TY - JOUR

T1 - The impact of regionalism on anti-immigrant attitudes

T2 - a multilevel international comparative study

AU - Dirksmeier, Peter

N1 - Funding information: I thank Lars Mewes for his constructive and very helpful criticism, which has clearly sharpened my argumentation.

PY - 2023/5

Y1 - 2023/5

N2 - Regionalism, understood as affective attachment of people to place, is shifting into the focus of social scientific attention. An important aspect of this are the globally observable encounters of growing numbers of immigrants with regional identities. Empirical work concerning the impact of regionalism on anti-immigrant attitudes has been contradictory so far. Results range from a moderate to no influence. The paper, thus, analyses the intricate relationship between hostility towards immigrants and regionalism in detail. Merging country-level data on the extent of regional autonomy in a nation-state with individual and regional data on regionalism enables us to gauge the relevance of regionalism for anti-immigrant attitudes in a comparative perspective. The paper presents a multilevel regression analysis that shows a mitigating relationship of the presence of extensive regional autonomy in a nation-state on anti-immigrant attitudes at the country level. Regionalism, unlike nationalism, does not correlate with anti-immigrant attitudes at the regional or individual level, while nationalism is clearly significant at both levels. These results reflect general global prejudice trends and the call for further work on the effect mechanisms of institutionally granted regional autonomy on openness to immigrants.

AB - Regionalism, understood as affective attachment of people to place, is shifting into the focus of social scientific attention. An important aspect of this are the globally observable encounters of growing numbers of immigrants with regional identities. Empirical work concerning the impact of regionalism on anti-immigrant attitudes has been contradictory so far. Results range from a moderate to no influence. The paper, thus, analyses the intricate relationship between hostility towards immigrants and regionalism in detail. Merging country-level data on the extent of regional autonomy in a nation-state with individual and regional data on regionalism enables us to gauge the relevance of regionalism for anti-immigrant attitudes in a comparative perspective. The paper presents a multilevel regression analysis that shows a mitigating relationship of the presence of extensive regional autonomy in a nation-state on anti-immigrant attitudes at the country level. Regionalism, unlike nationalism, does not correlate with anti-immigrant attitudes at the regional or individual level, while nationalism is clearly significant at both levels. These results reflect general global prejudice trends and the call for further work on the effect mechanisms of institutionally granted regional autonomy on openness to immigrants.

KW - anti-immigrant attitudes

KW - migration

KW - nationalism

KW - regional authority

KW - regionalism

KW - regions

UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85109023398&partnerID=8YFLogxK

U2 - 10.1080/21622671.2021.1931424

DO - 10.1080/21622671.2021.1931424

M3 - Article

AN - SCOPUS:85109023398

VL - 11

SP - 873

EP - 893

JO - Territory, Politics, Governance

JF - Territory, Politics, Governance

SN - 2162-2671

IS - 5

ER -