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Individual gendered attitudes toward immigrants. Empirical evidence from French surveys
The Social Science Journal 50 (2013) 321–330
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Individual gendered attitudes toward immigrants. Empirical evidence from French surveys Abel Franc¸ois a,c,∗ , Raul Magni-Berton b a b c
EM Strasbourg Business School, Strasbourg University (LaRGE), France Grenoble University (Pacte), Science Po Grenoble, France Telecom ParisTech (Dep. ESS), France
a r t i c l e
i n f o
Article history: Received 15 May 2012 Received in revised form 27 February 2013 Accepted 27 February 2013 Available online 26 March 2013
Keywords: Immigration Tolerance Gender Competition Contact
a b s t r a c t This article explores gendered attitudes towards immigrants and argues there are three gendered effects on intolerance: the gender gap that induces different levels of intolerance for men and women; gendered sensitivity, meaning men and women react differently to contact or competition with immigrants; the relative sex ratio related to the demographic gender changes in the environment due to immigrants. These hypotheses are tested using the French WVS data and three different intolerance measurements: soft and hard intolerance and relative empathy. The results highlight that the simple gender gap, already observed in the literature, can be partly accounted for by both gendered sensitivity and the relative sex ratio. More broadly, the findings confirm the hypothesis of gendered attitudes towards immigrants defined by three dimensions. © 2013 Western Social Science Association. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
1. Introduction In industrialized countries, immigration grows each year and, as a result, the literature on natives’ attitudes towards immigration has expanded as well. Scholars have provided evidence and a range of theoretical models to understand who is for or against immigration. In this respect, gender differences have been observed but no theoretical approach has been put forward. In cross-sectional studies, it has been shown that men are globally more tolerant of immigrants (Mayda, 2006), even if women seem more supportive of some specific kinds of immigrants (Hainmueller & Hiscox, 2007). Moreover, this global trend is contradicted in some countries, and sometimes – as in Slovenia – evidence shows a significantly higher level of tolerance among women (O’Rourke & Sinnott, 2004). This
∗ Corresponding author. E-mail addresses: [email protected] (A. Franc¸ois), [email protected] (R. Magni-Berton).
pattern is also surprising when it is compared with the radical right gender gap: in Europe, men are not always more conservative than women, but they vote more for extreme populist right-wing parties (Givens, 2004). Moreover, men are more likely to endorse the values associated with the radical right-wing vote, such as conservatism, political cynism, order, but not anti-immigration attitudes, which are particularly widespread among women (Gidengil, Hennigar, Blais, & Nevitte, 2005; Givens, 2004). As a result, it appears that gender matters in the acceptance of immigrants, but there is a lack of theoretical justification. On the other hand, empirically, gender is systematically used as a control variable, without a more sophisticated analysis, except for one study (AmuedoDoranted & Puttitanun, 2011). This article provides a theoretical framework to predict differences in acceptance of immigrants by gender, and two classic models are used to explain attitudes towards immigration: contact theory and competition theory. The main factors explaining positive and negative attitudes towards immigration lie in the interaction between
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natives and immigrants. Are we more open-minded with different people we are familiar with, or do we reject them when we share the same environment? In the migration literature, the contact hypothesis advocates that personal interaction between members of different ethnic groups is associated with lower levels of negative attitudes towards immigrants (Allport, 1954; Pettigrew, 1998). In a metaanalysis comprising results for 515 studies, Pettigrew and Tropp (2006) find that a high number of contact types leads to reducing prejudice. Second, the competition hypothesis is that when immigrants possess similar skills as natives, natives reject immigrants. Note that this rejection can be interpreted as an individual rejection (Facchini & Mayda, 2009; Hanson, Scheve, & Slaughter, 2007) or as a rejection that stems from solidarity with fellow citizens (Quillian, 1995). Evidence does not support one hypothesis over the other. The interaction between natives and immigrants sometimes produces increasing cooperation and tolerance and sometimes lead to conflict and prejudice. Certain immigrant characteristics bring about rejection or acceptance when interaction between natives and immigrants increases. Their religion or marketable skills can predict the direction of the effect of this interaction (Hainmueller & Hiscox, 2010; Sniderman, Hagendoorn, & Prior, 2004). 2. Background In this theoretical section, our gender migration hypotheses about differences in regarding people’s perception of immigrants are developed. What we call gendered attitudes towards immigration is the set of three different effects on tolerance of immigrants which are associated with gender differences. 2.1. The gender gap After controlling for age, income, and education, women are frequently less tolerant of immigrants than men. For instance, Mayda (2006) cross-country study based on the International Social Survey Program and the World Values Survey data finds that males are significantly more tolerant in the ISSP survey, whereas in the WVS, a gender gap does not exist. In a more detailed study using ISSP data, O’Rourke and Sinnott (2004) find that in six out of 24 countries, women are more intolerant than men and only in one country is the opposite true. Hainmueller and Hiscox (2007) using the European Social Survey, find that females are more intolerant of immigrants from rich countries, but not of immigrants from poor countries. The explanations of the gender gap are mainly based on structural factors. Economic models demonstrate that native rejection of immigrants is partly due to the expected competition with them in labor markets. Scheve and Slaughter (2001), for example, find that unskilled workers are more likely to oppose immigration than skilled workers, and when skills are taken into account, the gender gap is no longer significant. Similarly, individual income is correlated with anti-immigrant preferences (Facchini & Mayda, 2009). Since women are internationally less likely to be skilled or high income earners, education and
income may narrow the gender gap. Some authors demonstrate other structural characteristics are at work but not economic factors. Hainmueller and Hiscox (2007, 2010) demonstrate that educated individuals are more tolerant of immigrants, regardless of their competitiveness. Contrary to the economic hypothesis, education matters not because it protects people from unskilled immigrants, but because it makes people more open-minded. We can expect in countries in which women are less educated than men that a gender gap occurs. Finally, age is also a possible explanation. As people age and become more conservative, and women live longer than men, the gender gap may disappear (Gidengil et al., 2005). The literature on the gender gap in preferences for radical right-wing parties finds little impact of these structural factors (Givens, 2004). As we will show, these factors cannot explain the gender gap in tolerance for immigrants. Some attitudinal approaches to the gender gap also exist. Gidengil et al. (2005) find that, contrary to structural factors, sexual differences in attitudes, such as conservatism, anti-statism, or preference for law and order can explain the gender gap in preferences for the radical right. However, we do not adopt this approach for two reasons. First, because gendered differences in attitudes need be explained, these differences can be useful when other structural arguments are tested. Second, because the link between one attitude and another is unclear. For example, we do not know whether anti-immigrants attitudes are an effect of conservatism, or if they are simply included in the concept of conservatism. For these reasons, we only retain structural factors in our estimations. 2.2. Gendered sensitivity The second gendered hypothesis is gendered sensitivity. Females and males are not affected the same by different characteristics. Adopting this view, Amuedo-Doranted and Puttitanun (2011) carry out their analysis separately by gender. They find greater sensitivity to undocumented immigrants among women for social integration and economic assimilation but no difference for documented immigration. The hypothesis developed here is that there is a gendered sensitivity to the context, i.e. the explanatory power of contact and competition varies according to gender. According to the contact hypothesis, increasing contact enhances tolerance because it produces knowledge and familiarity (Amir, 1969), opportunities to share common experiences, and to discover similarities (Brewer & Gaertner, 2001) and because of its affective dimension in which empathy plays a role (Pettigrew, 1998). In this respect, gender differences in empathy are found, which tend to indicate that women are more sensitive to inputs that trigger empathy (Macaskill, Maltby, & Day, 2002; Mestre, Samper, Frías, & Tur, 2009; Thunberg & Dimberg, 2000; Wakabayashi et al., 2007). This difference depends on specific situations and on specific kinds of empathy (Hyde, 2005). Generalizing these findings, it may be expected that contact mechanisms work more for women than for men. There are two psychological mechanisms that underscore the competition hypothesis. First, higher levels of
