The Differential Character of Material and Cultural Perceived Threat of Immigration.

Material and cultural threats generate two distinct yet closely related dimensions, and this two-dimensional structure emerges across different four countries with dissimilar immigration conditions: Austria, Spain, Denmark, and Greece. The two dimensions of perceived threat have significantly different antecedents: more situational and economic for material threat, and more stable, enduring personal characteristics for cultural threat. The two threats also have differential consequences for political attitudes, for instance for the type of immigrants to be allowed, and socially integrated, in one's country: culturally threatened prefer allowing in people like them, and the materially threatened prefer allowing in people different from them, whom will not compete for the same resources. These hypotheses are investigated on 2003 ESS data by exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis as well as structural equations model. By disentangling the two types of perceived threat we reveal effects of threat otherwise masked. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]