Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

What Difference Does a Negative Opinion Climate Make? Assessing Immigrants’ Low-Wage Risks in Times of Heightened Anti-Immigrant Attitudes

Welchen Unterschied macht ein negatives Meinungsklima? Eine Analyse des Niedriglohnrisikos von Migranten in Zeiten ausländerfeindlicher Einstellungen

  • Abhandlungen
  • Published:
KZfSS Kölner Zeitschrift für Soziologie und Sozialpsychologie Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

The paper argues that a negative opinion climate vis-à-vis immigrants increases the low-wage risks of second-generation immigrants. Analysing data from 18 waves of the German Socio-Economic Panel and using a matched case design, we provide strong support for this hypothesis. The findings complement studies of immigrants’ wages, bringing evidence for their sensitivity to contextual factors. They also complement recent findings from firm-level studies that found that the wage bias in cases of second-generation immigrants reflects the perception of competition between them and German workers.

Zusammenfassung

Dieser Beitrag argumentiert, dass ein negatives Meinungsklima gegenüber Einwanderern das Niedriglohnrisiko von Einwanderern der zweiten Generation erhöht. Eine Matching-basierte Analyse von Daten aus 18 Wellen des Sozio-oekonomischen Panels (SOEP) liefert deutliche Indizien für diese Hypothese. Im Einklang mit existierenden Studien über die Löhne von Migranten zeigen die Ergebnisse, dass kontextuelle normative Faktoren einen substanziellen Einfluss haben. Sie ergänzen auch Unternehmensstudien, die Lohnlücken von Einwanderern der zweiten Generation durch den wahrgenommenen Grad an Wettbewerb zwischen deutschen und nichtdeutschen Arbeitnehmern erklären.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Log in via an institution

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Institutional subscriptions

Fig. 1
Fig. 2

Similar content being viewed by others

Notes

  1. This has changed with the rise of the party Alternative für Deutschland, which received 12.6% of the votes in the 2017 federal election. However, as explained below, our empirical analyses focus on data from 1996 to 2013.

  2. The SOEP was launched in West Germany with a random sample of the 1984 resident population (subsample A) and a stratified random sample of immigrants from the traditional guest-worker nations of Greece, Italy, the former Yugoslavia, Spain, and Turkey (subsample B). Other subsamples (C–M) were added later to address population changes and panel attrition. Two of these subsamples focus on immigration waves into Germany between 1984 and 1994 (subsample D) and between 1995 and 2013 (subsample M).

  3. See employment status in the SOEP data documentation (SOEP 2014).

  4. See migback in the SOEP data documentation (SOEP 2014).

  5. We compute gross hourly wages as the ratio between monthly gross wage and weekly working hours multiplied by 4.2. This estimation depends on the reliability of weekly working hours provided by the respondents, and it may provide unrealistically low or high hourly wages. Therefore, the computed values were top- and bottom-coded at € 5 and € 50.

  6. Economic: “If jobs are scarce, foreigners should be sent home.” Political: “One should deny foreigners any political activity.” Family: “Foreigners living in Germany should choose their spouses from among their own compatriots.”

  7. All descriptive analyses are based on weighted data using the cross-sectional weights provided by SOEP. The weights control for different selection probabilities of the various subsamples (e.g., the oversampling of immigrants) and for different response and attrition rates (Pischner 2007). Weights are not available for sample D and hence, for some descriptive analyses, sample sizes may slightly differ from the ones mentioned in this section.

  8. These scores are supplied with the SOEP data but include a high percentage of missing values. In these cases, we assign a status score of zero and control the missing data imputation with a dummy variable (named “imputation flag” in the estimation results).

  9. In principle, these friends may also have a migration background, but this information is not available in the SOEP data.

  10. Note that a FE model focuses on the within variance. Therefore, it cannot tell the absolute level of the dependent variable. However, it provides estimates on how low-wage probabilities deviate from natives when the corresponding independent variable (here: \(OC_{t}\)) is above or below its average. Therefore, at average opinion climate levels, the differences between both immigrant groups and natives were set to 0 in Table 3.

References

  • Alba, Richard, and Victor Nee. 1997. Rethinking assimilation theory for a new era of immigration. International Migration Review 31:826–874.

