Abstract
The attitudes of the European Union (EU) citizens towards immigration and the impact of their national identification on attitudes towards the EU have received ample attention in the literature. However, the immigrants’ identification with Europe has not been adequately studied. This article investigates the impact of non-EU immigration heritage on European identification. Based on social identity theory and using Eurobarometer cross-sectional data, it compares the European identification of those with a first generation non-EU immigration heritage to that of EU country natives. Moreover, it focuses on salient aspects of immigrant experience such as country policies directed at reducing discrimination and personal experience of discrimination. The results show that those with non-EU immigration heritage have higher European identification compared to the natives. Furthermore, in line with social identity theory, this article shows that successful anti-discrimination policies pull immigrants towards national identification rather than European identification.
MIPEX in use
Clustered nature of Eurobarometer data allow to shed light on processes operating at different levels such as personal characteristics interacting with institutional characteristics. Hence, individual level data from the Eurobarometer 77.4 is combined with country-level data. Country-level data come from Migrant Integration Policy Index (MIPEX) Project (Huddleston et al., 2015). The index is constructed from survey responses of experts and peer-reviewers to questions on country policies in eight policy areas: labor market mobility, family reunion, education, political participation, long-term residence, access to nationality, anti-discrimination, and health-care. Depending on the policy domain, countries with policies that are open to third country residents as they are open to EU nationals receive the top score on MIPEX. This article uses the 2010 MIPEX scores for the anti-discrimination policy area (Huddleston et al., 2011).
