ImmigrationThe Roots of Discrimination Against Immigrants

Published 31 July 2019

All over the world, immigration has become a source of social and political conflict. But what are the roots of antipathy toward immigrants, and how might conflict between immigrant and native populations be dampened? New research finds that religion may matter more than ethnicity in how immigrants are treated, even if they comply with local social norms.

All over the world, immigration has become a source of social and political conflict. But what are the roots of antipathy toward immigrants, and how might conflict between immigrant and native populations be dampened? 

Political scientist Nicholas Sambanis has spent his career considering various forms of inter-group conflict, starting with civil wars and international interventions to help countries transition from war to peace. More recently, he has studied nonviolent forms of conflict, including discrimination between individuals of different ethnic or religious background. Understanding why groups come into conflict and how to resolve those conflicts and avoid violent escalations is the mission of the Penn Identity and Conflict (PIC) Lab, which he founded when he arrived at Penn in 2016.

His newest research on identity politics, an experimental approach that explores the causes of discrimination against Muslim immigrants in Germany, was published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences

“Opposition toward immigration can be due to economic reasons because of competition for jobs or due to the perceived cultural threat that immigrants pose to their host country by challenging dominant norms and changing the national identity,” he says.

He finds arguments centered on cultural threat more convincing than economic explanations of opposition to immigration, especially in Europe. 

“Most previous research is limited to presenting survey-based attitudinal measures of antipathy toward immigrants or refugees and correlating them with socioeconomic characteristics of the survey respondents or their political beliefs,” Sambanis says. “We wanted to go beyond that and measure actual behavior in the field. We wanted to figure out what particular aspects of refugees or immigrants generate more hostility. Is it racial differences? Ethnic differences? Is it linguistic or religious differences? Is there merit to the idea that discrimination toward immigrants is due to the perception that they do not follow the rules and threaten dominant social norms?”

There’s very little experimental research, Sambanis says, on the causes of anti-immigrant bias, and even less research on how to reduce it.