Africanization of immigrants: a multilevel analysis of factors influencing Africans’ willingness to accept immigrants

ABSTRACT

Immigration in Africa has increased significantly in the past two decades, with a record number of people moving to Africa from other non-African countries as well as Africans moving to other countries on the continent. This increase in immigration requires an empirical exploration to understand how Africans feel and think about immigrants. Therefore, the purpose of the current study is to explore Africans’ willingness to accept immigrants and foreign workers into their neighbourhoods. Analyzing large-scale data from more than 45,000 citizens across 34 countries, we examined individual- and country-level factors using a multilevel hierarchical linear approach. At the individual level, our analysis revealed that gender, religious affiliation, nationalism, fear of extremism, and security are important indicators of Africans’ willingness to live with immigrants in their neighbourhoods. While we did not observe any effect for country-level economic variables, it was revealed that regional location was a vital consideration. These observations are helpful in understanding immigration in Africa as well as offering insights for policy development.

KEYWORDS:

• Immigration
• immigrants
• Africa
• multilevel analysis
• migration

Disclosure statement

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

Notes

1 Respondents were asked the following question: Please tell me whether you would like to have people from this group as neighbors – immigrants/foreign workers.