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cooperation inside a group may lead to hostile attitudes to out-of-group individuals (Hardin, 1995). In this case, each individual is motivated by socio-tropic feelings or feelings of loyalty, but within their identity group. If this group is perceived as threatened by strangers like immigrants, people may reject them in order to protect their own group. Second, an individual develops a feeling of rejection of people who compete with her or him. In this case, such an individual is self-interested and accepts to cooperate only with people who do not compete with him or her. Only the first mechanism is compatible with the contact effect: meeting out-group members can decrease perceived difference between groups. The second mechanism, on the contrary, is an alternative to the contact hypothesis. Competition is a specific type of contact that increases intolerance. In this case, the more intensely the competition is felt, the more adverse to immigration people become. In this respect, the literature reveals differences between genders. Women tend to be more reluctant to engage in competitive interaction than men (Frick, 2011; Gneezy, Leonard, & List, 2009; Niederle & Vesterlund, 2008), meaning that there are gendered differences in the expected impact of the competition effect on attitudes towards immigration. As a result, both competition and contact effects are expected to be more predictive for women than for men. This expectation can be reinforced by another relevant difference among genders, and these effects depend on the environment being correctly perceived. Concerning immigrants, these effects are expected to be greater if people correctly perceive the likelihood that an immigrant competes or cooperates with them. This ecological sensitivity is observed as higher among women than among men. Carter and Hall (2008) define ecological sensitivity as the capacity to recall a large number of valid co-variations. In their experiments, women perform significantly better than men. In practice, this finding is confirmed in French rural communities in which women seem significantly more aware than men of short-term demographic changes (Facchini & Magni Berton, 2010). According to such results, contextual effects should be stronger among women.
2.3. The relative sex ratio effect The third gendered hypothesis is the relative sex ratio effect. Independent of gender differences, sex-biased migration is the main “source of behavioral variation in sex ratios” (Angrist, 2002). We can expect a different impact of male or female migrations on natives according to their gender. The relative sex ratio effect is another contextual effect – added to those of contact and competition – but it is difficult to observe if the gender of the respondents, the natives, and the immigrants are not taken into account. In a society in which gender roles are well distinguished, competition among same-gender individuals is greater. In this specific pattern, competition theory based on competition between immigrants and natives should mainly concern immigrants belonging to the same gender as natives. On the contrary, interaction with the opposite gender should not produce competition and, therefore,
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increases the chance of spreading the contact mechanism which is based on familiarity and empathy. For instance, if productive activities are strongly male, whereas the reproductive activities are mainly female, the economic conflict generated by a mono-gendered immigration should concern only one gender. Such a relative importance of gendered roles should imply that conflict or contact mechanisms are perceived by way of a relative sex ratio effect. If the proportion of men and women among immigrants reflects that among native population, we expect that – on average – there will be no gendered difference in attitudes towards immigration, because no change in the gendered demographic structure is made. However, when the proportion of male and female immigrants is different from that of natives, two predictions are formulated. First, the more male immigrants there are, the more xenophobic male natives are compared to female natives. On the other hand, the more female immigrants there are, the less xenophobic native men are compared to native women. As for native women, their attitudes are symmetric. The second prediction states that the higher the proportion of male natives, the less xenophobic male natives are compared to female natives. Alternatively, the higher the proportion of female natives, the more xenophobic native men are compared to native women. The prediction for women’s attitudes is symmetric. The first prediction is more intuitive. This is a contextual effect automatically implied by the hypothesis of greater competition among same gender individuals, and, men like an exclusively female immigration, while women like a purely male immigration. The second prediction is the same idea in the opposite direction. When people are favored by the contextual sexual ratio, they tend to reject a demographic change in the population. If women are the minority – for instance – they are satisfied with that equilibrium and are more likely to reject immigrants than men. Such mechanisms imply two-gendered dimensions in addition to the classic gender gap. First, each individual is thought of as male or female, and second, he or she lives in a more male or more female context. From such parameters, he or she has to choose whether to support the arrival of new men or new women. We consider the result of this calculation as environmental xenophobia, because it does not reject immigrants individually, but rejects the demographic trend that spontaneous immigration produces. Notice that the two mechanisms can be reduced to one if they are described in terms of demographic change due to immigration. If this change favors men, women are expected to be more intolerant, and vice versa. 3. Data and method 3.1. Case study and data description According to the OECD, France is in the top five countries in number of immigrants, and for ten years, immigration has been an important issue in France. Natives holding traditional values and conservatives have paid considerable attention to this issue. On the other hand, considering its level of development, France is poorly ranked in the Gender Gap Index. In 2007, it was 51st in the general ranking, 61st
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in economic participation and opportunities for women and 67th in political empowerment of women. According to this measurement, France is the worst ranked country countries receiving a high number of immigrants This paper uses individual data based on the latest wave of the World Values Survey conducted in 2008 in France (n = 3071) and the aggregate data provided by the French Institute for statistics and economic data (INSEE). The latter aims to describe the environment of people and relates to the smallest French administrative scale i.e. the county (département). 3.2. Measuring attitudes toward immigrants: from simple intolerance to complex empathy Previous studies measure attitudes toward immigrants with good or bad opinions about their number (Givens, 2004; Hainmueller & Hiscox, 2007; Mayda, 2006; O’Rourke & Sinnott, 2004). In the WVS survey, two questions focus on the number of immigrants. The first is well known in the literature (see Givens, 2004; Simon & Lynch, 1999), while the second is formulated for the first time in the last wave in 2008 and is centered on immigrants as a threat. To distinguish both indicators, we call the former soft intolerance, and the latter hard intolerance. The first question measures the general attitude about the number of immigrants living in France. The broadest question summarizing both positive and negative attitudes towards immigration consists in agreeing with the statement “Today in France, there are too many immigrants.” Respondents choose between five responses: strongly agree, agree, neither agree nor disagree, disagree and disagree strongly. We compute these items to obtain a variable using three values. The soft intolerance variable takes the value +1 when respondents strongly agree and agree with the statement. It takes on the value of zero when they neither agree nor disagree and takes the value of -1 otherwise. We assume these opinions indicate the degree of soft intolerance towards immigrants. Majorities (46%) of respondents are softly intolerant of immigrants, whereas less than a third are softly tolerant (23% are neutral). The second attitude measurement is a more prospective and a more normative opinion on the number of immigrants. Respondents place themselves on a ten point scale in which 1 corresponds to the statement “In the future, the proportion of immigrants will become a threat to society” and 10 for the other side of this statement. The idea of threat is sufficiently broad to analyze such a statement as a general attitude instead of a specific belief. However, the message is stronger than in the first statement. It is plausible to think that there are too many immigrants, without considering them a threat, but the opposite belief is unlikely. Once again, this question is re-coded in a three-value variable. Since the majority of people place themselves at 5 on the scale, this point is the null value. Above this threshold, the variable takes the value -1 and below this point it takes the value 1. To distinguish this intolerance from the soft one, we consider it as hard intolerance. The population is more equally distributed across the three items than previously, since the proportion of tolerant and intolerant people is the same, around 39% (21% are
