Does In-Group Consolidation Polarize Attitudes Toward Immigrants?
| Author | Mikko Leino,Juha Ylisalo |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/0032321721998929 |
| Published date | 01 November 2022 |
| Date | 01 November 2022 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
https://doi.org/10.1177/0032321721998929
Political Studies
2022, Vol. 70(4) 1028 –1047
© The Author(s) 2021
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DOI: 10.1177/0032321721998929
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Does In-Group Consolidation
Polarize Attitudes Toward
Immigrants?
Mikko Leino and Juha Ylisalo
Abstract
Scholars have identified a host of individual-level and contextual factors associated with variation
in people’s attitudes toward immigrants. In this article, we argue that individual traits that are
conducive to a positive or negative attitude toward immigrants tend to be more strongly connected
to attitudes the larger the share of people with similar traits in the individual’s immediate living
environment. This is because interacting with like-minded people is likely to strengthen one’s
pre-existing views. We test this reasoning using data on more than 3000 individuals nested within
more than 100 neighborhoods in the city of Turku, Finland. We find that the attitudes of young
adults tend to be more positive the more people with characteristics predicting a positive attitude
there are in their neighborhood, while their attitudes tend to be more negative the more people
there are with a low level of education, a strong predictor of negative attitudes.
Keywords
age, attitudes, immigration, polarization, multilevel modeling, residential segregation
Accepted: 5 February 2021
Introduction
In this study, we investigate the sources of variation in people’s attitudes toward immigra-
tion using neighborhood-level data from a single city in Finland. Our primary interest lies
in the ways in which individual- and neighborhood-level attributes interact in explaining
individuals’ attitudes. We are concerned that residential segregation gives rise to pockets
of like-minded people whose attitudes become more aligned, which, in turn, leads to
increased polarization at the level of society as a whole. Immigration has become a sig-
nificant political topic across Western democracies (Castles and Miller, 2013; Eberl et al.,
2018). Recent evidence suggests that immigration attitudes may have affected electoral
results and the outcomes of referenda in various countries, notable examples being the
2016 Brexit referendum in the United Kingdom (UK) and the 2016 US presidential elec-
tion (Goodwin and Milazzo, 2017; Reny et al., 2019).
Department of Philosophy, Contemporary History and Political Science, University of Turku, Turku, Finland
Corresponding author:
Mikko Leino, University of Turku, Assistentinkatu 7, Turku 20014, Finland.
Email: molein@utu.fi
998929PSX0010.1177/0032321721998929Political StudiesLeino and Ylisalo
research-article2021
Article
Leino and Ylisalo 1029
Although the situation has changed somewhat during the last several decades, immi-
gration to Finland has been relatively modest by international standards (Jaakkola, 2009).
This does not mean that immigration as a policy area has lacked importance. For exam-
ple, when the populist right-wing Finns Party won its first major electoral victory in the
2011 parliamentary elections, the party’s campaign centered heavily on an anti-immigra-
tion discourse and demands for stricter immigration policies (Välimäki, 2012). The party
won 39 seats in total, which made it the third largest party in the 200-seat Parliament.
During the 2010s, immigration became an even more pronounced part of the political
agenda and a mainstay of election campaigns (Grönlund and Wass, 2016).
In recent decades, immigration has also become a significant topic in academic
research. Attitudes toward minorities, for example, immigrants, have received much
attention in the social sciences (Hainmueller and Hopkins, 2014). Regarding the effects
of individual-level characteristics on immigration attitudes, numerous recurring results
have emerged. In particular, researchers have found that women, younger adults and
those with higher education tend to have relatively positive attitudes toward immigration,
while men, older adults and those with lower education tend to have negative attitudes
(Clawson and Oxley, 2012; Hainmueller and Hopkins, 2014; Hello et al., 2006; Scheepers
et al., 2002). However, we have reason to believe that the empirical connections between
these individual-level attributes and attitudes are, in part, driven by the fact that people
often live among like-minded people sharing similar worldviews. This creates “echo
chambers” where people strengthen each other’s attitudes.
Regarding the effects of the living environment on attitudes, studies have largely
focused on ethnic diversity when seeking to explain the attitudes of the majority. This has
led to two influential but contrasting theories: the contact and threat theories. In this arti-
cle, our aim is to broaden the understanding of how the living environment influences
attitudes toward immigrants. Following Walks (2006; see also Bishop, 2008), we hypoth-
esize that residential segregation (Gottdiener and Hutchinson, 2011), whether based on
ethnicity, age, language, or education, produces polarization of opinion across different
parts of a city. We have reason to believe that this polarization happens because of in-
group consolidation (see Sunstein, 2009), that is, by being in contact with like-minded
people. When shared worldviews, similar policy preferences and common attitudes meet,
residential segregation can lead to the segregation of opinions, that is, to the creation of
clusters or “pockets” of individuals with similar attitudes.
This study provides new insight into how attitude polarization and opinion segrega-
tion develop in different parts of the same urban area. Using data from a large number of
neighborhoods in a single city, we examine how the living environment affects people’s
views and attitudes through in-group consolidation. Young age, high education, and—
importantly in the Finnish context—belonging to the Swedish-speaking minority have
been identified as strong predictors of positive attitudes toward immigration. We hypoth-
esize that living in an environment where a large proportion of the population shares
these characteristics strengthens the effects that these attributes have at the level of the
individual. We contribute to two separate, but often linked, theoretical debates. First, this
analysis contributes to the literature on how the living environment shapes attitudes
toward minorities. Second, we address the debate concerning spatial polarization of
opinions in increasingly homogeneous communities created by deepening residential
segregation.
There is some disagreement among scholars about the mechanisms linking residential
segregation to spatial attitude polarization or even to ideological divides within countries.
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