Explaining Immigrants' Worries About Ethnic Harassment: Germany, 1986-2004

What factors shape immigrants' worries about becoming targets of ethnic harassment? This is an important question to ask, but most previous studies restricted their focus to the microlevel only. By contrast, few if any studies examined the possible macrolevel antecedents driving harassment-related worries among immigrants. This study aims to help fill this gap. Focusing on a 19-years period from 1986 to 2004 in Germany, we apply multilevel regression modeling techniques to repeated cross-sectional survey data collected among immigrants of Greek, Italian, Spanish, Turkish, and (ex-) Yugoslavian origin, linked with contextual characteristics. Our central finding is that German citizens' anti-immigrant prejudice is the key driver of longitudinal differences in immigrants' harassment-related worries. This association holds net of rival variables, such as fluctuations in media attention to ethnic harassment, as well as across all immigrant groups under study. These results bring us one important step further toward a better understanding of interethnic relations between immigrants and host society members

Immigrant Integration: From the Choice of Destination to Social Integration

1) This study examines the destination choices of pan-American migrants using census data for migrants from 23 Latin-American and Caribbean origin groups opting for one of ten North and South American destination countries. Descriptive �findings suggest that Caribbean and Central American migrants overwhelmingly migrate to the United States, while South Americans show more diverse choice patterns. Using discrete choice models, the multivariate analysis shows that migrants are more likely to choose a country of destination which portrays a higher relative expected wage ratio, a lower relative income inequality, a smaller geographic as well as cultural distance, a larger co-ethnic community and policy conditions that are more favorable towards immigrants. The results also indicate that some of these characteristics lead to skill selection diff�erentials. Accordingly, destinations are more likely to attract highly educated migrants if the co-ethnic community is small and relative political freedom, geographic distance and cultural distance are above average. 2)Focusing on macro-level processes, this article combines Decennial Census and Current Population Survey data to simultaneously test longitudinal and cross-sectional effects on ethnic intermarriage using structural and cultural explanations. Covering a 130 year period, the results of our multilevel analysis for 140 national-origin groups indicate that structural characteristics explain why some origin groups become more open over time while others remain relatively closed. Ethnic intermarriage is more likely to increase over time when the relative size of an immigrant group decreases, sex ratios grow more imbalanced, the origin group grows more diverse, the size of the third generation increases and social structural consolidation decreases. Cultural explanations also play a role suggesting that an origin groups' exogamous behavior in the past exerts long-term effects and exogamous practices increase over time when the prevalence of early marriage customs declines. For some of the discussed determinants of intermarriage, longitudinal and cross-sectional effects differ calling for a more careful theorizing and testing in terms of the level of analysis (e.g., longitudinal vs. cross-sectional). 3)Combining Decennial Census (1980-2000) and American Community Survey (2008-2011) data, this article documents Mexican generational and ethnic intermarriage patterns across 543 Consistent Public Use Microdata Areas and evaluates the impact of changes in structural conditions on changes in marital behavior. Descriptive findings point to a generational differentiation with 2nd+ generation Mexicans firmly on the path towards marital assimilation while 1st generation intermarriage rates declined. Moreover, we find strong variation in intermarriage across settlement areas with intermarriage rates generally being higher in new settlement areas. Multivariate analyses suggest that increases in the availability of co-ethnics and Spanish language retention over time deter intermarriage in traditional settlement areas. In re-emerging destination only increases in cultural retention seemed to matter. Finally, we test two competing hypotheses posited by the immigrant replenishment literature. Our results indicate that the impact of immigrant replenishment is moderate by cultural retention and by the degree of negative feelings towards Hispanics experienced in the local context

Why We Should Care About Regional Origins: Educational Selectivity Among Refugees and Labor Migrants in Western Europe

Immigrant selectivity describes the notion that migrants are not a random sample of the population at origin, but differ in certain traits such as educational attainment from individuals who stay behind. In this article, we move away from group-level descriptions of educational selectivity and measure it as an individual's relative position in the age- and gender-specific educational distribution of the country of origin. We describe the extent of educational selectivity for a selection of Western European destinations as well as a selection of origin groups ranging from recent refugee to labor migrant populations. By contrasting refugees to labor migrants, we address longstanding assumptions about typical differences in the degree of selectivity between different types of immigrants. According to our findings, there are few and only minor differences between refugee and labor migrants. However, these differences vary; and there are labor migrant groups that score similar or lower on selectivity than do the refugees covered in this study. Selectivity differences between refugees and labor migrants therefore seem less prominent than arguments in the literature suggest. Another key finding is that every origin group is composed of varying proportions of positively and negatively selected individuals. In most cases, the origin groups cover the whole spectrum of selectivity, so that characterizing them as either predominantly positively or negatively selected does not seem adequate. Furthermore, we show that using country-level educational distributions as opposed to sub-national regional-level distributions can lead to inaccurate measurements of educational selectivity. This problem does not occur universally, but only under certain conditions. That is, when high levels of outmigration from sub-national regions in which economic opportunities are considerably above or below the country average, measurement inaccuracy exceeds ignorable levels. In instances where researchers are not able to use sub-national regional measures, we provide them with practical guidance in the form of pre-trained machine-learning tools to assess the direction and the extent of the measurement inaccuracy that results from relying on country-level as opposed to sub-national regional-level educational distributions

Demonstrating How to Best Examine Group-based Segregation: A Statistical and Conceptual Multilevel Approach