neutral). This confirms that the statement “immigrants are a threat” is more extreme and thereby, more difficult for people to agree with. However, soft and hard intolerance are quite well correlated (Table 1). The two previous questions are based on two statements showing adversity to the number or proportion of immigrants. The third measurement is more empathetic and positive. For contact theory, empathy is the key concept explaining the acceptance of immigrants, and the question used here is “to what extent do you feel concerned about the living conditions of immigrants in France?”, with the answers: very much, much, to a certain extent, not so much and not at all. We use a measure to control for the overall empathetic aptitude of the respondent. A respondent may feel general empathy toward all kinds of vulnerable people. For these respondents, the measurement of their empathy toward immigrants can be affected by their general empathy towards people. To restrict the measurement to empathy specifically towards immigrants, we use a relative measurement that is defined by the division of the score given to the question described above, by the average score given to the other vulnerable populations, such as elderly people, unemployed people, sick and disabled people and children from poor families, in an identical question. Note that men are, on average, slightly but significantly less empathetic than women with regard to vulnerable populations (2.4 vs. 2.3), while both genders have the same level of lack of empathy regarding immigrants (3.2). Subsequently, although relatively, women are less empathetic than men toward immigrants, they are absolutely as empathetic as men with immigrants. The variable of relative empathy toward immigrants goes from 0.36 to 5. Its average value is 1.4 with a standard deviation of 0.59. The score 1 indicates a neutral position, and people concerned as much by immigrants as by other disadvantaged kinds of people. On average, respondents are less empathetic with immigrants than with any other kind of population. And the higher the value is, the higher the intolerance of respondents towards immigrants. This third indicator, called relative empathy, is conceptually different from the other two, it is correlated with them (Table 2). In other words, our three indicators illustrate three different ways of describing the general attitude of intolerance towards immigrants. First, according to the soft intolerance variable, the distribution of respondents is similar to the distribution according to the hard intolerance variable (Table 1). Second, the average value of the relative empathy variable increases with the value of both the soft and hard intolerance variables (Table 2). 3.3. Independent variables To estimate the three attitude measurements toward immigrants, we distinguish the level of measurement: individual variables or aggregated variables at the county level. Moreover, we distinguish two sub-samples according to the sex of the respondent. In other words, we run three estimations. The first treats the population of the respondents, the second the men of the survey, and the last, the
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Table 1 Relationship between soft and hard intolerance.
Variable: “Immigrants Are a Threat” (hard intolerance)
% of obs.
Variable: “Too Much Immigrants” (soft intolerance)
−1 tolerant 0 neutral +1 intolerant
−1 tolerant 23.48% 4.4% 3.42%
0 neutral 8.99% 7.98% 5.83%
+1 intolerant 6.84% 8.82% 30.25%
Source: French Values Survey (2008). Table 2 Relationship between the measurements of intolerance and relative empathy. Mean value of relative empathy in regard with Measure of intolerance Variable: “Too Much Immigrants” (soft intolerance) Variable: “Immigrants Are a Threat” (hard intolerance)
−1 tolerant 1.19 1.26
0 neutral 1.34 1.40
+1 intolerant 1.65 1.62
Source: French Values Survey (2008).
women of the survey, as in the study by Amuedo-Doranted and Puttitanun (2011). We use this approach instead of introducing interactive variables because there are too many explanatory variables that would be impacted by the sex of the respondent, especially dummy variables. 3.3.1. The gender gap and its structural causes To test the gender gap, we use respondent’s gender as a simple independent variable in the estimations on the overall sample. For split sample estimates, the gender gap is captured by estimation intercepts. According to the structural approach, the impact of gender should disappear when skills, income, education or age are controlled. Respondent’s skill level is measured by coding the answers to questions on respondents’ occupation using the International Labour Organisation’s International Standard Classification of Occupations (ISCO88) coding scheme. Individual income is coded in six categories. Similarly, we also measure educational level with categories adapted to the French educational system. Age is controlled for as well. 3.3.2. Relative sex ratio effect To test the relative sex ratio effect, we use an index of gender proportion in the county of the respondent. The county sex ratio is defined: Relavite Sex Ratio =
men among migrants/women among migrants men among natives/women among natives
This ratio indicates the proportion of men immigrants to women immigrants relative to the proportion of native men to native women. If the ratio is one, then the proportion of men immigrants compared to women immigrants is identical the native population. If the ratio is greater than one, there are relatively more men within the immigrant population than in the native population. On the other hand, if the ratio is less than one, men are scarcer. Contrary to simple ratios, the relative sex ratio captures the demographic changes due to immigration. For example, male dominated migration does not modify the county’s sex ratio, if this county is male-dominated. Therefore, this relative sex ratio allows us to know whether the sex ratio has changed, compared to the situation without immigrants. On average, the ratio per county is 1.06, indicating that the immigrant population is slightly more male-dominated
than the native population. The minimum sex ratio is 0.88 and the maximum is 1.50, indicating a large disparity. The variance of the ratio of immigrants is much higher than that of natives. The native ratio varies from 0.88 to 0.98, whereas the immigrant ratio varies from 0.82 to 1.40. So, immigration affects the sex ratio in the county, but not necessarily positively. 3.3.3. Gendered sensitivity to contact and competition We test contact theory using the share of immigrants within the overall population in the respondent’s county. According to Digiusto and Jolly’s (2008), this measure correctly indicates the likelihood of meeting an immigrant once we control for the size of the agglomeration where respondents live. Concerning the labor-market competition hypothesis, the most appropriate contextual variable is the unemployment rate per county, which influences competition because natives feel less threatened by immigrants when they live in an economically dynamic environment. Gendered sensitivity to the context can be observed in sub-samples, and we can establish the extent that contact and competition affect men and women differently. Finally, we also introduce control variables such as immigrant parents’ nativity, the natural log of agglomeration size, and marital status. 3.3.4. Estimation strategy If we use the same explanatory variables to explain the three kinds of tolerance, our three attitude measurements toward immigration have two different natures. The two soft and hard intolerance variables are polynomial variables taking into account three growing values. Thus, for these variables, we use an ordered probit model with estimation based on maximum log-likelihood. For the last variable about relative empathy, due to its continuous nature, we use standard OLS method of estimation. The main statistical issue of our estimations is the fact that we use both individual and local variables. In this case, the introduction of variables measured at a higher geographical level may induce heteroscedasticity, and the error terms may be correlated with unobserved county characteristics. To solve this problem, we use clustering correction standard errors.
