Fortress, melting pot or multi-cultural society? Attitudes to immigration and cultural diversity

1. Fortress, melting pot or multi-cultural society?Attitudes to immigration and cultural diversity Lynn Jamieson & Sue Grundy University of Edinburgh

2. What do respondents imagine as a desirable future? • Fortress Europe: keep ‘others’ out. • Melting pot Europe: assimilates new arrivals into ‘European culture.’ • Multi-cultural Europe: cultural, ethnic and national diversity.

3. Methodological issues • People know they may damage their reputation if they are seen as racist. • This may influence answers • More possible to see the process in an interview dialogue. • Value of combining qualitative and quantitative methods.

4. Structured questionnaire items Agreement with attitude statements: ‘it is better for our country if everyone shares the same traditions and customs’ ‘ethnic minority cultures are good for the culture of our country’ ‘there should be fewer people of different nationalities living here’ Questions about immigration controls: ‘should the following groups of people be accepted without any restrictions, with certain restrictions or not accepted’ … Questions about criteria that should be met by those seeking citizenship.

5. Survey results: attitudes to diversity • The majority of respondents are positive or neutral about cultural, ethnic and national diversity. • Small proportions reject diversity and strongly endorse cultural, ethnic and national homogeneity; • ranging from 10% to over a third, e.g. ‘there should be fewer people of different nationalities living here’ Madrid 30%, Manchester 33% and Bratislava 39%

6. Survey results: immigration control • Many believed people from other EU countries should be accepted without restrictions. • True of less than half of representative sample from Bratislava (45%), Bielefeld (44%) Chemnitz (36%), Edinburgh (39%) and Manchester (27%). • Many believed those suffering from human rights violations should be accepted without restrictions. • Respondents from Bratislava, Edinburgh and Manchester were most likely to suggest restrictions on all immigrants.

7. ‘Ethnic’ or ‘Civic’ requirements • Ethnic: the ‘nationality’ of parents and ancestors. • Civic: obeying the laws, working, long term residence. • In general, civic items were endorsed by higher numbers of respondents and only small proportions stressed ethnic items. • In Manchester and Madrid between a quarter and a third of respondents emphasised ‘ethnic’ items but many also stressed ‘civic’ items.

8. Interview results: positive views of immigration There were positive respondents in all study localities: • immigrants bring skills and labour; • are a corrective to population decline; • enrich with difference - Michaela ‘The more different people the better’ (Vienna, representative sample).

9. Interview results: negative views Limits are needed – fear of competition • ‘I don’t want to run into the situation that I’ll be pushed into a labour market somewhere abroad just because others are pressing into our labour market’ (Chemnitz male, representative sample). – the ‘right kind’ of immigrant • ‘As long as they come to work’ (Madrid, female, target sample)

10. Interview results: negative stereotypes • Stories of immigrants and/or asylum seekers as ‘undesirables’ were told in each site: • ‘If you ask me about the immigrants who come here to steal and all that, I’m not happy, I get angry; if they’re people who come honourably, I think it’s just fine.’ (Madrid, female, target sample).

11. Integration or assimilation? • ‘[immigration is] good up to a point; as long as it’s an immigration of integration, not of creating ghettos. You come to a country; accept what there is… don’t isolate yourself, don’t impose’. (Madrid, male, target sample). • Muslims are sometimes singled out in this talk: ‘the way they treat women is awful’ (Madrid, male, representative sample).

12. Madrid: fear of street crime, high unemployment • ‘With the results I have to hand, not assumptions, but results I have to hand, Moroccans and South Americans. Because they’re the ones that have caused me most problems personally … I’m not generalizing’ (Woman, Madrid, Representative sample). • In Bratislava these kind of comments were more often about Roma than immigrants.

13. UK: fear of ‘soft touch’ Britain • a welfare system particularly vulnerable to abuse and attracting ‘scroungers’ • ‘We have to work really hard and they’re just getting loads of money for nothing’ (Gemma, Manchester, representative sample). • ‘We already have problems and we cannot afford anything as it is, you know. Labour [the government] is wanting to bring in the tuition thing [students having to pay higher fees to go to university]’ (Claire, Manchester, representative sample).

14. Concluding remarks • Some support for all three positions, least explicitly for ‘fortress Europe’ • Concerns about immigration were widespread • Variation encouraged by local discourses about immigration combined with respondents’ experience of opportunities and threats • The more educated are more open, despite local factors promoting intolerance • Are positive messages about the EU being maximised?

15. Orientations of Young Men and Women to Citizenship and European Identity www.sociology.ed.ac.uk/youth/