Neighbourhood-level social capital and anti-immigrant prejudice in an African context: an individual-level analysis of attitudes towards immigrants in South Africa

Abstract

African states are often characterised as low trust societies. Could a deficiency of social capital explain prejudice towards immigrants in such societies? Using South Africa as a case study, this paper tests the effect of social trust, social bonds with neighbours and a sense of community on attitudes towards foreigners. The results reveal that social capital may be a more important predictor of attitudes than economic status. Social bonds between neighbours and a sense of community were found to be more salient determinants of prejudice than social trust. In African societies it is, therefore, important to invest in programmes that promote social cohesion within communities.

Keywords:

• social capital
• anti-immigrant sentiments
• South Africa
• sense of community
• neighbourhood bonding
• nationalism

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank the Coordinators of the South African Social Attitudes Survey (SASAS), Benjamin Roberts and Jarè Struwig at the Human Sciences Research Council's (HSRC) Democracy Governance & Service Delivery research programme, for their cooperation and support during the writing of this paper. This publication is part of an existing programme of work that is being undertaken by the Coordinators of SASAS investigating xenophobia in contemporary South African society.

The authors would also like to thank the referees for their time and attention to this paper. We appreciate their considered and supportive feedback and suggestions.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1 The question used to measure social trust in the 2010–2012 Afrobarometer survey is a two-point indicator which asked respondents, ‘[g]enerally speaking, would you say that most people can be trusted or that you need to be very careful in dealing with people?' Respondents answered either (i) most people can be trusted or (ii) need to be very careful.

2 These findings were further verified by international survey evidence. According to a study by Miller (2012, p. 3) using data from the 2007 Global Attitudes Project, South Africans were found to be more supportive of restricting immigration than any of the other 47 different nations surveyed except for citizens of Tanzania and Malaysia.

3 Hainmueller and Hiscox (2007, p. 428) suggest that when examining the role of education as a determinant of attitudes towards immigrant, education should be measured categorically as these scholars noted ‘substantial nonlinearities in the relationship between education and attitudes toward immigrant'. Using data from the European Social Survey, these authors found that college education had a far greater positive effect on support for immigration than high school education, and that finishing elementary schooling actually appears to have negative effects on support for immigration.

4 The question used to construct this variable was: ‘For which party did you vote in the last national election, which was held in 2009’ Answers were then categorised to identify partisan support – the following dummy variables were created: ANC, Democratic Alliance (DA), other political parties and undeclared/undecided) The DA is the main opposition party in South Africa although the share of the electorate who vote for the DA is relatively small in comparison to the ANC. The DA has not made immigration a central part of their party agenda, which is informed by economic liberalism.

5 The exact wording of these questions is as follows: (i) Generally speaking, would you say that most people can be trusted, or that you cannot be too careful in dealing with people? (ii) Do you think that most people would try to take advantage of you if they got the chance, or would they try to be fair? and (iii) Would you say that most of the time people try to be helpful or that they are mostly looking out for themselves?

6 The exact wording of these questions is as follows: (i) How comfortable would you be asking a neighbour to lend you a cup of sugar if you needed it? (ii) How comfortable would you be asking a neighbour to take you to a doctor or clinic if you were sick? and (iii) If you were short of money, how comfortable would you be asking a neighbour if you could borrow R20 [about two dollars]?

7 The question used to measure social trust in the WVS is a two-point indicator which is identical to the 2010–2012 Afrobarometer survey item referred to earlier in this paper. For an analysis of social trust in data for 60 countries collected from wave II for 1989–1993 and wave III for 1995–1997 of the WVS using two-point item see Delhey and Newton (2005).

8 It could be argued that this is an empirical artefact related to including multiple measures of social position (such as education, labour market position and economic status) in the same model, which would suggest multicollinearity problems. But even if educational attainment was used as the only proxy for societal position, no relationship between educational attainment the dependent was not observed in a bivariate analysis (including post hoc Scheffe tests) also did not detect significant differences between well-educated South Africans and their less well-educated counterparts.

9 Using European data, Maddens et al. (2000) contend, for example, that when examining the relationship between nationalism and xenophobia, a distinction should be made between imagining the nation as an ethnic or republican construct (also see De Figueiredo & Elkins, 2003). The republican construct views national identity as an adherence to a contract between citizens based on shared respect for the rule of law. The ethnic construct or ethno-nationalism, on the other hand, views the nation as essentially connected with the ethnic heritage of a cultural group. An ethnic identification with the nation is positively associated with negative attitudes towards immigrants and immigration. In contrast, a republican identification with the nation could coincide with more positive view of foreigners.