EconPapers    
Economics at your fingertips  
 

Conceptions of National Identity and Ambivalence towards Immigration

Emmy Lindstam, Matthias Mader and Harald Schoen

British Journal of Political Science, 2021, vol. 51, issue 1, 93-114

Abstract: National identities are often conceived of as factors that lend structure and stability to citizens’ political opinions on issues such as immigration. While citizens who define national membership in ethno-cultural terms are less likely to support immigration, those with a civic conception are more likely to do so. The authors propose that defining national identity along both ethno-cultural and civic lines may give rise to conflicting considerations, leading people to experience ambivalence, implying that national identities may serve less as a stabilizing force than suggested by previous research. Findings from heterogeneous choice models and a unique survey experiment show that German citizens with mixed conceptions of national identity had more variable and more malleable opinions than individuals with ideal-type conceptions during the 2015/2016 European refugee crisis. The findings point to an identity-based source of ambivalence and extend current understandings of how people form attitudes towards immigration.

Date: 2021
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.cambridge.org/core/product/identifier/ ... type/journal_article link to article abstract page (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:cup:bjposi:v:51:y:2021:i:1:p:93-114_7

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in British Journal of Political Science from Cambridge University Press Cambridge University Press, UPH, Shaftesbury Road, Cambridge CB2 8BS UK.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Kirk Stebbing ().

 
Page updated 2025-03-19
Handle: RePEc:cup:bjposi:v:51:y:2021:i:1:p:93-114_7