    Google Scholar 

  • Allport, Gordon. 2000. The Nature of prejudice. In Stereotypes and Prejudice, ed. Charles Stangor, 20–48. Philadelphia: Psychology Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Andreß, Hans-Jürgen, and Henning Lohmann (eds.). 2008. The working poor in Europe. Employment, poverty and globalization. Cheltenham, UK: Edwar Elgar.

    Google Scholar 

  • Avdeenko, Alexandra, and Siedler, Thomas. 2017. Intergenerational correlations of extreme right-wing party preferences and attitudes toward immigration. The Scandinavian Journal of Economics 119:768–800.

    Google Scholar 

  • Bay, Ann-Helén, Henning Finseraas and Axel West Pedersen. 2013. Welfare Dualism in Two Scandinavian Welfare States: Public Opinion and Party Politics. West European Politics 36:199–220.

    Google Scholar 

  • Bean, Frank, Susan Brown, James Bachmeier, Tineke Fokkema, and Laurence Lessard-Philips. 2012. The dimensions and degree of second-generation incorporation in US and European cities: A comparative study of inclusion and exclusion. International Journal of Comparative Sociology 53:181–209.

    Google Scholar 

  • Betz, Hans-Georg, and Susi Meret. 2009. Revisting Lepanto: the political mobilization against Islam in contemporary Europe. Patterns of Prejudice 43:313–334.

    Google Scholar 

  • Blackwell, Matthew, Stefano Iacus, Gary King, and Giuseppe Porro. 2009. Coarsened exact matching in Stata. Stata Journal 9:524–546.

    Google Scholar 

  • Blalock, Hubert M. 1967. Toward a theory of minority-group relations. New York: John Wiley & Sons.

    Google Scholar 

  • Blanchard, Fletcher A., Christian S. Crandall, John C. Brigham, and Leigh Ann Vaughn. 1994. Condemning and condoning racism: a social context approach to interracial settings. Journal of Applied Psychology 79:993–997.

    Google Scholar 

  • Bohman, Andrea. 2011. Articulated antipathies: political influence on anti-immigrant attitudes. International Journal of Comparative Sociology 52:457–77.

    Google Scholar 

  • Boomgaarden, Hajo, and Rens Vliegenthart. 2007. Explaining the rise of anti-immigrant parties: the role of news media content. Electoral Studies 26:404–417.

    Google Scholar 

  • Braunthal, Gerard. 2009. Right-Wing Extremism in Contemporary Germany. Palgrave Macmillan.

    Google Scholar 

  • Brynin, Malcolm and Simonetta Longhi. 2015. The effect of occupation on poverty among ethnic minority groups. Joseph Rowntree Foundation.

    Google Scholar 

  • Careja, Romana. 2016. Party discourse and prejudiced attitudes toward migrants in Western Europe at the beginning of the 2000s. International Migration Review 50:599–627.

    Google Scholar 

  • Caviedes, Alexander. 2010. Prying Open Fortress Europe: The Turn to Sectoral Labor Migration. Plymouth, UK: Lexington Books.

    Google Scholar 

  • Coleman, James. 1990. Foundations of social theory. Harvard University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Constant, Amelie, and Douglas Massey. 2005. Labor market segmentation and the earnings of German guestworkers. Population Research and Policy Review 24:489–512.

    Google Scholar 

  • Crettaz, Eric. 2018. In-work poverty among migrants. In Handbook on in-work poverty, eds. Henning Lohmann and Ive Marx, 89–108. Cheltenham. UK: Edwar Elgar.

    Google Scholar 

  • Crul, Marcel, and Jens Schneider. 2010. Comparative integration context theory: participation and belonging in new diverse European cities. Ethnic and Racial Studies 33:1249–1268.

    Google Scholar 

  • van Dijk, Teun A. 2000. New(s) racism: a discourse analytical approach. In Ethnic minorities and the media, ed. Simon Cottle, 33–49. Buckingham, UK & Philadelphia, USA: Open University Press

    Google Scholar 

  • Ford, Robert, and Matthew J. Goodwin. 2010. Angry white men: Individual and contextual predictors of support for the British National Party. Political Studies 58:1–25

    Google Scholar 

  • Ganzeboom, Harry, and Donald J. Treiman. 1996. Internationally comparable measures of occupational status for the 1988 International Standard Classification of Occupations. Social Science Research 25:201–239.