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Table 3 Estimations of soft intolerance. Overall sample Coef. (s.e.)
Women Coef. (s.e.)
Men Coef. (s.e.)
% of immigrants Relative sex ratio Unemployment rate Gender (1 if female) Age
−0.003 (0.004) −0.56*** (0.20) 0.06*** (0.01) 0.10** (0.04) 0.01*** (0.002)
−0.004 (0.01) −0.72*** (0.24) 0.05*** (0.02) − 0.01*** (0.002)
−0.002 (0.01) −0.25 (0.28) 0.07*** (0.02) − 0.01*** (0.002)
Education (elementary excluded) Junior high school High school College Undergraduate Refuse, do not know Native parent
−0.42*** (0.07) −0.19** (0.08) −0.64*** (0.09) −0.94*** (0.09) −0.46** (0.21) −0.19*** (0.05)
−0.46*** (0.09) −0.32*** (0.09) −0.75*** (0.13) −1.14*** (0.14) −0.73*** (0.26) −0.13 (0.08)
−0.41*** (0.12) −0.05 (0.12) −0.55*** (0.14) −0.75*** (0.13) 0.01 (0.32) −0.25** (0.08)
Marital situation (single excluded) Domestic partner Married Monthly income (less than 1000 euros excluded) 1000–1500 euros 1500–2000 euros 2000–2500 euros 2500–3000 euros More than 3000 euros Refuse, do not know Skills (low skill excluded) No object High skill Log(size agglomeration) Cut 1: from −1 to 0 Cut 2: from 0 to +1 Pseudo R2 N
0.16*** (0.06) 0.12** (0.06) 0.01 (0.07) −0.11 (0.08) −0.09 (0.07) −0.23** (0.10) −0.11 (0.08) 0.02 (0.09) −0.02 (0.09) −0.18*** (0.05) −0.12** (0.05) −0.79 (0.25) 0.13 (0.25) 0.08 3071
0.22** (0.09) 0.18** (0.08) 0.12 (0.10) −0.09 (0.11) 0.03 (0.10) −0.17 (0.13) 0.04 (0.11) 0.02 (0.11) 0.003 (0.12) −0.25*** (0.07) −0.05 (0.06) −1.08 (0.34) −0.41 (0.33) 0.09 1647
0.04 (0.09) −0.01 (0.09) −0.16 (0.12) −0.17 (0.12) −0.28** (0.12) −0.33** (0.13) −0.30** (0.14) 0.002 (0.14) −0.09 (0.13) −0.08 (0.08) −0.20** (0.08) −0.45 (0.36) 0.21 (0.37) 0.08 1424
Source: French Values Survey 2008 for individual data and INSEE (French Institute of statistics and economic studies), Census 2006, adjusted for 2008. Notes: The dependent variable consists in agreeing with the statement “Today in France, there are too many immigrants”. This takes the value +1 when respondents strongly agree and agree with the statement. It takes a null value when they neither agree nor disagree, and it takes the value of −1 otherwise. Cell entries in the top panel are ordered probit coefficients with standard errors (in parentheses) corrected with the cluster method (by county). * p < 0.10. ** p < 0.05. *** p < 0.01.
Another statistical concern deals with the standard post-estimation tests on ordered probit estimations on the parallelism hypothesis and the relevance of the dependent variable categories. These issues are treated after the estimations and the results obtained make us confident about the robustness of our estimations. For each measurement of intolerance, we adopt a twostep approach in order to test the gendered sensitivity hypothesis. First, we run the estimation on the overall sample, 3071 observations. Then we run the same estimation on two sub-samples: women and men, containing 1647 and 1424 observations, respectively. 4. Results 4.1. Estimations of soft intolerance Estimates for the ordered probit estimation of soft intolerance are presented in Table 3. First, we observe the gender gap holds even with structural controls, and the associated coefficient is significant (first column). The magnitude of the gender gap is high, and
the predicted probability of a man (respectively a woman) being tolerant is 0.31 (respectively 0.28) whereas the predicted probability of a woman (respectively a man) being intolerant is 0.47 (respectively 0.43). This result is consistent with previous studies that indicate a higher level of intolerance among women than men (Mayda, 2006; O’Rourke & Sinnott, 2004). Soft intolerance effects are similar by gender, and there are only minor differences across individual variables. On the other hand, the relative sex ratio effect is both significant and negative for women, but not for men. Thus, the impact of relative sex ratio in column 1 is only explained by the female reaction and not by the male reaction to the relative sex ratio. Fig. 1 presents predicted probabilities of women considering there are too many immigrants or not according to the relative sex ratio of the county, and the predicted probability of women being intolerant equals the probability of being tolerant when the relative sex ratio is roughly 1.5. Tolerance is more widespread when the ratio increases. There are five differences between men and women. First, low skilled women have greater of intolerance than
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Table 4 Estimations of hard intolerance. Overall sample Coef. (s.e.)
Women Coef. (s.e.)
Men Coef. (s.e.)
