Inclusion Matters

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ATTITUDES AND PERCEPTIONS OF INCLUSION

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increase is considerable and coincides with the growth of conservative political parties that advocate for limiting the inflow of migrants (Norris 2005, cited in Foa 2012). The changes in anti-migrant sentiment also correlate with the stock of the migrant population in each region. Foa (2012) uses the most recent round of the World Values Surveys data to look at the relationship between increases in the migrant population and the change in the ratio of people accepting versus rejecting migrants. Such a comparison is useful if one believes that each region has a natural baseline against which changes should be measured. Foa finds that the proportion of migrants in the general population has fallen in some regions, such as Sub-Saharan Africa and Latin America. In these regions, anti-migrant sentiment has also declined. The exception remains Europe and Central Asia, where the size of the foreign-born population fell sharply following the collapse of the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia but unleashed processes of nationalism have served both to increase anti-migrant sentiment and, in a number of cases, to drive out resident minorities (Campos and Kuzeyev 2007, cited in Foa 2012). The World Values Surveys for 2005–08 show a weakly positive relationship between the share of a country’s population that rejects migrants or foreign workers as neighbors and the proportion of migrants in that country’s population in 2005 (figure 5.2). Jordan and Hong Kong SAR, China, stand out in terms of the relatively large size of their migrant population and the high levels of anti-foreigner attitudes. In contrast, Australia, Canada, and Switzerland are outliers with relatively large foreign populations, but less than 10 percent of respondents in these countries hold negative views of foreigners or migrants. Factors other than migration could also have influenced the acceptance or rejection of foreigners across countries. First, it is possible that migration is seen as a threat under some conditions but not others. It is also possible that the nature of migrant flows has changed. Today, international migrants may seem more “culturally distant” in the countries where they settle, compared to earlier migration flows (Baker et al. 2009). Moreover, migration has occurred against a backdrop of rising tensions over religious issues, in both Western societies and a number of developing countries, notably in East and South Asia. Second, national discourses around ethnicity or citizenship can influence attitudes toward foreigners. For example, in high-income countries witnessing recent waves of immigration, foreigner rejection is higher in countries with strongly ethnic or cultural conceptions of citizenship (such as France or Italy) than in countries with “thinner”


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