    Google Scholar 

  • Gleicher, David, and Lonnie Stevans. 2005. A comprehensive profile of the working poor. Labor 19:517–29.

    Google Scholar 

  • Glet, Alke. 2009. The German hate crime concept: an account of the classification and registration of bias-motivated offences and the implementation of the hate crime model into Germany’s law enforcement system. Internet Journal of Criminology 20.

  • Glet, Alke. 2011. Sozialkonstruktion und strafrechtliche Verfolgung von Hasskriminalität in Deutschland. Eine empirische Untersuchung polizeilicher und justizieller Definitions- und Selektionsprozesse bei der Bearbeitung vorurteilsmotivierter Straftaten. Freiburg: Max-Planck-Institut für ausländisches und internationales Strafrecht.

    Google Scholar 

  • Goldberg, Andreas, and Martina Sauer. 2004. Die Lebenssituation von Frauen und Männern türkischer Herkunft in Nordrhein-Westfalen: Ergebnisse der sechsten Mehrthemenbefragung 2004. Report requested by the Ministry for Health, Social Affairs, Women and Family of North Rhine-Westphalia. Essen: Zentrum für Türkeistudien.

    Google Scholar 

  • Grandner, Thomas, and Dieter Gstach. 2015. Decomposing wage discrimination in Germany and Austria with counterfactual densities. Empirica 42:49–76.

    Google Scholar 

  • Halikiopoulou, Daphne, Steven Mock and Sofia Vsilopoulou. 2013. The civic Zeitgeist: nationalism and liberal values in the European Radical Right. Nations and Nationalism 19:107–127.

    Google Scholar 

  • Hedetoft, Ulf. 2004. Discourses and images of belonging: migrants between new racism, liberal nationalism and globalization. In The Politics of Multiple Belonging: Ethnicity and Nationalism in Europe and East Asia, eds. Flemming Christiansen and Ulf Hedetoft, 23–44. Ashgate.

    Google Scholar 

  • Hedström, Peter, and Richard Swedberg. 1998. Social mechanisms: An introductory essay. In Social mechanisms: An analytical approach to social theory, eds. Peter Hedstrom and Richard Swedberg, 1–31. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Hirsch, Boris, and Elke Jahn. 2015. Is there monopsonistic discrimination against immigrants? First evidence from linked employer-employee data. Industrial and Labor Relations Review 68:501–528.

    Google Scholar 

  • Iacus, Stefano M., Gary King and Giuseppe Porro. 2012. Causal inference without balance checking: coarsened exact matching. Political Analysis 20:1–24

    Google Scholar 

  • Ivanov, Andrey. 2008. Immigrant Discrimination in Germany? Quantile Regression Decomposition of the Wage Gap. Center for Doctoral Studies in Economics, University of Mannheim. Discussion Paper No. 41.

    Google Scholar 

  • Jäckle, Sebastian, and Pascal D. König. 2017. The dark side of the German ‘Welcome Culture’: investigating the causes behind attacks on refugees in 2015. West European Politics 40:223–51.

    Google Scholar 

  • Just, Aida, and Christopher J. Anderson. 2014. Opinion climates and immigrant political action: a cross-national study of 25 European democracies. Comparative Political Studies 47:935–965.

    Google Scholar 

  • Kaas, Leo, and Christian Manger. 2012. Ethnic discrimination in Germany’s labor market: a field experiment. German Economic Review 13:1–20.

    Google Scholar 

  • Kalter, Frank. 2006. In search of an explanation for the specific labor market disadvantages of second generation Turkish migrant children. Simultaneously a comment on the contribution of Holger Seibert and Heike Solga. Zeitschrift fur Soziologie 35:144–160.

    Google Scholar 

  • Kogan, Irena. 2007. A study of immigrants’ employment careers in West Germany using the sequence analysis technique. Social Science Research 36:491–511.

    Google Scholar 

  • Koopmans, Ruud, and Susan Olzak. 2004. Discursive opportunities and the evolution of right-wing violence in Germany. American Journal of Sociology 110:198–230.

