Racial prejudice, threat perception and opposition to immigration: A comparative analysis

This paper analyzes the opposition to immigration, comparing the European Union as a whole and Portugal, United Kingdom, France and Germany. The first hypvothesis that was examined posits that the perception of economic, security and cultural threats are significant predictors of the orientation towards immigration. The second hypothesis states that racial prejudice is an important predictor of threat perception. Results show that, globally, attitudes towards immigration in EU are more close to openness than they are to closure. As predicted, cultural, economic and security threats are significantly associated with the opposition to immigration. These results are stable across compared countries. Moreover results show that in the EU as a whole political conservatism and racial prejudice are the main predictors of the perception of threat in the economic, security and cultural domains. These same results were obtained in France, Germany and United Kingdom. Except in the case of security threat, also in Portugal prejudice is an important predictor of threat perception. These results are discussed in the context of the immigration integration policies.