Conference Agenda

Immigration is currently one of the most controversial policy areas in all European societies. Growing migration and the associated immigration figures into the EU are one reaon why populist parties have become increasingly popular in recent years. Proponents of a liberal immigration policy justify their position either with moral arguments or by pointing to macroeco-nomic necessities and overall economic benefits. Despite the presence of these arguments in the media, they are obviously not really convincing for the opponents of liberal immigration policy - a change in attitudes towards immigration has not been observed in recent years. From an action-theoretical perspective, this is not surprising. This is because a "moral" argument fails to recognize that moral reasons are only a weak motive for action for many people and are accordingly overlaid by motives of self-interest. The "economic benefit" argument is similarly problematic. It expects individuals to agree to immigration because it is in the interests of everyone in society. However, this reference to the collective rationality of immigration is rarely in line with individual rationality calculations and is therefore also only a very weak motive for action.

In order to gain understanding or support for an immigration policy that is justified on the basis of both arguments, it is necessary to understand the individual motivations and individual reasons for approving or rejecting immigration and, if necessary, to address them politically. This paper deals with such an understanding of the individual rationality of attitudes towards immigration. In con-trast to previous approaches, which are primarily anchored in psychological concepts, this will be done on the basis of a general model of action. With the help of the Theory of Social Production Functions and Goal Framing Theory, (1) it is possible to systematically derive the indi-vidual and social conditions under which approval or rejection of immigration is individually ration-al. By means of the theoretical tools used, it is (2) possible to justify why the determinants of indi-vidual attitudes towards immigration identified in the literature to date must be extended to in-clude attitudes towards social justice. Building on this, (3) clear assumptions can be formulated as to the conditions under which subjectively experienced injustices and normative ideas about justice become relevant for the approval or rejection of immigration. These assumptions are tested with data from the European Social Survey Round 9 from 2018. The analyses based on multilevel ran-dom-effects models for 29 countries show that attitudes towards justice make a substantial contribution to explaining the variation in attitudes towards immigration and that subjectively experienced injustices can explain a high proportion of the variance, especially among people who describe themselves as economically deprived. Conversely, economically non-deprived members of the majority society and people with a migration background are more strongly guided by their normative ideas about justice (moral argument). By extending the classical explanatory models with attitudes towards justice, this article not only provides new evidence for the causes of attitudes towards immigration, it also proposes a more theory-driven approach to survey-based research on attitudes towards immigration.

European societies are undergoing simultaneous processes of secularization, desacralization, and increased ethnic and religious diversity resulting from immigration (Hooghe et al., 2008). This paper acknowledges the ethno-religious characterization of immigrants, primarily marked by their affiliation with Islam, contrasting with the national and Christian identity of European countries (Storm, 2011; Brubaker, 2016). This recent discursive shift identifies Europe’s post-war immigrants and their descendants as "Muslims," highlighting the contrast between their assumed religiosity and the secularity of Western and Northern Europe (Brubaker, 2016). As a result, inter-group relations are located within the social context of culturalized religion (Astor & Mayrl, 2020), where the threat posed by ethnoreligious others relies on culturalized religion as a political tactic for heightening religious boundaries and galvanizing nationalist or civilizational sentiments (Astor & Mayrl, 2020). The paper aims to discuss religion's transformation into a civilizational or identity marker, influencing inter-ethnic relationships despite losing its purely religious meaning. Despite the declining institutional influence of Christianity in Europe, religion becomes instrumentalized, symbolically representing traditional values despite the loss of its purely religious meaning (Casanova, 2006; Bail, 2008; Hoover & Echchaibi, 2021). This new framework of immigrant identification is frequently used in opposition to the national and Christian heritage of European countries, providing the European national-populist Right with the new “master frame” theme of protecting liberal and Western values against Islam (Storm, 2011; Brubaker, 2016).

Thus, the aim of this paper is to focus on the use of religion as a marker of identity and political differentiation and, consequently, examine the extent to which the level of support for a) parties with higher salience on anti-Islam rhetoric, and b) parties supporting use of religion in politics and restrictive immigration policy explain the attitudes towards immigration. The paper will also investigate if and how these relationships vary across different religious types and different religious majorities of the countries. To address these research questions the multilevel regression models were estimated using data from the ninth wave of the European Social Survey (ESS-9, 2018) across twenty-three countries. Contextual-level data from the Chapel Hill Expert Survey were supplemented to capture the instrumental use of religion within political elite discourse. Additionally, differences among religious traditions, or 'religious culture' (Siegers, 2019), were considered to better understand cross-contextual variations and the nuanced nature of the processes of culturalization of religion.

