Who opposes immigration? Determinants of anti-immigrant prejudice among Croatian youth

In the socio-political context of an ongoing debate over immigration policies across Europe, youth opinions and perceptions should be an important research topic. Recent studies show that anti-immigration attitudes are shaped by concerns about social consequences of immigration (e.g. in-group threat), rather than self-interest motives (e.g. personal income). Hence, the conception and importance of national identity, as well as other aspects of social identity formation, could be critical for shaping youth anti-immigrant attitudes. Socio-cultural factors (e.g. political partisanship, cultural capital) might also influence these attitudes, but the link lacks stronger empirical evidence. The aim of the research was to investigate the role of different identity-based and socio-cultural variables in explaining anti-immigrant prejudice among Croatian youth. The study was conducted in spring 2016 on a representative sample of high-school graduates of City of Zagreb and Zagreb county (N=1050). The following constructs were assessed: conception of national identity, ethnocentrism, perceived in-group threat, SDO, RWA, cultural practices, political ideology, religious practices and sociodemographics. When controlling for socio-economic factors, both the identity-based and socio-cultural variables explained a substantial amount of variance of anti-immigrant prejudice (R2=.50, p