    Google Scholar 

  • Kopp, Andrea, and Meike Betz. 2007. Analyse der Entwicklungsverläufe von jugendlichen Gewalttätern mit rechtsextremer, fremdenfeindlicher oder antisemitischer Tatmotivation und Schlussfolgerungen für die Optimierung von Präventions- und Interventionsmaßnahmen. Potsdam: Institut für angewandte Familien-, Kindheits- und Jugendforschung e. V.

    Google Scholar 

  • Luthra, Renée. 2013. Explaining ethnic inequality in the German labor market: labor market institutions, context of reception, and boundaries. European Sociological Review 29:1095–1107.

    Google Scholar 

  • Mau, Steffen, and Christoph Burkhardt. 2009. Migration and welfare state solidarity in Western Europe. Journal of European Social Policy 19:213–229.

    Google Scholar 

  • McLaren, Lauren. 2003. Anti-immigrant prejudice in Europe: contact, threat perception, and preferences for the exclusion of migrants. Social Forces 81:909–936.

    Google Scholar 

  • Melzer, Silvia Maja, Donald Tomaskovic-Devey, Reinhard Schunck and Peter Jacobebbinghaus. 2018. A relational inequality approach to first- and second-generation immigrant earnings in German workplaces. Social Forces 97:91–127.

    Google Scholar 

  • Menz, Georg. 2009. The Political Economy of Managed Migration. Non-State Actors, Europeanization, and the Politics of Designing Migration Policies. New York: Oxford University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Meuleman, Bart, Eldad Davidov and Jacques Billiet. 2009. Changing attitudes toward immigration in Europe, 2002–2007: a dynamic group conflict theory approach. Social Science Research 38:352–365.

    Google Scholar 

  • Müller, Ulrike Anne. 2011. Far away so close: race, whiteness, and German identity. Identities 18:620–645.

    Google Scholar 

  • van Oorschot, Wim. 2005. Immigrants, Welfare and Deservingness: Opinions in European Welfare States. Aalborg Universitet: Centre for Comparative Welfare Studies, Institut for Økonomi, Politik og Forvaltning, Aalborg.

    Google Scholar 

  • Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). 1994. The OECD Jobs Study: Facts, Analysis, Strategies. Paris/Bristol: OECD/University Presses Marketing.

    Google Scholar 

  • Petersen, Lars-Eric, and Jörg Dietz. 2000. Social discrimination in a personnel selection context: the effects of an authority’s instruction to discriminate and followers’ authoritarianism. Journal of Applied Social Psychology 30:206–220.

    Google Scholar 

  • Petersen, Lars-Eric, and Jörg Dietz. 2005. Prejudice and enforcement of workforce homogeneity as explanations for employment discrimination. Journal of Applied Social Psychology 35:144–159.

    Google Scholar 

  • Pichler, Florian. 2010. Foundations of anti-immigrant sentiment: the variable nature of perceived group threat across changing European societies, 2002–2006. International Journal of Comparative Sociology 51:445–469.

    Google Scholar 

  • Pischner, Rainer. 2007. Die Querschnittsgewichtung und die Hochrechnungsfaktoren des Soziooekonomischen Panels (SOEP) ab Release 2007 (Welle w). Berlin: German Institute for Labor Market Research.

    Google Scholar 

  • Portes, Alejandro, and Jószef Böröcz. 1989. Contemporary immigration: theoretical perspectives on its determinants and modes of incorporation. International Migration Review 23:606–630.

    Google Scholar 

  • Portes, Alejandro, and Min Zhou. 1993. The new second generation: segmented assimilation and its variants. The Annals of American Academy of Political and Social Science 530:74–96.

    Google Scholar 

  • Ramm, Christoph. 2010. The Muslim makers. How Germany ‘islamizes’ Turkish immigrants. Interventions: International Journal of Postcolonial Studies 12:183–197.

    Google Scholar 

  • Salverda, Wiemer. 2018. Low earnings and their drivers in relation to in-work poverty. In Handbook on in-work poverty, eds. Henning Lohmann and Ive Marx, 26–49. Cheltenham. UK: Edwar Elgar.