Segregation between ethnic or sociodemographic groups represents a longstanding key independent and dependent variable for the social sciences. However, researchers have only recently begun to take advantage of inferential rather than descriptive statistical techniques in order to assess various aspects of segregation. Specifically, this paper shows that the multilevel binomial response approach suggested by Leckie et al. (2012) provides a particularly flexible framework for describing and explaining segregation in ways not previously possible. Taking the index of dissimilarity (D) as an example we demonstrate how the multilevel binomial response approach helps to reduce the problem of small unit bias, allows to asses segregation at different scales and enables researchers to better understand the role of individual- and contextual-level explanatory variables in shaping segregation. To this end, we employ three case studies focusing on different manifestations of ethnic and gender segregation using survey data from urban, national and cross-national settings

Catalyst of hate? Ethnic insulting on YouTube in the aftermath of terror attacks in France, Germany and the United Kingdom 2014–2017

In the last 20 years, several major terror attacks conducted in the name of political Islam hit Western Europe. We examine the impact of such terror attacks on hostile behaviour on social media from a cross-national perspective. To this end, we draw upon time-stamped, behavioural data from YouTube and focus on the frequency and popularity (‘likes’) of ethnically insulting comments among a corpus of approximately one hundred thousand comments. We study aggregate change and use individual-level panel data to investigate within-user change in ethnic insulting in periods leading up to and following major terror events in Germany, France and the UK. Results indicate that terror attacks boost interest in immigration-related topics in general, and lead to a disproportional increase in hate speech in particular. Moreover, we find that attack effects spill over to other countries in several, but not all, instances. Deeper analyses suggest, however, that this pattern is mainly driven by changes in the composition of users and not by changing behaviour of individual users. That is, a surge in ethnic insulting comes from hateful users newly entering online discussions, rather than previous users becoming more hateful following an attack

Metabolome analysis of Arabidopsis thaliana roots identifies a key metabolic pathway for iron acquisition

Fe deficiency compromises both human health and plant productivity. Thus, it is important to understand plant Fe acquisition strategies for the development of crop plants which are more Fe-efficient under Fe-limited conditions, such as alkaline soils, and have higher Fe density in their edible tissues. Root secretion of phenolic compounds has long been hypothesized to be a component of the reduction strategy of Fe acquisition in non-graminaceous plants. We therefore subjected roots of Arabidopsis thaliana plants grown under Fe-replete and Fe-deplete conditions to comprehensive metabolome analysis by gas chromatography-mass spectrometry and ultra-pressure liquid chromatography electrospray ionization quadrupole time-of-flight mass spectrometry. Scopoletin and other coumarins were found among the metabolites showing the strongest response to two different Fe-limited conditions, the cultivation in Fe-free medium and in medium with an alkaline pH. A coumarin biosynthesis mutant defective in ortho-hydroxylation of cinnamic acids was unable to grow on alkaline soil in the absence of Fe fertilization. Co-cultivation with wild-type plants partially rescued the Fe deficiency phenotype indicating a contribution of extracellular coumarins to Fe solubilization. Indeed, coumarins were detected in root exudates of wild-type plants. Direct infusion mass spectrometry as well as UV/vis spectroscopy indicated that coumarins are acting both as reductants of Fe(III) and as ligands of Fe(II)

A many-analysts approach to the relation between religiosity and well-being

The relation between religiosity and well-being is one of the most researched topics in the psychology of religion, yet the directionality and robustness of the effect remains debated. Here, we adopted a many-analysts approach to assess the robustness of this relation based on a new cross-cultural dataset (N=10,535 participants from 24 countries). We recruited 120 analysis teams to investigate (1) whether religious people self-report higher well-being, and (2) whether the relation between religiosity and self-reported well-being depends on perceived cultural norms of religion (i.e., whether it is considered normal and desirable to be religious in a given country). In a two-stage procedure, the teams first created an analysis plan and then executed their planned analysis on the data. For the first research question, all but 3 teams reported positive effect sizes with credible/confidence intervals excluding zero (median reported β=0.120). For the second research question, this was the case for 65% of the teams (median reported β=0.039). While most teams applied (multilevel) linear regression models, there was considerable variability in the choice of items used to construct the independent variables, the dependent variable, and the included covariates

A Many-analysts Approach to the Relation Between Religiosity and Well-being

The relation between religiosity and well-being is one of the most researched topics in the psychology of religion, yet the directionality and robustness of the effect remains debated. Here, we adopted a many-analysts approach to assess the robustness of this relation based on a new cross-cultural dataset (N = 10, 535 participants from 24 countries). We recruited 120 analysis teams to investigate (1) whether religious people self-report higher well-being, and (2) whether the relation between religiosity and self-reported well-being depends on perceived cultural norms of religion (i.e., whether it is considered normal and desirable to be religious in a given country). In a two-stage procedure, the teams first created an analysis plan and then executed their planned analysis on the data. For the first research question, all but 3 teams reported positive effect sizes with credible/confidence intervals excluding zero (median reported β = 0.120). For the second research question, this was the case for 65% of the teams (median reported β = 0.039). While most teams applied (multilevel) linear regression models, there was considerable variability in the choice of items used to construct the independent variables, the dependent variable, and the included covariates

Demonstrating How to Best Examine Group-based Segregation : A Statistical and Conceptual Multilevel Approach

Segregation between ethnic or sociodemographic groups represents a longstanding key independent and dependent variable for the social sciences. However, researchers have only recently begun to take advantage of inferential rather than descriptive statistical techniques in order to assess various aspects of segregation. Specifically, this paper shows that the multilevel binomial response approach suggested by Leckie et al. (2012) provides a particularly flexible framework for describing and explaining segregation in ways not previously possible. Taking the index of dissimilarity (D) as an example we demonstrate how the multilevel binomial response approach helps to reduce the problem of small unit bias, allows to asses segregation at different scales and enables researchers to better understand the role of individual- and contextual-level explanatory variables in shaping segregation. To this end, we employ three case studies focusing on different manifestations of ethnic and gender segregation using survey data from urban, national and cross-national settings