this dimension should have lower levels of xenophobia than those with low scores.
Conversely, those who express strong support for the ascriptive dimension should
have higher levels of xenophobia than those expressing more moderate support.
The data of Table 5 produce yet another surprise. The positive correlations between
the ascriptive dimension and xenophobia in both Eastern and Western Europe are
still in accordance with the expectation, although it is perhaps remarkable to find
Western Europe exhibiting the stronger association. 13 However, what is truly
astonishing is that the voluntarist dimension is also positively related to xenophobia
in both regions, albeit to a slightly weaker extent than the ascriptive dimension.
This means that the stronger a respondent’s support for voluntaristic, inclusive
notions of nationhood, the higher that person’s level of xenophobia. Surely this
result must come as an unpleasant surprise to those who think that strong inclusive
national identities are conducive to more positive opinions on immigrants and
foreigners. Taken together these results provide further evidence for the notion that
attitudes to immigrants and (in)tolerance of other cultures are not so much
dependent on the qualitative nature of national identities but more on the intensity
of these identities.
Discussion and conclusions
This study has examined to what extent the ethnic-civic framework surfaces in
popular conceptions of nationhood. Using the 2002 Eurobarometer survey on
national identity it has produced a number of interesting results that complement
and partially support the findings of studies that utilized the 1995 ISSP survey on
national identity.
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