% of immigrants Relative sex ratio Unemployment rate Gender (1 if female) Age
−0.02*** (0.005) −0.71** (0.32) 0.06*** (0.01) −0.02 (0.03) 0.01*** (0.002)
−0.02*** (0.01) −0.92*** (0.37) 0.07*** (0.02) − 0.003 (0.002)
−0.01 (0.01) −0.37 (0.40) 0.06*** (0.02) − 0.01*** (0.002)
Education (elementary excluded) Junior high school High school College Undergraduate Refuse, do not know Native parent
−0.30*** (0.08) −0.04 (0.08) −0.45*** (0.10) −0.71*** (0.10) −0.70*** (0.27) −0.29*** (0.06)
−0.30*** (0.09) −0.10 (0.10) −0.50*** (0.12) −0.84*** (0.13) −0.72* (0.40) −0.28*** (0.08)
−0.37*** (0.13) −0.004 (0.11) −0.42*** (0.14) −0.63*** (0.15) −0.75** (0.31) −0.29*** (0.08)
0.12 (0.09) −0.01 (0.08)
0.12 (0.09) −0.02 (0.09)
Marital situation (single excluded) Domestic partner Married Monthly income (less than 1000 euros excluded) 1000–1500 euros 1500–2000 euros 2000–2500 euros 2500–3000 euros More than 3000 euros Refuse, do not know Skills (low skill excluded) No object High skill Log(size agglomeration) Cut 1: from −1 to 0 Cut 2: from 0 to +1 Pseudo R2 N
0.14** (0.06) 0.02 (0.05) 0.07 (0.09) −0.03 (0.09) 0.03 (0.09) 0.06 (0.11) −0.04 (0.11) 0.19** (0.09) 0.04 (0.08) −0.15*** (0.05) −0.10** (0.05) −0.76 (0.40) −0.17 (0.40) 0.06 3071
0.18* (0.10) 0.01 (0.11) 0.15 (0.12) 0.19 (0.17) 0.02 (0.15) 0.30** (0.13) −0.06 (0.1) −0.17*** (0.06) −0.06 (0.07) −1. 11 (0.45) −0.46 (0.45) 0.07 1647
−0.09 (0.16) −0.10 (0.14) −0.13 (0.12) −0.09 (0.14) −0.13 (0.15) 0.05 (0.15) 0.17 (0.13) −0.13* (0.07) −0.16** (0.07) −0.36 (0.48) 0.17 (0.47) 0.06 1424
Source: French Values Survey (2008) for individual data and INSEE (French Institute of statistics and economic studies), Census 2006, adjusted for 2008. Notes: The dependent variable consists in agreeing with the statement “In the future, the proportion of immigrants will become a threat to society”. This takes the value +1 when respondents tend to agree with the statement. It takes a null value when they neither agree nor disagree, and it takes the value of −1 otherwise. Cell entries in the top panel are ordered probit coefficients with standard errors (in parentheses) corrected with the cluster method (by county). * p < 0.10. ** p < 0.05. *** p < 0.01.
high skilled ones but is not observed for men. Second, income is significant and negative for men but not women. Third, the size of the agglomeration an individual lives is negatively related with the intolerance of men but not women. Fourth, there is a negative relationship of education and intolerance, which may be more valid for women than for men. Finally, the marital situation only impacts the intolerance of the women. 4.2. Estimations of hard intolerance Table 4 demonstrates that hard intolerance confirms results obtained with soft intolerance. The differences concern the contact effect and the gender gap. Since the coefficient associated with the sex variable is not significant, women are no more intolerant than men. Note that this result is not explained by individual or contextual control variables. This means that when intolerance is hard, no differences are observed between men and women. This result may be associated with the above mentioned radical right gender gap (Gidengil et al., 2005; Givens, 2004). Indeed, apart from xenophobia, values associated with
radical right parties in Western Europe are more widespread among men. This indicates radicalism is a typically male feature. Therefore, xenophobia is no longer a feminine feature when it becomes radical. On the other hand, in line with contact theory, the percentage of immigrants in a county has a negative relationship with intolerance (column 1), but this effect is significant only for women (columns 2 and 3). Thus, women’s attitudes are more influenced by contextual variables than men’s. As above, there is a competition effect for both genders, which is demonstrated by the positive coefficient on the unemployment rate. The magnitudes of the effects are coherent with those of the soft intolerance estimation. Finally, Table 4 confirms that the relative sex ratio effect of intolerance exists for women. The predicted probability of intolerance is greater than for being intolerant when the relative sex ratio is greater than 1, but the first probability decreases with the ratio, while the second increases (Fig. 2). As for soft tolerance, the relative sex ratio increases the predicted probability of being tolerant. Compared to the relative sex ratio effect on soft intolerance, Fig. 2 shows
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.8 .6 .4 .2 0
PREDICTED PROBABILITY
1
328
0
1
2
3
4
RELATIVE SEX RATIO TOLERANT
NEUTRAL
INTOLERANT
Source: French Values Survey 2008 for individual data and French Institute of statistics and economic studies (INSEE ), Census 2006, adjusted for 2008. Fig. 1. Predicted probabilities of soft intolerance and relative sex ratio for women.
for both men and women, income is not related with tolerance. Second, high skills have an impact for men and women. Third, the impact education is similar across the sub-samples, and, respondent’s age is only significant for men. On the other hand, this is also a difference with the relationship of size of the agglomeration remains the same:
.8 .6 .4 0
.2
PREDICTED PROBABILITY
1
that the effect on hard intolerance is stronger and, without a change in the relative sex ratio, women are as likely to be tolerant as intolerant. This result confirms the previous point that the overall impact of the relative sex ratio is due to the negative influence of the ratio on female intolerance. Four comparisons between men and women have changed compared to the soft intolerance results. First,
0
1 TOLERANT
2 RELATIVE SEX RATIO NEUTRAL
3
4 INTOLERANT
Source: French Values Survey 2008 for individual data and French Institute of statistics and economic studies (INSEE ), Census 2006, adjusted for 2008. Fig. 2. Predicted probabilities of hard intolerance and relative sex ratio for women.
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Table 5 Estimations of relative empathy. Overall sample Coef. (s.e.)
Women Coef. (s.e.)
Men Coef. (s.e.)
% of immigrants Relative sex ratio Unemployment rate Gender (1 if female) Age
−0.006** (0.002) −0.04 (0.11) 0.02*** (0.01) 0.05** (0.02) 0.004*** (0.001)
−0.01*** (0.003) −0.27** (0.13) 0.02** (0.01) − 0.003*** (0.001)
−0.005 (0.004) 0.39** (0.16) 0.03** (0.01) − 0.005*** (0.001)
Education (elementary excluded) Junior high school High school College Undergraduate Refuse, do not know Native parent
−0.11** (0.05) −0.11** (0.05) −0.22*** (0.05) −0.23*** (0.04) −0.11 (0.28) −0.12*** (0.02)
−0.07 (0.07) −0.13* (0.07) −0.22*** (0.08) −0.23*** (0.07) 0.14 (0.35) −0.13*** (0.03)
−0.19*** (0.05) −0.09* (0.05) −0.23*** (0.06) −0.25*** (0.05) −0.63*** (0.14) −0.11*** (0.03)
0.04 (0.03) 0.01 (0.03)
0.07* (0.04) 0.03 (0.04)
−0.03 (0.05) −0.12*** (0.04) −0.08* (0.05) −0.14*** (0.05) −0.11** (0.05) −0.04 (0.05)
0.04 (0.06) −0.07 (0.06) −0.04 (0.06) −0.14** (0.06) −0.07 (0.06) −0.003 (0.07)
Marital situation (single excluded) Domestic partner Married Monthly income (less than 1000 euros excluded) 1000–1500 euros 1500–2000 euros 2000–2500 euros 2500–3000 euros More than 3000 euros Refuse, do not know Skills (low skill excluded) No object High skill Log(size agglomeration) Constant Adjusted R2 N
−0.07* (0.04) −0.07*** (0.02) −0.02 (0.02) 1.36*** (0.14) 0.09 3071
−0.06 (0.05) −0.08** (0.03) −0.02 (0.03) 1.70*** (0.18) 0.09 1647
−0.01 (0.04) −0.03 (0.05) −0.15 (0.09) −0.18** (0.08) −0.15* (0.09) −0.15* (0.09) −0.17* (0.10) −0.11 (0.09) −0.08 (0.06) −0.04 (0.04) −0.02 (0.03) 0.94** (0.31) 0.12 1424
Source: French Values Survey 2008 for individual data and INSEE (French Institute of statistics and economic studies), Census 2006, adjusted for 2008. Notes: The dependent variable is the division of the score given to the question “to what extent do you feel concerned about the living conditions of immigrants in France?” by the average score given to the other vulnerable populations (elderly people, unemployed people, sick and disabled people and children from poor families) in an identical question. Cell entries in the top panel are OLS coefficients with standard errors (in parentheses) corrected with the cluster method (by county). * p < 0.10. ** p < 0.05. *** p < 0.01.
male intolerance increases but there is no relationship with female intolerance.
