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We ask how human behavior changes when racial discrimination is costly and when choices are risky. By asking N = 4,944 participants in Germany to form a soccer team in a series of online experiments, we measure decision-making in an accessible way. Higher costs of discrimination can reduce disparities, but we show that these costs can also trigger implicit racial bias: participants who received an additional financial incentive to select more skilled soccer players outperformed nonincentivized participants and differentiated less based on skin color. However, when confronted with risky choices in a lottery, incentivized participants are more likely to gamble to avoid players with a darker skin color. That is, racial (minority) markers alter the risk preferences of people when their decisions carry costly consequences. This implicit racial bias may partly explain why members of visible minority groups are regularly discriminated against in real-world competitive markets. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Categorising certain forms of human movement as 'migration' and others as 'mobility' has far-reaching consequences. We introduce the migration–mobility nexus as a framework for other researchers to interrogate the relationship between these two categories of human movement and explain how they shape different social representations. Our framework articulates four ideal-typical interplays between categories of migration and categories of mobility: continuum (fluid mobilities transform into more stable forms of migration and vice versa), enablement (migration requires mobility, and mobility can trigger migration), hierarchy (migration and mobility are political categories that legitimise hierarchies of movement) and opposition (migration and mobility are pitted against each other). These interplays reveal the normative underpinnings of different categories, which we argue are too often implicit and unacknowledged. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Persistent hiring discrimination as demonstrated by correspondence experiments incites immigrant job candidates and their descendants to modify their résumé to hide their immigrant status, that is, résumé whitening. To date, we have little to no empirical evidence on how common this is in practice. We test the extent of résumé whitening with a representative survey of immigrants in Switzerland (N = 7659). Around 9% of the immigrants used some résumé whitening. Immigrants appear to use résumé whitening strategically when experiencing or anticipating discrimination. Future correspondence experiments should take this into account to maximize external validity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Members of ethnic and racial minorities across North America and Europe continue to face discrimination, for instance, when applying for jobs or seeking housing. Such unequal treatment can occur because societies categorize people into groups along social, cultural, or ethnic and racial lines that seemingly rationalize differential treatment. Research suggests that it may take generations for such differences to decline, if they change at all. Here, we show that a single gesture by international soccer players at the World Cup 2018 – followed by an extensive public debate – led to a measurable and lasting decline in discrimination. Immediately after the galvanizing event, invitation rates to view apartments increased by 6 percentage points for the migrant group represented by the players, while responses to the native population did not change noticeably. We demonstrate that anti‐immigrant behaviour can disband rapidly when the public receives messages challenging the nature of ethnic and racial categories while sharing a common cause. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

When crises hit, social theory predicts increased hostility toward immigrants. We exploit the Covid-19 pandemic as a unique exogenous crisis and examine whether discrimination increased in its wake. Repeating a field experiment in the Swiss housing market in 2018 and 2020, we find no evidence of increased discrimination against the most important immigrant groups in Switzerland. Contrarily, when uncertainty dominates the market, proprietors appear to change their selection behavior by substituting signals of ethnicity for other markers of solvency and reliability and, consequently, invitation rates for immigrants increase relative to native house-hunters. We conclude that crises do not necessarily increase discriminatory behavior in market situations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We examine how contextual variation in aggregated political attitudes shapes ethnic discrimination. Using a field experiment with national coverage we identify ethnic discrimination in the Swiss housing market (N = 7,533 queries for viewings from fictitious persons who vary by name to signal ethnic origin). We use referendums and popular initiatives to identify the aggregated political attitudes at the municipality level in two dimensions: social conservatism and economic conservatism. We show that although aggregated levels of discrimination are low, discrimination varies spatially – higher levels of discrimination are found in municipalities that are both socially and economically conservative. Municipalities that are economically conservative, but socially liberal also tend to exhibit ethnic discrimination. By contrast, we find no evidence of ethnic discrimination in municipalities that are socially conservative, but economically liberal. Considering how the literature highlights social conservatism when discussing the role of political ideology on attitudes and ethnic discrimination, this result highlights how differentiating different forms of conservatism helps better understand the relationship between ideology and behaviour – in this case ethnic discrimination. