Los efectos de las prácticas de participación

I approach anti-immigrant framework with an inductive analytical framework grounded in three main assumptions. First of all, I assume that citizens’ perceptions of immigration are not fixed, but a product of both individual and contextual variables. I view macro-level variables as factors that regulate the intensity of attitudes (Ceobanu and Escandell 2010). What I try to decipher is the role of the institutional environment; how states’ regulations of immigration and integration could be influencing anti-immigrant sentiment.

Second, I conceive state regulations of immigration and integration as a product of historical definitions of the nation, with path-dependent implications on citizens’ understandings of membership. The comparison of Belgian and Spanish regions is particularly useful, due to the within-country variability in the notions of membership. I seek to examine whether the prevalence of a specific notion of membership, for instance, in ethnic or civic terms, is more likely to encourage anti-immigrant sentiment than others, and, if yes, what is the relationship between concrete forms of membership and distinctive manifestations of anti-immigrant sentiment.

Third, I assume that political parties are rational actors (Downs 1957; Norris 2004; Rosenof 2003). They optimize their means, such as: political discourses, to control government. As immigrants access political rights, political parties are expected to chase their vote (Carmines and Wagner 2006; Inglehart 1990; Norris 2004; Rohrschneider 2002). In this direction, my research examines to what extent citizens’ exposure to pro-cultural diversity discourses discourages them from perceiving immigration as a threat. At the same time, I anticipate that restrictive approaches to immigration or the presence of the radical right will motivate anti-immigrant sentiment.

With these three assumptions in mind, I claim that there are three key processes explaining the low manifestation of anti-immigrant sentiment in the Brussels and the Madrid regions, its high manifestations as a material threat in Andalusia and Wallonia, and as a cultural threat in Catalonia and Flanders.

1. Immigrants’ demographic and political power: I account for the low manifestation of anti-immigrant sentiment as a product of anti-immigrants’ demographic distribution and access to political rights. In Brussels, I observe that the high concentration of both EU and non-EU immigrants has turned cultural diversity into a defining characteristic of the urban space, encouraged internal migration flows between the capital and the country-side, and shifted the political correlation of power on behalf of parties that represent immigrants’ socio-economic interests; traditionally, those of the left. In Madrid, I show that citizens’ low skepticism towards immigration is tied to the political power of Europeans and Latin Americans, which represent a new and growing percentage of the electorate. I argue that regulations facilitating immigrants’ enfranchisement have contained anti-immigrant

sentiment by encouraging political parties to use pro-cultural diversity discourses targeted to the immigrant and the native voter.

2. Immigrants’ access to scarce economic resources: I explain the material manifestation of anti-immigrant sentiment as a product of two types of economic scarcity: jobs and welfare.

Andalusia and Wallonia are the most economically-deprived regions in each country, where both types of resource scarcity is most salient. In addition to the longstanding claim that anti-immigrant sentiment is a product of the immigrant-native competition for jobs, I observe that a significant percentage of the citizenry perceives immigrants as undeserving recipients of welfare. With this insight, I contribute to prevailing theories on economic competition, which have not examined inter-ethnic contention outside labor market boundaries.

3. Immigrants’ integration in the cultural mainstream: I present the cultural manifestation of anti-immigrant sentiment as the outcome of a demand-supply problem. I complement previous studies, which have emphasized the significance of nation-building projects, with evidence of citizens’ uneven expectations of immigrants’ integration. I show that citizens in Catalonia and Flanders have higher expectations of immigrants’ integration than their peers in other regions of the country. Immigrants in these regions exhibit stronger interest in attending language and integration classes than their peers elsewhere, but they do not meet the high expectations of the Catalan and the Flemish. Evidence from these two regions encourages a theoretical discussion about the extent to which cultural integration is

attainable, and how can state regulations contribute to the establishment of such expectations.

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With this research, I attempt to contribute to the literatures on anti-immigrant sentiment and state regulations of immigration and integration. In the conclusion, I assess the extent to which my findings allow me to fill in prevailing gaps in the literature, and outline policy suggestions.

CHAPTER 3

RESEARCH DESIGN

This chapter elaborates the methodological strategy to examine anti-immigrant sentiment across three Belgian and three Spanish regions. I divide it into four main parts: 1. Cross-regional attitudinal differences; 2. Six regions; 3. Data; and 4. Outline of analytical chapters. I begin by presenting the uneven geographical distribution of anti-immigrant sentiment as a material and as a cultural threat. The statistical significance of cross-regional attitudinal differences encourages me to use regions as units of analysis. Second, I introduce the reader to the structural characteristics of the six research sites. Evidence from Brussels, Flanders, and Wallonia allows me to dig into the case of Belgium; while Andalusia, Catalonia, and Madrid permit examining anti-immigrant sentiment in Spain. I use one region per country to analyze the low manifestation of anti-immigrant sentiment (Brussels and Madrid), its manifestation as a material threat (Andalusia and Wallonia), and its manifestation as a cultural threat (Catalonia and Flanders). Next, I describe the mixed methods of data collection that facilitate assessing the role of state regulations in citizens’ attitudes.

I combine data from: a) surveys; b) semi-structured interviews; c) ethnographic fieldwork; and d) socio-demographic, policy, and macro-economic indicators. I conclude with a brief description of the goals and findings of the three empirical chapters.