and Sweden regardless of isb.
The marginal effect of unemploy × isb is significantly positive for Greece
where the effect of unemploy is negative. It suggests that the unemployed
were more likely to be anti-immigration in sectors where the presence of
foreign workers is relatively high in the country. However, for Germany,
Spain and the UK, the opposite is the case: as far as isb is sufficiently low,
the unemployed are more likely to be restrictive than the others.
The estimated effects of the other explanatory variables remain almost
the same as in Table 6(b).
[Table 8 about here]
We have assumed that a high value of isb is associated with a high sectoral
employability of immigrant labor. However, even in sectors where foreign
workers are useful input for production, the presence of foreign workers might
be limited because of for instance restrictive policy regarding the issuance of
work permits.26 In such a case, a lower value of isb might be associated with
less restrictive attitudes, while a high value of isb might suggest an already
sufficient supply of immigrant labor. This might be one reason why the sign
of the employer-related terms interacted with isb is not consistent across the
countries.
In order to check whether the status of being an employer makes a dif-
ference in each sector assuming that the employability of foreign workers is
26 Although the EU imposes restrictions on its members regarding the admission of
workers from non-member countries, the control of immigration from outside the Union
largely remains under the domain of national policies. See Boeri et al. (2002: 46).
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