4.3. Estimations of relative empathy We believe that empathy has a more complex relationship with tolerance for two reasons. First, this is no general concern about the number of immigrants but a question with native’s empathy for immigrants. Second, the relationship is no longer absolute but relative since it considers empathy for immigrants given the empathy for other categories of people. Compared to previous results, empathy also increases as the respondent becomes less tolerant. Notably, Table 5 illustrates that women are less relatively empathetic with immigrants than men, which confirms the gender gap. On the other hand, relative empathy increases with income, education, and skill levels; however, it decreases with age. Concerning contextual effects, column 1 validates both the contact effect, and the competition effect. As for hard intolerance, columns 2 and 3 show that the competition
effect is similar for women and men, while the contact effect affects only women. The relative sex ratio effect is noteworthy and has a significant and negative impact on female empathy and has a significant and positive impact on male empathy. That means that we observe an opposing influence of the proportion of men in the immigrant population related to the proportion of men in the native population. Women are more empathetic to immigrants when the proportion of male immigrants is higher than in the native population. On the contrary, men are more empathetic when the proportion of women among immigrants is higher. From this perspective, male empathy decreases and female empathy increases when immigrant populations are maledominated relative to native populations. Finally, as in the previous estimations, women are more tolerant when they are high-skilled, and education has a similar impact for both genders. As a result, the estimations of the relative empathy towards immigrants confirm previous observations. There has been a gender gap, gendered sensitivity, a relative sex ratio effect, and a gendered sensitivity of the relative sex ratio with French attitudes toward migration by gender.
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5. Conclusion This article focuses on the acceptance of immigrants by natives. The central issue is not how many immigrants there are, but rather who they are. The existing literature analyzes the impact of immigrant characteristics on intolerance. In this paper, we include the relationship with gender. There are three gendered attitudes toward immigrants. Men and women have different tolerance level. They are not equally sensitive to typical explanations of xenophobia. While the competition hypothesis influences both genders, contact theory works only for females, and female intolerance decreases with the probability of interacting with an immigrant. Moreover, sex ratio among immigrants has a significant and inverse relationship for males and females on lack of empathy. These results point out two caveats. First, intolerance measures only matter in understanding why people are intolerant. What is related with strong immigrant rejections do not affect empathy with them. However, these aspects of xenophobia have the same causes. Second, when men and women are considered separately, the gender gap holds. In nearly all our results, the difference between male and female models is high, and women are more intolerant. In this respect, the gender sensitivity and relative sex ratio do not eliminate the gap in gender intolerance, which remains unanswered. While some aspects of this gender gap are understood using individual and contextual structural variables, attitudinal approaches are also likely to be decisive (Gidengil et al., 2005). Finally, we have tested the existence of gendered attitudes towards immigration in France, but we have not tested the impact of the extent of patriarchal structure on the gendered attitudes to immigration. We presume that the ideal condition for developing sensitivity to relative sex ratio is when society promotes different roles between genders. Under this condition, we expect strong intra-sexual competition and a subsequent rejection of same-sex immigrants. Similarly, the more distant a society is from this condition, the less sensitive natives are to the relative sex ratio. In traditional societies, interfaith or interracial sexual relationships have often been forbidden for women but not for men. In such societies, attitudes towards foreigners are explicitly gendered, sometimes even by law. Acknowledgements We would like to thank Eric Dubois for his helpful work on data, Camille Bromley and Anna Jeannesson for their work on the text, and a referee for his valuable comments. Any remaining errors are ours. References Allport, G. W. (1954). The nature of prejudice. Reading, MA: Addison Wesley. Amir, Y. (1969). Contact hypothesis in ethnic relations. Psychological Bulletin, 71, 319–342. Amuedo-Doranted, C., & Puttitanun, T. (2011). Gender differences in native preferences toward undocumented and legal immigration: Evidence from San Diego. Contemporary Economic Policy, 29, 31–45.
Angrist, J. (2002). How do sex ratios affect marriage and labor markets? Evidence from America’s second generation. The Quarterly Journal of Economics, 117, 997–1038. Brewer, M. B., & Gaertner, S. L. (2001). Toward reduction of prejudice: Intergroup contact and social categorization. In R. Brown, & S. Gaertner (Eds.), Blackwell handbook of social psychology: Intergroup processes (pp. 451–472). Malden, MA: Blackwell. Carter, J. D., & Hall, J. A. (2008). Individual differences in the accuracy of detecting social covariations: Ecological sensitivity. Journal of Research in Personality, 42, 439–455. Digiusto, G., & Jolly, S. (2008). French xenophobia and immigrant contact: Public attitudes toward immigrants “Paper presented at the annual meeting of the APSA 2008 Annual Meeting”. Facchini, F., & Magni Berton, R. (2010). Politiques publiques d’installation et célibat des agriculteurs. Politique et sociétés, 29, 47–64. Facchini, G., & Mayda, A. M. (2009). Does the welfare state affect individual attitudes toward immigrants? Evidence across countries. Review of Economics and Statistics, 91, 295–314. Frick, B. (2011). Gender differences in competitiveness: Empirical evidence from professional distance running. Labour Economics, 18, 389–398. Gidengil, E., Hennigar, M., Blais, A., & Nevitte, N. (2005). Explaining the gender gap in support for the new right. Comparative Political Studies, 38, 1171–1195. Givens, T. E. (2004). The radical right gender gap. Comparative Political Studies, 37, 30–54. Gneezy, U., Leonard, K. L., & List, J. A. (2009). Gender differences in competition: Evidence from a matrilineal and a patriarchal society. Econometrica, 77, 1637–1664. Hainmueller, J., & Hiscox, M. J. (2007). Educated preferences: Explaining attitudestoward immigration in Europe. International Organization, 61, 399–442. Hainmueller, J., & Hiscox, M. J. (2010). Attitudes toward highly skilled and low-skilled immigration: Evidence from a survey experiment. American Political Science Review, 104, 61–84. Hanson, G., Scheve, K., & Slaughter, M. (2007). Public finance and individual preferences over globalization strategies. Economics and Politics, 19, 1–33. Hardin, R. (1995). One for all: The logic of group conflict. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Hyde, J. S. (2005). The gender similarities hypothesis. American Psychologist, 60, 581–592. Macaskill, A., Maltby, J., & Day, L. (2002). Forgiveness of self and others and emotional empathy. Journal of Social Psychology, 142, 663– 665. Mayda, A. M. (2006). Who is against immigration? A cross-country investigation of individual attitudes toward immigrants. Review of Economics and Statistics, 88, 510–530. Mestre, M. V., Samper, P., Frías, M. D., & Tur, A. M. (2009). Are women more empathetic than men? A longitudinal study in adolescence. The Spanish Journal of Psychology, 12, 76–83. Niederle, M., & Vesterlund, L. (2008). Gender differences in competition. Negotiation Journal, 24, 447–463. O’Rourke, K. H., & Sinnott, R. (2004). The determinants of individual attitudes towards immigration. European Journal of Political Economy, 22, 838–861. Pettigrew, T. F. (1998). Intergroup contact theory. Annual Review of Psychology, 49, 65–85. Pettigrew, T. F., & Tropp, L. R. (2006). A meta-analytic test of intergroup contact theory. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 90, 751–783. Quillian, L. (1995). Prejudice as a response to perceived group threat: Population composition and anti-immigrant and racial prejudice in Europe. American Sociological Review, 60, 586–611. Scheve, K. F., & Slaughter, M. J. (2001). Labor market competition and individual preferences over immigration policy. Review of Economics and Statistics, 83, 133–145. Simon, R. J., & Lynch, J. P. (1999). A comparative assessment of public opinion toward immigrants and immigration policies. International Migration Review, 33, 455–467. Sniderman, P. M., Hagendoorn, L., & Prior, M. (2004). Predisposing factors and situational triggers: Exclusionary reactions to immigrant minorities. American Political Science Review, 98, 35–49. Thunberg, M., & Dimberg, U. (2000). Gender differences in facial reactions to fear-relevant stimuli. Journal of Nonverbal Behavior, 24, 45–51. Wakabayashi, A., Baron-Cohen, S., Uchiyama, T., Yoshida, Y., Kuroda, M., & Weelwright, S. (2007). Empathizing and systemizing in adults with and without autism spectrum conditions: Cross-cultural stability. Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, 37, 1823–1832.
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Individual gendered attitudes toward immigrants. Empirical evidence from French surveys Abel Franc¸ois a,c,∗ , Raul Magni-Berton b a b c
EM Strasbourg Business School, Strasbourg University (LaRGE), France Grenoble University (Pacte), Science Po Grenoble, France Telecom ParisTech (Dep. ESS), France
a r t i c l e
i n f o
Article history: Received 15 May 2012 Received in revised form 27 February 2013 Accepted 27 February 2013 Available online 26 March 2013
Keywords: Immigration Tolerance Gender Competition Contact
a b s t r a c t This article explores gendered attitudes towards immigrants and argues there are three gendered effects on intolerance: the gender gap that induces different levels of intolerance for men and women; gendered sensitivity, meaning men and women react differently to contact or competition with immigrants; the relative sex ratio related to the demographic gender changes in the environment due to immigrants. These hypotheses are tested using the French WVS data and three different intolerance measurements: soft and hard intolerance and relative empathy. The results highlight that the simple gender gap, already observed in the literature, can be partly accounted for by both gendered sensitivity and the relative sex ratio. More broadly, the findings confirm the hypothesis of gendered attitudes towards immigrants defined by three dimensions. © 2013 Western Social Science Association. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
1. Introduction In industrialized countries, immigration grows each year and, as a result, the literature on natives’ attitudes towards immigration has expanded as well. Scholars have provided evidence and a range of theoretical models to understand who is for or against immigration. In this respect, gender differences have been observed but no theoretical approach has been put forward. In cross-sectional studies, it has been shown that men are globally more tolerant of immigrants (Mayda, 2006), even if women seem more supportive of some specific kinds of immigrants (Hainmueller & Hiscox, 2007). Moreover, this global trend is contradicted in some countries, and sometimes – as in Slovenia – evidence shows a significantly higher level of tolerance among women (O’Rourke & Sinnott, 2004). This
∗ Corresponding author. E-mail addresses: [email protected] (A. Franc¸ois), [email protected] (R. Magni-Berton).
pattern is also surprising when it is compared with the radical right gender gap: in Europe, men are not always more conservative than women, but they vote more for extreme populist right-wing parties (Givens, 2004). Moreover, men are more likely to endorse the values associated with the radical right-wing vote, such as conservatism, political cynism, order, but not anti-immigration attitudes, which are particularly widespread among women (Gidengil, Hennigar, Blais, & Nevitte, 2005; Givens, 2004). As a result, it appears that gender matters in the acceptance of immigrants, but there is a lack of theoretical justification. On the other hand, empirically, gender is systematically used as a control variable, without a more sophisticated analysis, except for one study (AmuedoDoranted & Puttitanun, 2011). This article provides a theoretical framework to predict differences in acceptance of immigrants by gender, and two classic models are used to explain attitudes towards immigration: contact theory and competition theory. The main factors explaining positive and negative attitudes towards immigration lie in the interaction between
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natives and immigrants. Are we more open-minded with different people we are familiar with, or do we reject them when we share the same environment? In the migration literature, the contact hypothesis advocates that personal interaction between members of different ethnic groups is associated with lower levels of negative attitudes towards immigrants (Allport, 1954; Pettigrew, 1998). In a metaanalysis comprising results for 515 studies, Pettigrew and Tropp (2006) find that a high number of contact types leads to reducing prejudice. Second, the competition hypothesis is that when immigrants possess similar skills as natives, natives reject immigrants. Note that this rejection can be interpreted as an individual rejection (Facchini & Mayda, 2009; Hanson, Scheve, & Slaughter, 2007) or as a rejection that stems from solidarity with fellow citizens (Quillian, 1995). Evidence does not support one hypothesis over the other. The interaction between natives and immigrants sometimes produces increasing cooperation and tolerance and sometimes lead to conflict and prejudice. Certain immigrant characteristics bring about rejection or acceptance when interaction between natives and immigrants increases. Their religion or marketable skills can predict the direction of the effect of this interaction (Hainmueller & Hiscox, 2010; Sniderman, Hagendoorn, & Prior, 2004). 2. Background In this theoretical section, our gender migration hypotheses about differences in regarding people’s perception of immigrants are developed. What we call gendered attitudes towards immigration is the set of three different effects on tolerance of immigrants which are associated with gender differences. 2.1. The gender gap After controlling for age, income, and education, women are frequently less tolerant of immigrants than men. For instance, Mayda (2006) cross-country study based on the International Social Survey Program and the World Values Survey data finds that males are significantly more tolerant in the ISSP survey, whereas in the WVS, a gender gap does not exist. In a more detailed study using ISSP data, O’Rourke and Sinnott (2004) find that in six out of 24 countries, women are more intolerant than men and only in one country is the opposite true. Hainmueller and Hiscox (2007) using the European Social Survey, find that females are more intolerant of immigrants from rich countries, but not of immigrants from poor countries. The explanations of the gender gap are mainly based on structural factors. Economic models demonstrate that native rejection of immigrants is partly due to the expected competition with them in labor markets. Scheve and Slaughter (2001), for example, find that unskilled workers are more likely to oppose immigration than skilled workers, and when skills are taken into account, the gender gap is no longer significant. Similarly, individual income is correlated with anti-immigrant preferences (Facchini & Mayda, 2009). Since women are internationally less likely to be skilled or high income earners, education and
