Party affiliation and support for Muslim newcomers: masked opposition in the Norwegian context

ABSTRACT

This work considers how anti-immigrant sentiment is selectively revealed, offering a new perspective on the role stigma plays in defining the political mainstream. By way of a survey experiment in Norway, we measure the gap between what people express and the beliefs they hold anonymously, assessing how supporters of distinct political parties situationally conform to expectations about the expression of intolerance. Using three frames, we contrast attitudes toward immigrants, refugees and more general types of new entrants to Norway. We conclude that the intolerance is more widespread than openly expressed sentiment would suggest due to the systematic masking of targeted opposition to Muslim newcomers. Covert expression, under conditions of absolute and permanent anonymity, demonstrate hardened sentiment among the mainstream right. In other words, a large shift in covert attitudes is best understood as a shift in deference to norms about the expression of targeted bias – in this case toward Muslim newcomers – rather than a large change in underlying, anonymously expressed attitudes.

KEYWORDS:

• Anti-immigrant sentiment
• immigration
• populism
• Norway
• experimental design

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributors

Mathew J. Creighton is an Associate Professor of Sociology at University College Dublin in Dublin, Ireland. His main areas of research are immigration, education and health. He is a country co-coordinator of the European Social Survey in Ireland and has designed survey experiments in many countries and contexts. His work has been published in Social Forces, Social Problems, Social Science Research, JEMS, IMR and Demography.

Zan Strabac is a Professor of Sociology at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology in Trondheim, Norway. His main areas of research are quantitative research methods, migrations and ethnic relations and peace studies. His articles have appeared in Ethnic and Racial Studies, Sociological quarterly, Social Science Research, Politics and Religion, Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies and Südosteuropa.

Notes

1 Azrout and Wojcieszak (2017) focus on the unlikely, but salient ascension of Turkey in the EU. As attitudes toward Polish immigrants are contrasted to those directed at Muslim immigrants, the key insight is that having a negative view of Muslim immigrants is significantly associated only with the potential inclusion of Turkey in the EU. In other words, outgroup characteristics determine distinct preferences.

2 Some have suggested a more permanent, less situationally defined theoretical mechanism rooted in motivated reasoning (Bloemraad et al. 2016). This perspective links the formation of attitudes toward immigrants/immigration to stable identities formed earlier in the life course (e.g., political orientation, party affiliation).

3 Discreditable refers to the type of attribute than could result in stigma but is able to be masked in a given interaction (e.g., an opinion expressed via a list experiment). This terminology was introduced by Goffman (1959) who used it to delineate attributes that could be hidden (i.e., discreditable) from those that could not be managed in a given interaction (i.e., discredited).

4 Each Political party will be referred to by their respective acronym from this point forward in the text.

5 Hvor mange av de tre følgende påstandene er du enig i? Vi ønsker ikke å vite hvilke påstander, bare hvor mange.

6 Synes du Norge bør la immigranter fra muslimske land komme for å bosette seg her?

7 Synes du Norge bør la flyktninger fra muslimske land komme for å bosette seg her?

8 https://www.uib.no/en/citizen

9 https://www.ideas2evidence.com/

10 https://www.evry.com/

11 Assuming that there is limited substantive overlap of list items (i.e., multiple items that query a similar opinion), Blair and Imai (2012) suggest a test for design effects. This tests the null hypothesis of no design effect. At an alpha of 0.05, the null hypothesis was not rejected for each treatment list – Muslim people, Muslim immigrants and Muslim refugees.

12 The decrease is significant at the 0.1 level.