Attitudes toward immigrants in Luxembourg - Do contacts matter?

According to the latest official statistics, the number of immigrants in Luxembourg is approaching half the population. This demographic change raises questions concerning social inclusion, social cohesion, and intergroup conflicts. The present paper contributes to this discussion by analyzing attitudes toward immigrants and their determinants. Controlling for key socio-demographic and economic individual characteristics, we focus specifically on examining how the intensity of core contacts between nationals and inhabitants with migratory background affects attitudes toward immigrants among three groups of Luxembourg residents: natives, first-generation immigrants, and second-generation immigrants. The European Values Study data of 2008 was used in the paper. The results indicate that attitudes toward immigrants depend significantly on the origins of the residents of Luxembourg. Nationals adopt the most negative stance toward immigrants; they are followed by second-generation and first-generation immigrants. Attitudes of second-generation immigrants are closer to those of the native population than to those of first-generation immigrants, which confirms the assimilation hypotheses. Core contacts appear to play the most important role in the case of first-generation immigrants. The more connected the first-generation migrant to the native population, the more negative his/her opinion of immigrants.attitudes toward immigrants; contact theory; migratory background; EVS

European Survey Data on Attitudes to Equality and Human Rights Technical Paper. Research Series

This report maps the data available on attitudes to equality and human rights issues in Ireland collected in European surveys over the period 2000 to 2018. These surveys provide a rich source of evidence for researchers and policymakers in Ireland. We identify a total of 1,509 relevant questions from a search of over 125 attitude surveys. These questions are categorised according to the groups and topics addressed. We find that attitudes towards minority ethnic/nationality groups, gender/gender roles and social welfare recipients are the most widely covered. Questions on attitudes towards religious minorities, age groups/ageism, family status, disability and sexual orientation are much less common. Moreover, while the frequency of attitude questions relating to sexual orientation has increased over the period, questions on age and disability groups have declined. Within these equality groups the surveys cover a range of topics including social distance, social contact, tolerance and policy preferences

Applications of Research Data Management at GESIS Data Archive for the Social Sciences

The chapter "Applications of Research Data Management at GESIS Data Archive for the Social Sciences" explores ways in which an archive - i.e. an organization whose work has a strong focus on preservation and dissemination of digital data - can become involved in research data management (RDM). The Data Archive looks back on a long history of working with researchers to make their data re-usable and accessible since 1960. Today it provides support for Research Data Management across the entire data lifecycle by offering a wide range of tools and services tailored to the needs of different types of stakeholders. The chapter gives an overview of selected tools and services offered in the areas of metadata and data documentation, data preparation, data publication, and long-term preservation. To illustrate how support for research data management plays out in different settings, three case studies for typical scenarios are presented: 1) The European Values Survey (EVS), a large international longitudinal survey studying basic human values across Europe. 2) The German Longitudinal Election Study (GLES), a national survey program with a comprehensive approach to gain insights into the German federal elections. 3) A data center in the health sector which decided to make data originally collected to support policy-making available to research

Learning from experience leading to engagement: for a Europe of religion and belief diversity

The Religious Diversity and Anti-Discrimination Training Program provides a remarkable opportunity for participants of all walks of life to share opinions, concerns and needs of a variety of very real and practical issues such as the role of religion in education, accommodating religious practice in the work place, adapting social services to religio-cultural needs and limitations, engaging minorities in community development, negotiating the use of public space, gender relations, etc. Not only do participants report that the training influences their own roles in local decision-making, but the issues which they raise can be very informative for policy-makers. This Policy Brief, based upon feedback gathered systematically from participants and trainers, provides new insights and ideas to European policy-makers on emerging issues and possible interventions that need to be considered.CEJ

Revisiting Rustow: An Empirical Assessment of the Relationship Between National Identity and Attitudes Towards Democracy in post-Soviet Russia

Does national identity influence a country’s prospects for democratization? Brudny and Finkel (2011) contend that national identity explains variation in the political developments among former Soviet states. In considering this argument, this effort examines the empirical evidence to determine 1) whether a measurable model of national identity has developed within Russia, 2) how this national identity has developed over time, and 3) whether a relationship exists between this intersubjectively held conception of national identity and attitudes towards democracy. Findings suggest the development and ongoing contestation of two competing conceptions of national identity that covary with changing attitudes towards democracy over time. This supports prior research suggesting a purposively distinctive conceptualization of democracy that prioritizes stability over liberty at a foundational level (Hale 2011). Consistent with social identity theory and Eckstein’s (1966) congruency theory, this research adds to the knowledge derived from the intersection of political psychology, political culture, and democratization, while providing evidence to support the theoretical linkage between psychological mass tendencies and systemic institutional properties

Measuring Income in Household Panel Surveys for Germany: A Comparison of EU-SILC and SOEP

Empirical analyses of economic inequality, poverty, and mobility in Germany are, to an increas-ing extent, using microdata from the German Federal Statistical Office's contribution to the European Union Statistics on Income and Living Conditions (EU-SILC) as well as data from the German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP). In addition to their significance for national reporting, the EU-SILC data are of great international significance for comparative EU-wide measurement, description, and analysis in support of the European Commission's stated objective of fighting poverty and reducing social inequality through the European social cohesion process. It is therefore crucial to assess the quality of the German contribution to EU-SILC, particularly in view of evidence in the literature of methodological problems in this still relatively young survey with respect to the representation of specific social groups and the distri-bution of key educational characteristics that can have a considerable impact on the degree and structure of inequality and poverty (see Hauser 2008, Causa et al. 2009, Nolan et al. 2009). While previous papers have critically examined the German EU-SILC contribution in comparison to the cross-sectional data from the German Survey of Income and Expenditure (EVS), the present paper compares EU-SILC-based results about income trends, inequality, and mobility with results based on SOEP, a widely used alternate panel survey of private households in Germany. The - in some cases severe - differences identified are discussed in the context of the surveying and interviewing methods, post-data-collection treatment of the micro-data as well as sample characteristics of the two studies, all of which exert a major influence on the substantive results and thus on the core findings regarding the social situation of Germany in EU-wide comparison.Inequality, poverty, mobility, household panel, EU-SILC, SOEP

Issues in measuring education in cross-national and migration surveys

Education is a central concept in social science research, and thus a key socio-demographic characteristic that is measured in almost every survey. Due to the importance and wide usage of education in empirical studies, this dissertation takes a closer look at this concept and the related education variables. In this thesis the quality of education variables from the perspective of survey organisers producing the data and of researchers using these data is assessed. Dissertation papers I, II and III evaluate the quality of the widely used ISCED variable (International Standard Classification of Education) by assessing the reliability and comparability of this measure in ten cross-national surveys. These papers have a methodological focus, largely from the perspective of survey organisers who produce data. The papers highlight severe problems in the data quality of the resulting harmonised education variable. Major inconsistencies in the education distributions within countries and years indicate a lack of reliability at the aggregated level, which implies difficulties with data comparability, especially across surveys. In contrast, dissertation paper IV has a substantive focus and uses the education variable as a proxy for cognitive competencies when assessing immigrants’ German language proficiency. In addition to this paper, a construct validation of different education measures is conducted to decide which variable to include in the main analysis of this paper. The results of the construct validation of different education variables show only small differences in the predictive power of these variables. The observed effect of education on immigrants' German language proficiency is in line with previous studies. In this paper, the perspective of a data user is reflected