration from Zimbabwe. Other working papers are here.

Posted by John Sides at 08:20 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

For Spain, the EU adopted full economic integration as the preferred goal, and substantial resources — equivalent to tens of billions of U.S. dollars — were made available to modernize Spanish institutions and infrastructure so they would harmonize with conditions in the north. As these investments were made, Spanish out-migration to the rest of Europe not only did not increase; it stopped, despite a continuing income gap between Spain and the rest of the EU.

In the U.S., in contrast, authorities chose not to pursue full economic integration, instead negotiating terms that were exploitive of Mexico and protective of the U.S. And since the signing of NAFTA, migration from Mexico to its northern neighbor has continued unabated as efforts to increase border enforcement have backfired, encouraging Mexican migrants in the U.S. to remain and actually increasing net undocumented migration.

That is Douglas Massey, writing in the new magazine, Miller-McCune. Here is the article. Here is an overview of the magazine’s mission. Here is the Miller-McCune Foundation’s website. I look forward to more from them.

Posted by John Sides at 09:12 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)

What are American and European attitudes toward immigration? Do they differ? Clearly, the centrality of immigration in “settler societies” such as the United States — both in terms of the literal populating of the country and in terms of its founding myths — is greater than in most, if not all, European countries. But does this make the United States “exceptional” in how immigrants are viewed?

Jack Citrin and I have a recently published paper in which we examine attitudes toward immigrants and immigration in the United States and 20 European countries, drawing on the European Social Survey and the Citizenship, Involvement, Democracy Survey.

Our results suggest that Americans do not stand apart from Europeans in terms of the perceived consequences of immigration, the desired qualities of immigrants, and the preferred level of immigration. There is, however, one difference: attitudes toward cultural diversity more generally.

The two survey items that speak to diversity asked respondents whether they agreed or disagree with these statements:

It is better for a country if almost everyone shares the same customs and traditions.

It is better for a country if there are a variety of religions among its people.

Below are plots of the percent of respondents in each country who endorse homogeneity — i.e., agree that everyone should share customs and traditions and disagree that a variety of religions is better. (See the paper for fancier plots with means and confidence intervals.)

“American exceptionalism” emerges fairly clearly. Relative to almost all European nations, fewer Americans endorse cultural or religious homogeneity, and the differences between the U.S. and these other nations are almost always statistically significant (see Figure 1 of the paper).

The paper has more discussion of these results, as well as the individual- and country-level factors underlying attitudes toward immigration. Another noteworthy finding: few of the most obvious country-level attributes — unemployment, inflation, the size of the immigrant population, the growth of the immigrant population, etc. — explain the differences among countries in attitudes toward immigrants. I’d be happy to entertain other possibilities.

Addendum: In the comments, Chris Zorn asked for a scatterplot, and I am happy to oblige.

Posted by John Sides at 06:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (6)