The framing effects of COVID-19 on ethnic intolerance: evidence from Romania

ABSTRACT

Studies of tolerance often employ an ethnic lens. Reports of increasing anti-Chinese racism during the pandemic is evidence. Yet, COVID-19 is a global pandemic. How the disease is framed matters. We employ a survey experiment in Romania – where there is a large Chinese population and an even larger Romanian migrant population – to show that when primed about COVID-19, people responded with Chinese exclusion – a result consistent with the ethnic politics literature. But surprisingly, we find no evidence of Romanians cutting their coethnics a break. These results challenge how we think about identities when studying ethnic politics and group (in)tolerance.

KEYWORDS:

• Chinese
• COVID-19
• diaspora
• ethnicity
• tolerance
• China

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 https://www.facebook.com/groups/2264766253827015/posts/2535371373433167. Accessed 19 July 2021.

2 https://www.facebook.com/epochtimesro/posts/10158643620722597. Accessed 19 July 2021.

3 https://www.facebook.com/naty.popescu/posts/10219851493372912. Accessed 19 July 2021.

4 https://www.facebook.com/catalin.radulescu.73/posts/2763868260367615. Accessed 19 July 2021.

5 https://www.facebook.com/alina.neagu.125/posts/4122066311152444. Accessed 19 July 2021.

6 https://www.facebook.com/g4media.ro/posts/3902016553226346. Accessed 19 July 2021.

7 To avoid priming effects, we opted not to ask specifically about the Chinese. Instead, we used “Asians” more broadly assuming that if someone said they did not want Asian neighbours, they probably did not want a Chinese neighbour as well. We asked about Canadians and Romas as neighbours to identify the upper and lower ends of tolerance, respectively. Priors would suggest more tolerance for Canadians than Romas (see Bracic 2020; Csata, Hlatky, and Liu 2021). The empirics support this theoretical premise.

8 Per one reviewer’s suggestion, we present our results without differentiating between non-politicized and politicized treatments (i.e. we aggregate the Chinese primes into one treatment and likewise for the two diaspora primes) – although per another reviewer, we do show the results with the four primes disaggregated in each model. In our pre-registered report, we hypothesized – per Adida, Dionne, and Platas (2020) – that the politicized primes would have a larger effect than the non-politicized ones. And while we find respondents getting politicized primes were more likely to answer “send back” than those in the control group, there was no statistical difference vis-à-vis those getting a non-politicized prime. One explanation for this unexpected non-finding is that the non-politicized primes touched on an issue that was simply too salient. Since the survey was administered as the pandemic unfolded, a large proportion of the sample was already “naturally” treated. Thus, a treatment would have no effect discernible from the control. To consider this possibility, we remove the “already treated” individuals from the analysis. The results in table E in appendix confirm this may indeed be at play: The effect size for the politicized treatment is substantially larger than the non-politicized treatment.

9 https://www.facebook.com/groups/2264766253827015/posts/2535371373433167. Accessed 2 March 2022.

10 https://www.facebook.com/catalintenita/posts/10158237834514402. Accessed 2 March 2022.

11 When talking about ethnic politics and group intolerance in Romania, it is hard to not talk about the Romas. They have been subject to extreme discrimination. This structural inequity has resulted in several perverse trends when it comes to identifying Romas, thus making it difficult to assess any Roma effects – whether it is about (1) Roma intolerance towards non-coethnics; or (2) Romanian intolerance towards Romas returning from Italy. The first trend is that ethnic Romas do not always want to self-identify as such publicly (Csata, Hlatky, and Liu 2021). Consider that for this survey, only three (!) respondents self-identified as Roma. This number is certainly not large enough for making any inference about their attitudes. The second trend is that non-Romas end up conflating some negative attribution with the Roma group identity – e.g. if someone is poor, they must be Roma (Csata, Hlatky, and Liu 2021). And while the Romanian migrant population that returned from Italy included Romas, we cannot ascertain any valid number of how many returned. In fact, given that many of the returnees were generally poorer, there is the risk that whatever estimates are drawn will be an overcount.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Amy H. Liu

Amy H. Liu is an Associate Professor in the Department of Government at the University of Texas at Austin. She is the author of multiple books including “The Language of Political Incorporation: Chinese Migrants in Europe” (2021, Temple University Press).

Eoin L. Power

Eoin L. Power is a PhD candidate in the Department of Government at the University of Texas at Austin. He holds an MA in Russian, East European, and Eurasian Studies from the University of Michigan, and a BA in Political Science and Philosophy from Middlebury College.

Meiying Xu

Meiying Xu is a PhD student in the Department of Government at the University of Texas at Austin. She holds an MA in International Relations from Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS).