Ethnic Majority Attitudes toward Jewish and Non-Jewish Migrants in Israel: The Role of Perceptions of Threat, Collective Vulnerability, and Human Values

Abstract

We investigate whether the attitudes of the Israeli majority toward migrants reflect the double standard embedded in Israel’s immigration regime, differentiating Jewish from non-Jewish migrants. We compare attitudes toward ethnic migrants (Jews), non-ethnic migrants (non-Jews), and asylum seekers, considering three explanations: values, collective vulnerability, and perceived threat. Our findings show that perceived vulnerability increases threat due to immigration. Values play an important role in predicting opposition to both Jewish and non-ethnic immigrants. Perceptions of threat are more relevant for the explanation of opposition to non-ethnic immigrants than to that of Jewish immigrants. We discuss our findings in light of existing theories.

Keywords:

• Attitudes toward migrants
• values
• perceived threat
• collective vulnerability
• Israel

Acknowledgments

Work on this paper was supported by ISF grant (number 769-2018) awarded by Israel Science Foundation. The authors would like to thank Lisa Trierweiler for the English proof of the manuscript. Eldad Davidov would like to thank the University of Zurich Research Priority Program Social Networks for their support during work on this study.

Notes

1 According to the Halacha (Jewish law), a Jew is anyone born to a Jewish mother (matrilineal definition) or converted to Judaism in a halakhic manner. According to the amendment of the Law of Return, both the matrilineal (Jewish mother) and patrilineal (Jewish father) definition of Jewish ancestry are equally valid for granting the right to return.

2 De facto, asylum seekers do work in Israel, especially in the secondary labor market. A court petition before the Israeli Supreme Court submitted by eight Israeli NGOs in 2010 led to a government policy of non-enforcement of the prohibition to work on employers who hired asylum seekers.

3 This category might also include non-Jewish immigrants (according to the Halacha) arriving under the Law of Return, as these can be seen as people of a different ethnic group by the Jewish majority.

4 Given the high correlation between the two types of threat in our study, we refer to a general construct of threat deriving similarly from both socio-economic and symbolic dimensions.

5 Preliminary analysis revealed significant differences in how human values crystalize and function among Jews and Arabs in Israel. Therefore, we focus only on the attitudes of the Jewish majority.

6 The year 1989 was selected as the lower bound because the most recent large-scale immigration wave into Israel started in this year.

7 We follow previous studies that rely on the assumption that ordinal variables with at least five categories can be considered as continuous if the sample size is large enough. Given our large sample size, maximum likelihood is likely to produce correct results (Rhemtulla et al., 2012). We also ran the model treating the two questions with four response categories (allow Jews and allow non-ethnic immigrants) as ordinal categorical. The main conclusions remained rather robust.

8 Our theoretical model did not assume any direct effects of vulnerability on the three dependent variables, and modification indices did not suggest we should add them.