Popular Conceptions of Nationhood in Old and New European

As we can see in Table 4, this expectation is not at all borne out by the data. All
three dimensions show only very weak correlations with feelings of closeness, both
in the West and in the East (6 correlations are not even statistically significant at
the 0.05 level). Surprisingly, and totally contrary to the expected relationship, the
ethnic dimension correlates positively with feelings of closeness towards Gypsies
in the both regions. Another unexpected outcome is that ethnicity correlates
negatively with feelings of closeness towards Jews in the West but positively with
these feelings in the East. This would certainly come as a surprise to those who
believe that ethnic sentiments and anti-Semitism are closely related phenomena
especially in Eastern Europe.

As the ISSP survey does include questions on attitudes towards immigrants, we
can examine whether the pattern of non-correlations from the Eurobarometer also
surfaces in the data of that survey. In fact, Hjerm (2003) has already used the ISSP
survey to correlate attitudes on immigrants to national pride and national sentiment.
The question on immigrants was phrased as follows:

There are different opinions about immigrants from other countries living in [country].
(By “immigrants” we mean people who came to settle in [country]). How much do you
agree or disagree with each of the following statements?

1. Immigrants increase crime rates.

2. Immigrants are generally good for [country’s] economy.

3. Immigrants take jobs away from people who were born in [country].

4. Immigrants make [country] more open to new ideas and cultures.

Hjerm constructed an index of what he called „xenophobia’ from the answers to
this question by combining the values on the four statements (these values ranged

23

<<   20   21   22   23   24   25   26   >>

More intriguing information