Relying on our modelling results we see that people’s attitudes towards immigrants in both countries varied greatly: the indicator of country specific effects in explaining the respondents’ attitudes towards immigrants is statistically significantly negative in the UK and positive in Sweden (figure 1). According to MIPEX – Migrant Integration Policy Index...the migrant integration policies of these countries are evaluated differently. According to MIPEX III (2011), Sweden has the best migration integration policy in the world. In the international context, the British immigrant integration policies are assessed as being weak...
The results of our empirical analysis are consistent with several individual theories explaining the determinants of people’s attitudes towards immigrants. Ethnic minorities, urban people,
people with higher education and higher income, as well as people who have work experience abroad are, as a rule, more tolerant towards immigrants in Europe. Furthermore, people who evaluate the political and legal systems of a country and its police higher (e.g. political trust)are more tolerant. Similarly, people who have a more positive expectation of their future wellbeing and whose attitudes to socio-economic risks are lower, are more tolerant towards immigrants. The labour market status of respondents (employed, unemployed) does not have a statistically significant relationship with their attitudes towards immigrants. Thus, people in general do not connect their own labour market status with immigrants.
Possible country specific conditions that can form the attitudes of respondents towards immigrants beside their individual characteristics are taken into account by including country dummies in the regression models... The estimators show that the majority of the country specific effects are statistically significant, indicating that in addition to the respondent’s personal characteristics and their attitudes towards the institutions and socio-economic stability of the countries that the collective determinants of attitudes are also valid...