    Google Scholar 

  • Salzborn, Samuel. 2016. Renaissance of the New Right in Germany? A discussion of New Right elements in German right-wing extremism today. German Politics and Society 34:36–63.

    Google Scholar 

  • Scheepers, Peer, Mérove Gijberts and Marcel Coenders. 2002. Ethnic exclusionism in European countries. Public opposition to civil rights for legal migrants as a response to perceived ethnic threat. European Sociological Review 18:17–34.

    Google Scholar 

  • Schneider, Jan, and Martin Weinmann. 2015. Diskriminierung türkeistämmiger Jugendlicher in der Bewerbungsphase. Ein Korrespondenztest am deutschen Ausbildungsmarkt. In Diskriminierung migrantischer Jugendlicher in der beruflichen Bildung. Stand der Forschung, Kontroversen, Forschungsbedarf, ed. Albert Scherr, 115–142. Weinheim/Basel.

    Google Scholar 

  • Sechrist, Gretchen B., and Charles Stangor. 2001. Perceived consensus influences intergroup behavior and stereotype accessibility. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 80:645–654

    Google Scholar 

  • Semyonov, Moshe, Rebeca Raijman and Anastasia Gorodzeisky. 2006. The rise of anti-foreigner sentiment in European societies, 1988–2000. American Sociological Review 71:426–449.

    Google Scholar 

  • SOEP Group. 2014. SOEP 2013—Documentation of Person-related Status and Generated Variables in PGEN for SOEP v30. Berlin: DIW/SOEP.

    Google Scholar 

  • Tajfel, Henri, and John Turner. 1986. The social identity theory of intergroup behavior. In Psychology of Intergroup Relations, eds. Stephen Worchel and William G. Austin, 7–24. Chicago: Nelson-Hall.

    Google Scholar 

  • Verwiebe, Roland, Lena Seewann, Margarita Wolf and Melek Hacioglu. 2016. ‘I have to be very good in what I do.’ Marginalisation and discrimination in the career-entry phase. Experiences and coping strategies among university graduates with a migrant background in Austria. Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies 42:2468–2490.

    Google Scholar 

  • Wagner, Gert G., Joachim R. Frick and Jürgen Schupp. 2007. The German Socio-Economic Panel Study (SOEP). Scope, evolution and enhancements. Schmollers Jahrbuch: Zeitschrift für Wirtschafts- und Sozialwissenschaften 127:139–169.

    Google Scholar 

  • Woods, Roger. 2007. Germany’s New Right as Culture and Politics. Palgrave Macmillan.

    Google Scholar 

  • Zhou, Min. 1997. Segmented assimilation: issues, controversies, and recent research on the new second generation. International Migration Review 31:975–1008.

    Google Scholar 

  • Zick, Andreas, Carina Wolf, Beate Küpper, Eldad Davidov, Peter Schmidt and Wilhelm Heitmeyer. 2008. The syndrome of group-focused enmity: the interrelation of prejudices tested with multiple cross-sectional and panel data. Journal of Social Issues 64:363–383.

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Political Science and Public Management, University of Southern Denmark, Campusvej 55, DK-5230, Odense, Denmark

    Romana Careja

  2. Institute of Sociology and Social Psychology, University of Cologne, Albertus-Magnus-Platz, 50923, Cologne, Germany

    Hans-Jürgen Andreß

  3. Institute of Sociology, Zürich University, Andreasstr. 15, CH-8050, Zürich, Switzerland

    Marco Giesselmann

Authors
  1. Romana Careja
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  2. Hans-Jürgen Andreß
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  3. Marco Giesselmann
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Romana Careja.

Additional information

Online Appendix: www.kzfss.uni-koeln.de/sites/kzfss/pdf/Careja_et_al.pdf.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this article

Careja, R., Andreß, HJ. & Giesselmann, M. What Difference Does a Negative Opinion Climate Make? Assessing Immigrants’ Low-Wage Risks in Times of Heightened Anti-Immigrant Attitudes. Köln Z Soziol 72, 265–288 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11577-020-00697-w

Download citation

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11577-020-00697-w

Keywords

Schlüsselwörter

Search

Navigation