Our results indicate that the general notion of religion within political elite discourse does affect the intolerance of those who consider religion a crucial element of their identity, while the specification of Muslims as an out-group within the discourse activates a general civilizational or group identity opposed to that of religious (and Muslim) migrants. Hence, both European Christianity and Islam are not inherently religious entities but rather subject to instrumentalization, serving as symbolic boundaries between immigrants and the European citizens.

Turks mostly migrate to European countries. Turkish immigrants want to protect and maintain their religious and cultural existence. Religion is an important component that affects the daily life of a significant part of society. There are institutions where Turkish immigrants can carry out their religious activities in some European countries. Turkish immigrants often adopt a high level of Islamic practices, such as praying, attending mosque, fasting, and abstaining from alcohol. These Islamic practices, which directly affect their daily lives, may negatively affect their social inclusion with individuals in the European country of immigration. While there is social integration and social inclusion among individuals of the same religion, social inclusion may decrease among individuals who adopt different religions, that is, immigrant individuals and locals. Social inclusion is the process of improving the conditions for individuals and groups to take part in society, improving the capabilities, opportunities and dignity of those who are disadvantaged on the basis of their identity. At the same time, social inclusion is a dynamic, two-way process of social interaction between forced migrants and the receiving society, aimed at overcoming the separation between people. It is stated that people with immigrant backgrounds may have a higher risk of exclusion and lower levels of social inclusion. This review aims to examine the effect of religion on social inclusion among immigrant Turks.

Recent waves of immigration have had significant consequences for European societies. However, the perception of the consequences of immigration varies: in some accounts, the economic consequences are emphasized, and in others, the priority is given to the cultural ones. This paper examines the possible connection between the perceiver’s ideological orientation and views on the economic and cultural consequences of immigration.

Two main hypotheses are tested. The first one states, uncontroversially, that the general anti-immigrant orientation is more characteristic of the right-wing identifiers across Europe. The second hypothesis concerns the difference between the left and right in specific anti-immigrant attitudes. More minor differences are expected in the economic sphere, i.e., left and right should be more similar regarding the economic consequences of immigration. This hypothesis is based on the notion of welfare chauvinism. However, significantly larger ideological differences are expected in the cultural sphere, where the left is expected to be more tolerant. At the same time, the right should be more concerned with protecting the “country's cultural life”.

The analysis focuses on individual-level attitudes and the situation in Europe. Data are taken from the European Social Survey (ESS) project. The statistical analysis focuses on the association between the left-right ideological self-identification scale and relevant attitudes about immigration. The study provides novel insights into this important aspect of the relationship between immigration and social development in Europe.

Overall, leftist ideological identification is associated with more positive attitudes towards immigrants, especially regarding the cultural consequences. However, while the overall attitude towards immigrants is more negative in Eastern Europe, the association with ideological identification is mainly absent.

Migration has become one of Europe's most significant political issues in recent years. Since 2015 and the so-called Refugee Crisis, when a huge number of migrants from mostly Muslim nations in the Middle East, North Africa, and West Asia began traveling to Europe in the hopes of a brighter future, this topic has gained prominence. As the immigration issue gained traction, this put to the test core European values, including those outlined in the Lisbon Treaty, as well as the shared interests and objectives of EU member and candidate states, revealing its limitations. In recent scholarship on immigration in the West it is often considered that perception of immigrants as a competition (or ‘threat’) and conservative views and ideologies play significant factor in shaping anti-immigrant sentiments among local populations of receiving countries. It is a proven fact that social and economic vulnerability pushes individuals towards perceiving immigrants as out-groups, as both groups happen to compete for same social and economic resources. On the other hand, conservativism and right-wing political orientations also contribute to anti-immigrant stances as people holding these views tend to see immigrants as threat to their national, cultural and religious identities. The two explanatory theoretical frameworks are proven to work in the Western countries which enjoy political stability and have efficient social welfare politics. But, it is the question whether such micro-sociological explanations (related to self-interests in socio-economic spheres and concerns about cultural and ethnic homogeneity of the society) play a meaningful role in explaining opposition to immigration and its different forms in post-communist Europe. Rather, in those countries attitudes towards immigration and its effects on economy and culture are more likely to be explained by the set of variables that could be defined as perceived collective vulnerability and includes factors such as – respondents’ satisfaction with the present state of the economy of their country; satisfaction with the way their governments are doing their jobs; as well as contentment with the state of education and health services they are offered in their home countries. To test this hypothesis the paper uses data obtained through all rounds of ESS project and implements longitudinal multilevel regression analysis, so that country-level factors (such as GDP, percentage of immigrants etc.) and change over time are also taken into account.