Attitudes of the EU citizens towards immigrants. Cultural Threat, Subtle Bias, Acceptance Criteria. A cross-national study

This thesis is about attitudes towards immigrants in the European Union (EU) countries, with special regard to subtle bias and education. Its purpose is to further study the immigration issue, as one of the most urgent issues nowadays. Immigration is a promoter of social changes, but it still appears to be an everlasting question, capable of renewing continually its aspects. Living in the EU countries with people from different nationalities is the rule, rather than the exception. Still, the coexistence is not always so peaceful. Three areas of research are relevant for this thesis: literature concerning the theory of in-groups and the group position; literature concerning the new forms of racism; and literature concerning attitudes of the EU countries’ citizens towards immigrants. The literature indicated the characteristics of a dominant group and the relationship with the subordinate group. It indicated also that the highest level of prejudice is manifested through the exclusion of immigrants from a given community. In line with this statement, the analysis focused on three concepts: “Cultural Threat”, “Subtle Bias”, and “Acceptance Criteria”. The quantitative analysis is based on the European Social Survey database, round 7 - 2014. We achieved the statistical analysis using the SPSS software program, version 23. In order to obtain three dependent variables “Cultural Threat”, “Subtle Bias”, and “Acceptance Criteria”, three indexes have been created through the Principle Component Analysis. Furthermore, several cross-tabulations, correlations, and multiple linear regressions have been applied in order to test the hypotheses. Based on the literature and the analysis results, the 1st hypothesis has been proved, indicating that the EU has all the features of a dominant group, excluding immigrants, and selecting them according to their needs. The 2nd hypothesis has been proved on the basis of the multiple linear regression results. It sustains that higher educated individuals are more prejudiced towards immigrants in terms of subtle bias than lower educated individuals. The 3rd hypothesis has been proved on the basis of cross-tabulation analysis. Higher educated individuals are more likely to show subtle bias. Hypothesis 3b has been proved on the basis of cross-tabulation analysis. Countries that joined the EU earlier are less likely to show explicit prejudice but are more likely to sophisticate prejudice and discrimination in terms of subtle bias. On the other hand, countries that joined the EU late are more likely to show higher levels of explicit prejudice towards immigrants. The analysis answers positively the research questions: Yes, education can be a way to turn the explicit discrimination into an implicit one. Yes, the time frame within the EU seems to be a predictor of the strength of subtle bias. And, yes, EU countries select the immigrants basing on their country needs.