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract Are politicians more responsive to foreign citizens if they have the right to vote? To examine this question, we exploit regional variation in voting rights for foreign citizens in Switzerland. Our original audit experiments find no evidence that local politicians are more responsive to foreign citizens depending on whether foreign citizens have the right to vote. Another survey suggests that local politicians are not strongly motivated by reelection. Although our findings are preliminary, given the small sample size, they may indicate that responsiveness at the local level may differ from the national level. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The study of transnationalism raises important questions about the effects of political rights that international migrants enjoy in different places. We contribute to this debate asking the following question: Do international migrants who retain voting rights in the place of origin have a greater propensity to vote in the local elections of the country of residence than those who do not retain such rights? We analyse individual-level survey data of voting turnout in the 2015 municipal elections in Geneva, combined with information about voting rights in the municipality of origin (local-to-local connections) and in the country of origin (national-to-local connections). We find statistical effects of national-to-local connections only in models with no additional control variables, while the statistical effects of local-to-local connections are strong and robust. This points to an association between retaining voting rights in the municipality of origin and the propensity to vote in the local elections in the country of residence. We suggest that local-to-local electoral connections are produced by spill-over: By actively pursuing the diaspora, political parties, unions, and local electoral commissions act as vehicles of greater electoral participation not only in migrants' municipality of origin, but also in their municipality of residence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Several academic fields study how immigrants choose their place of residence when moving to, or within destination countries. Existing studies, however, focus on isolated factors, and we do not know whether political factors matter once we have accounted for well-established determinants. This paper examines the extent to which political factors, such as voting rights for foreign citizens, citizenship policies and popular support for right-populist parties, influence internal mobility decisions of newly-arrived immigrants, relative to other variables. We draw on a 2020 conjoint experiment in Switzerland (N = 1596 participants) in the context of a larger survey of foreign citizens who arrived in Switzerland in the preceding 15 years. The conjoint experiment provides data on the causal effects of contextual factors on mobility decisions, allowing us to assess their relative importance. We show that inclusive political reception contexts constitute a pull factor for immigrants. Exploratory analysis indicates that the size of the effect of the political reception context on residential location choice depends on educational achievement, income, legal status, a feeling of belonging to Switzerland and social networks. We conclude that studies of immigrant location choice should routinely consider political factors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With the rise of the Black Lives Matter movement in 2020, the situation of Black people in many Western countries has come under closer scrutiny and ethnic discrimination has been brought to the forefront. Little is known about hiring discrimination against Blacks in many European countries. In a correspondence test in the Swiss labour market, we sent fictitious paired applications by candidates of Swiss (ostensibly White) and Cameroonian descent (ostensibly Black) in response to 354 adverts for sales assistants and electricians. We report significant discrimination against Black job seekers, who must send around 30 per cent more applications than White candidates in order to be invited to a job interview. The level of discrimination is substantively equivalent to results for applicants with a Kosovo-Albanian name that were included in previous correspondence tests in Switzerland. This suggests that in the Swiss case there is on average no additional penalty for skin colour. Explorations, however, reveal significant differences in discrimination rates between urban and rural settings, opening new avenues for understanding why ethnic and racial discrimination vary across geographical contexts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article looks at the immigration profile of the Austrian centre right. It examines whether the Austrian People's Party (ÖVP) can be considered an anti-immigrant party by systematically analysing the party's electoral manifestos from 1994 to 2019. From previously more ambiguous positions, the article identifies an amplification of restrictive positions after 2017. In the electoral manifestos of 2017 and 2019, immigration plays a key role, with a strong focus on Muslim immigrants and their descendants as a 'cultural other'. A major driver of the explicit anti-immigration profile was the restructuring of the ÖVP into a leadership party, which effectively side-lined concentrated interest groups. The article concludes that the party can be classified today as anti-immigrant actor, able to attract anti-immigrant votes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article investigates the politicisation of immigration in Switzerland during two major socioeconomic crises: the oil crisis of the 1970s and the financial crisis of the late 2000s. Based on 2,853 newspaper claims from 1970 to 1976 and 1995 to 2018, we measure and compare differences in salience, polarisation, actor diversity and frame use between crisis and noncrisis periods. We find that while claims-making on immigration was indeed more salient, polarised, and diversified during the oil crisis, the empirical data for the financial crisis are inconclusive or show a slight decrease. Nonetheless, we still find a noteworthy increase in the use of identity frames during both periods. We conclude that while crises may influence claims-making about immigration and thus affect the politicisation of the matter, their contextual links to particular immigrant groups appear to be of importance as well. Crises do not increase politicisation automatically but may provide important opportunity structures that foster it. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article provides estimates of different kinds of contemporary migration trajectories, highlighting multiple or repeated migrations. Using sequence analysis on linked longitudinal register data, we identify different migration trajectories for three cohorts (1998, 2003, and 2008) of 315,000 immigrants in Switzerland. Multinomial regression analysis reveals the demographic characteristics associated with specific migration trajectories. We demonstrate high heterogeneity in migration practices, showing that direct and definitive settlement in the destination country remains a common trajectory and that highly mobile immigrants are less common. We conclude that accounts of a fundamental "mobility turn" have been overstated. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We examine the relationship between attitudes to foreigners and the share of foreigners at the occupational level. Using a question on equal opportunities for foreigners from the Swiss Household Panel, ordered probit regression models show a negative association between the share of foreigners in one's occupation and positive attitudes to foreigners: workers seem to react to competition with foreigners. When we add the occupational unemployment rate, objective pressures in the labour market appear as relevant as contact at the occupational level. Further controlling for occupational heterogeneity establishes that both factors—particularly objective pressures—are probably accounted for by sorting on job quality. We also show that the association between the occupational share of foreigners and attitudes decreases for workers with better job prospects. This implies that workers welcome foreigners to overcome labour market shortages. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Immigration is often perceived as a political topic that overlaps traditional ideological cleavages. Much research has focused on the positions of the extreme right, and little research has examined mainstream parties and their public stances on immigration. This shortcoming hampers broader understanding of political competition on this issue. Drawing on a political claims analysis of seven countries between 1995 and 2009, we present the salience, position and overall coherence of claims made by mainstream parties on immigration control and immigrant integration. Mainstream left parties adopt a more positive/expansive position on immigration and exhibit higher levels of coherence than centrist and right-wing parties. We also show that the impact of extreme-right parties on the political claims of mainstream left parties seems to be limited. Our conclusions highlight that immigration does not necessarily constitute a cross-cutting cleavage across mainstream left parties: Their ideological preferences remain aligned with their positive/liberal discourse on immigration control and immigrant integration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To what extent do political parties in South Africa politicise immigration? We systematically analyse the party manifestos of all major parties in post-apartheid South Africa, using two separate approaches of content analysis: coding all sentences about immigration individually, and coding the electoral manifesto overall using a 'checklist'. Although we can expect high politicisation of immigrants in new democracies, most party manifestos do not treat immigration at all. If parties in South Africa treat immigration in their manifestos, they tend to take relatively inclusive positions, focus on immigrant integration rather than immigration control, and use instrumental frames. It appears that the nation-building project of a post-apartheid South Africa has not led to an increased politicisation of immigration by political parties qua parties, although individual politicians certainly play a role. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While many countries across the world face increasing numbers of immigrants, the literature on attitudes to foreigners and immigrants focuses on Western countries. This article tests broad insights from Western countries in a specific non-Western context – South Africa, a country marked by sporadic violence against some immigrant groups. This provides an important validity check. Data from the 2013 South African Social Attitudes Survey and the 2013 World Value Survey are used to model attitudes to immigrants. In line with research on Western countries, individual personality is associated with differences in attitudes; people in vulnerable positions and those who lack a personal support mechanism are more likely to oppose immigrants. When implemented to reflect the specific context, research on attitudes to immigrants appears to generalise to non-Western contexts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Covid‐19 pandemic highlighted the economic contribution of migrant workers in maintaining essential services and access to goods. This new perspective on migrants as essential workers raised expectations in migration studies that it could reinvigorate an inclusive setting in terms of migration debates and policies. Building on this potential, we examine migration debates in the political party arena with a focus on centrist parties. The analysis focuses on Austria, a country with a high dependence on migrant labor in key sectors and a long‐standing contestation of migration across the political party spectrum. Drawing on an analysis of parliamentary contributions and press releases by the Austrian People's Party (ÖVP) and the Social Democratic Party of Austria (SPÖ) during the pandemic, the study finds that the debates did not change fundamentally. Whilst external shocks such as the Covid‐19 pandemic have a limited potential to reverse the focus on unwanted migration in European party politics, crises can lead the political center to reemphasize bifurcation strategies in response to shifts in public discourse, as this study of the Austrian case during the pandemic suggests. