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. 2021 Jun 10:6:666717.
doi: 10.3389/fsoc.2021.666717. eCollection 2021.

Left-Wing Xenophobia in Europe

Affiliations

Left-Wing Xenophobia in Europe

Svenja Kopyciok et al. Front Sociol. .

Abstract

Given rising populist nationalism and multiplying meanings of "right" and "left," this paper assesses whether Europeans who identify as extremely left-wing on the political spectrum hold anti-immigrant attitudes. In contrast to right-wing xenophobes, we further examine whether the political left, who conventionally emphasize class conflict, oppose immigrants less for cultural reasons and more for materialist reasons. We also consider whether socioeconomic status and values traditionally associated with the political left-favoring redistributive policies, egalitarianism, or social rights to benefits and services for immigrants-temper left- more than right-wing xenophobia. We find that a surprisingly large share of those who identify as far left do express extremely xenophobic attitudes, and we profile them in contrast to far right xenophobes. With logistic regression analysis of nine waves of the European Social Survey (2002-2018), we find that, all things equal, socioeconomic status influences far left xenophobia more than far right xenophobia, but inegalitarian values, less support for redistributive policies, and welfare chauvinism can only partially account for far left xenophobia and unexpectedly do not distinguish it from far right xenophobia. This implies that far left parties might adopt anti-immigrant policies to try to retain their loyal voters, even though such policies do not comport with broader left-wing values and may increase racial and ethnic inequality. Controlling for demographic and attitudinal differences reduces the probability of xenophobia among the far left by about sixty percent, but there remains some residual anti-immigrant attitudes among this group still to be explained.

Keywords: Europe; anti-immigrant attitudes; class politics; immigration; left-right dimension; nationalism; welfare chauvinism; xenophobia.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

Figures

FIGURE 1
FIGURE 1
Relationship between Political Ideology and Attitudes Towards Immigrants. Source: European Social Survey, cumulative dataset, waves 1–9. Own calculations.
FIGURE 2
FIGURE 2
Percentage of Extremely Anti-Immigrant Respondents by Political Ideology. Source: European Social Survey, cumulative dataset, waves 1–9. Own calculations.
FIGURE 3
FIGURE 3
Predicted Probabilities of Being Extremely Xenophobic by Political Ideology. Source: European Social Survey, cumulative dataset, waves 1–9. Own calculations.
FIGURE 4
FIGURE 4
Percentage of Respondents Strongly Agreeing that “Immigrants Are Very Bad for the Development of the Country” by Political Ideology. Source: European Values Study 2017, Integrated Dataset, wave 7. Own calculations.
FIGURE 5
FIGURE 5
Extreme Xenophobia Among the Far Left and Far Right by Country. Source: European Social Survey, cumulative dataset, waves 1–9. Own calculations.
FIGURE 6
FIGURE 6
Percentage Welfare Chauvinists Who State that Immigrants Should Never be Granted Social rights by Political Ideology. Source: European Social Survey, cumulative dataset, waves 4 and 8 (N: 41,618). Own calculations.

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