Do Sociotropic Concerns Mask Prejudice? Experimental Evidence on the Sources of Public Opposition to Immigration
| Date | 01 November 2021 |
| DOI | 10.1177/0032321720946163 |
| Published date | 01 November 2021 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
https://doi.org/10.1177/0032321720946163
Political Studies
2021, Vol. 69(4) 1009 –1032
© The Author(s) 2020
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DOI: 10.1177/0032321720946163
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Do Sociotropic Concerns
Mask Prejudice? Experimental
Evidence on the Sources
of Public Opposition to
Immigration
Omer Solodoch
Abstract
Does opposition to immigration mostly stem from prejudice or from sociotropic concerns about
broad economic and cultural implications on the nation as a whole? Previous work on immigration
preferences cannot answer this question because the two explanations are observationally
equivalent when focusing on the attitudes of natives. I analyze a unique survey experiment that asks
both natives and immigrants of various origins to evaluate different profiles of visa applicants to
the Netherlands. The experiment also assigns an “ingroup treatment”—applications by individuals
of the same ethnocultural background as the respondent. Using this rich data, I show that
sociotropic concerns are the major source of immigration preferences, while ethnic biases play
a moderate role. Remarkably, the ingroup treatment has limited effects on admission. However,
bias against specific immigrant groups is detected in preferences of immigrant respondents and of
those who sympathize with the far-right Freedom Party.
Keywords
immigration attitudes, immigrant attitudes, sociotropic concerns, prejudice
Accepted: 8 July 2020
Introduction
During the last decade, the issue of immigration has played a key role in election cam-
paigns across developed democracies. This was the case in the United States when the
elected president, Donald J. Trump, announced a “total and complete shutdown of
Muslims entering the United States” during his campaign.1 On the other side of the
Atlantic, the increasing electoral support for far-right parties in Germany and in France
has been regarded in the media as an expression of public opposition to open immigration
policies that were implemented by moderate governments.
Department of Political Science, Tel Aviv University, Tel Aviv, Israel
Corresponding author:
Omer Solodoch, Department of Political Science, Tel Aviv University, Tel Aviv 6139001, Israel.
Email: omersolodoh@mail.tau.ac.il
946163PSX0010.1177/0032321720946163Political StudiesSolodoch
research-article2020
Article
1010 Political Studies 69(4)
Immigration was arguably also the most prominent issue in the agenda of the 2017
Dutch elections. Statements regarding controlling immigration flows and promoting
the cultural assimilation of immigrant minorities within the Netherlands were made not
only by Geert Wilders, the leader of the far-right Freedom Party (PVV), but also by
Mark Rutte, Prime Minister and head of the liberal VVD Party. Both political figures
expressed opposition to immigrants that fail to assimilate into Dutch society, but they
used different rhetorical styles. Wilders bluntly expressed disdain toward Moroccan
minorities in the Netherlands, labeling them as “scum,”2 while Rutte rejected such ste-
reotyping discourse, but clearly stated that those immigrants who refuse to adapt should
leave the Netherlands.3
Whether it is only a matter of style and rhetoric—a semantic distinction between two
essentially similar acts of outgroup rejection—or rather, there is a substantive distinction
between them that reflects two distinct reasons for opposition to immigration remains to
be explored. One is an antipathy based upon a faulty and inflexible generalization of out-
groups, also known as prejudice (Allport, 1954). A second potential source for opposition
to immigration may be sociotropy. That is, civic concerns about broad economic and
cultural implications on the nation as a whole, not on the basis of personal circumstances
(Kinder and Kiewiet, 1981). In the context of immigration preferences, sociotropic con-
siderations are non-prejudiced concerns about the potential effects of immigration on the
nation. Such concerns are neither dependent on individual economic circumstances, nor
determined by ethnic identity. But do sociotropic concerns mask old-fashioned
prejudice?
Indeed, public opposition to immigration in the West is often viewed through a lens of
group identity, wherein immigrants are, by definition, the “others,” or the “outgroup,” and
the White majority is the native ingroup. Accordingly, public attitudes toward immigra-
tion are almost always studied by observing native attitudes toward foreign immigrants.
Within this framework, sociotropic and ethnocentric mechanisms have equivalent
observational implications and their isolation is challenging. Concerns over the impact of
immigration on the nation could be driven by either civic or ethnic considerations, but
both scenarios are closely related when only native attitudes are examined. Therefore,
despite a wealth of recent scholarship exploring determinants of public attitudes toward
immigration, a clear identification of the sociotropic mechanism is lacking (e.g.
Hainmueller et al., 2015; Valentino et al., 2019).
This gap has important policy implications. If public backlash is a factor, policymak-
ers with limited resources would design very different immigration policies based on
sociotropic perceptions than they would based on ethnic prejudice. The former would
suggest a “point system” for visas, for example, and the latter, a travel ban that targets
specific countries of origin. In this article I address this fundamental problem.
I argue that three crucial components of research design must be included in order to
differentiate between prejudiced and sociotropic considerations. These are (1) multiple
treatments, which indicate the marginal effect of immigrant attributes that are related to
prejudice or sociotropic considerations; (2) variation in the ethnocultural identity of
respondents, which indicates whether sociotropy is subjective to being a member of the
majority ingroup; and (3) ingroup identification, to test whether sociotropic considera-
tions affect immigration preferences only in evaluating foreigners. The first component
exists in recent experimental studies (Bansak et al., 2016; Hainmueller and Hopkins,
2015; Valentino et al., 2019), but the combination of all three components is lacking in
previous work.
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