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Immigration is a hot topic in Europe, but research on the media effects on public attention to immigration remains limited. We examine how media coverage affects the degree of importance attached to immigration in seven Western European Union member states. Data come from an extensive analysis of claims in printed newspapers, and the Eurobarometer (2002–2009). The continuous sample of news coverage is aggregated into a biannual panel, and we relate these data to citizens’ perceptions of the most important issues in their country 6 months later (lagged). The public consider immigration more important than other policy‐related issues when there is an increase in the volume of news and more political claims on the topic in the media. The media environment appears to be an exogenous actor that can have agenda‐setting effects on public concern about immigration. Our results highlight limitations of both the ‘policy‐gap’ thesis and thermostatic models of policy making. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: We assess who among migrants is likely to choose unauthorized migration. While the literature has addressed reasons for unauthorized migration, we are the first to model individual choice of actual unauthorized migration. By using data from Albanian return migrants, we can ascertain that we capture actual migration – behaviour – rather than intentions to migrate, and respondents have no incentives to hide unauthorized migration as there are no consequences at this stage. At the individual level, unauthorized migration in a context of circular migration is linked to being young and male – interpreted as risk‐taking individuals – and being free of social responsibilities like having a partner or children. Social responsibilities appear to moderate the impact of risk‐taking on choosing unauthorized migration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Why do immigrants vote less in local elections when they have the right to vote? I present a new representative survey on participation in the 2015 municipal elections in the Canton of Geneva, Switzerland, and predict electoral participation with logistic regression models. Most immigrant groups vote less than the majority population. Four explanations are tested for this difference: social origin (resources), political engagement, civic integration and networks, as well as socialisation. Individually, all these explanations are associated with differences in electoral participation, but contrary to some recent studies, substantive differences between nationalities remain. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For almost 50 years field experiments have been used to study ethnic and racial discrimination in hiring decisions, consistently reporting high rates of discrimination against minority applicants – including immigrants – irrespective of time, location, or minority groups tested. While Peter A. Riach and Judith Rich [2002. “Field Experiments of Discrimination in the Market Place.”The Economic Journal112 (483): F480–F518] and Judith Rich [2014. “What Do Field Experiments of Discrimination in Markets Tell Us? A Meta Analysis of Studies Conducted since 2000.” InDiscussion Paper Series. Bonn: IZA] provide systematic reviews of existing field experiments, no study has undertaken a meta-analysis to examine the findings in the studies reported. In this article, we present a meta-analysis of 738 correspondence tests in 43 separate studies conducted in OECD countries between 1990 and 2015. In addition to summarising research findings, we focus on groups of specific tests to ascertain the robustness of findings, emphasising differences across countries, gender, and economic contexts. Moreover we examine patterns of discrimination, by drawing on the fact that the groups considered in correspondence tests and the contexts of testing vary to some extent. We focus on first- and second-generation immigrants, differences between specific minority groups, the implementation of EU directives, and the length of job application packs. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The existence of a gap between public preferences for more restrictive immigration policies and relatively expansive immigration policy in Western democracies has received considerable attention. Sometimes, this gap has been explained by the nature of immigration policies: dominated by elites while the public remained uninterested. In many countries, however, immigration has gained considerable salience among the public. There are competing expectations and accounts relating to whether policy-makers ignore or follow public demands on immigration. In this article we examine the potential drivers of variations in the opinion–policy gap on immigration in seven countries (1995–2010). We analyse the effect of the politicisation of immigration on this opinion–policy gap. The strength of anti-immigrant parties is unrelated to the opinion–policy gap on immigration. The salience of the issue and the intensity of the public debate are associated with the opinion–policy gap, and the combination of negative attitudes with extensive media coverage seems particularly conducive to policy congruence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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