income may narrow the gender gap. Some authors demonstrate other structural characteristics are at work but not economic factors. Hainmueller and Hiscox (2007, 2010) demonstrate that educated individuals are more tolerant of immigrants, regardless of their competitiveness. Contrary to the economic hypothesis, education matters not because it protects people from unskilled immigrants, but because it makes people more open-minded. We can expect in countries in which women are less educated than men that a gender gap occurs. Finally, age is also a possible explanation. As people age and become more conservative, and women live longer than men, the gender gap may disappear (Gidengil et al., 2005). The literature on the gender gap in preferences for radical right-wing parties finds little impact of these structural factors (Givens, 2004). As we will show, these factors cannot explain the gender gap in tolerance for immigrants. Some attitudinal approaches to the gender gap also exist. Gidengil et al. (2005) find that, contrary to structural factors, sexual differences in attitudes, such as conservatism, anti-statism, or preference for law and order can explain the gender gap in preferences for the radical right. However, we do not adopt this approach for two reasons. First, because gendered differences in attitudes need be explained, these differences can be useful when other structural arguments are tested. Second, because the link between one attitude and another is unclear. For example, we do not know whether anti-immigrants attitudes are an effect of conservatism, or if they are simply included in the concept of conservatism. For these reasons, we only retain structural factors in our estimations. 2.2. Gendered sensitivity The second gendered hypothesis is gendered sensitivity. Females and males are not affected the same by different characteristics. Adopting this view, Amuedo-Doranted and Puttitanun (2011) carry out their analysis separately by gender. They find greater sensitivity to undocumented immigrants among women for social integration and economic assimilation but no difference for documented immigration. The hypothesis developed here is that there is a gendered sensitivity to the context, i.e. the explanatory power of contact and competition varies according to gender. According to the contact hypothesis, increasing contact enhances tolerance because it produces knowledge and familiarity (Amir, 1969), opportunities to share common experiences, and to discover similarities (Brewer & Gaertner, 2001) and because of its affective dimension in which empathy plays a role (Pettigrew, 1998). In this respect, gender differences in empathy are found, which tend to indicate that women are more sensitive to inputs that trigger empathy (Macaskill, Maltby, & Day, 2002; Mestre, Samper, Frías, & Tur, 2009; Thunberg & Dimberg, 2000; Wakabayashi et al., 2007). This difference depends on specific situations and on specific kinds of empathy (Hyde, 2005). Generalizing these findings, it may be expected that contact mechanisms work more for women than for men. There are two psychological mechanisms that underscore the competition hypothesis. First, higher levels of
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cooperation inside a group may lead to hostile attitudes to out-of-group individuals (Hardin, 1995). In this case, each individual is motivated by socio-tropic feelings or feelings of loyalty, but within their identity group. If this group is perceived as threatened by strangers like immigrants, people may reject them in order to protect their own group. Second, an individual develops a feeling of rejection of people who compete with her or him. In this case, such an individual is self-interested and accepts to cooperate only with people who do not compete with him or her. Only the first mechanism is compatible with the contact effect: meeting out-group members can decrease perceived difference between groups. The second mechanism, on the contrary, is an alternative to the contact hypothesis. Competition is a specific type of contact that increases intolerance. In this case, the more intensely the competition is felt, the more adverse to immigration people become. In this respect, the literature reveals differences between genders. Women tend to be more reluctant to engage in competitive interaction than men (Frick, 2011; Gneezy, Leonard, & List, 2009; Niederle & Vesterlund, 2008), meaning that there are gendered differences in the expected impact of the competition effect on attitudes towards immigration. As a result, both competition and contact effects are expected to be more predictive for women than for men. This expectation can be reinforced by another relevant difference among genders, and these effects depend on the environment being correctly perceived. Concerning immigrants, these effects are expected to be greater if people correctly perceive the likelihood that an immigrant competes or cooperates with them. This ecological sensitivity is observed as higher among women than among men. Carter and Hall (2008) define ecological sensitivity as the capacity to recall a large number of valid co-variations. In their experiments, women perform significantly better than men. In practice, this finding is confirmed in French rural communities in which women seem significantly more aware than men of short-term demographic changes (Facchini & Magni Berton, 2010). According to such results, contextual effects should be stronger among women.
2.3. The relative sex ratio effect The third gendered hypothesis is the relative sex ratio effect. Independent of gender differences, sex-biased migration is the main “source of behavioral variation in sex ratios” (Angrist, 2002). We can expect a different impact of male or female migrations on natives according to their gender. The relative sex ratio effect is another contextual effect – added to those of contact and competition – but it is difficult to observe if the gender of the respondents, the natives, and the immigrants are not taken into account. In a society in which gender roles are well distinguished, competition among same-gender individuals is greater. In this specific pattern, competition theory based on competition between immigrants and natives should mainly concern immigrants belonging to the same gender as natives. On the contrary, interaction with the opposite gender should not produce competition and, therefore,
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increases the chance of spreading the contact mechanism which is based on familiarity and empathy. For instance, if productive activities are strongly male, whereas the reproductive activities are mainly female, the economic conflict generated by a mono-gendered immigration should concern only one gender. Such a relative importance of gendered roles should imply that conflict or contact mechanisms are perceived by way of a relative sex ratio effect. If the proportion of men and women among immigrants reflects that among native population, we expect that – on average – there will be no gendered difference in attitudes towards immigration, because no change in the gendered demographic structure is made. However, when the proportion of male and female immigrants is different from that of natives, two predictions are formulated. First, the more male immigrants there are, the more xenophobic male natives are compared to female natives. On the other hand, the more female immigrants there are, the less xenophobic native men are compared to native women. As for native women, their attitudes are symmetric. The second prediction states that the higher the proportion of male natives, the less xenophobic male natives are compared to female natives. Alternatively, the higher the proportion of female natives, the more xenophobic native men are compared to native women. The prediction for women’s attitudes is symmetric. The first prediction is more intuitive. This is a contextual effect automatically implied by the hypothesis of greater competition among same gender individuals, and, men like an exclusively female immigration, while women like a purely male immigration. The second prediction is the same idea in the opposite direction. When people are favored by the contextual sexual ratio, they tend to reject a demographic change in the population. If women are the minority – for instance – they are satisfied with that equilibrium and are more likely to reject immigrants than men. Such mechanisms imply two-gendered dimensions in addition to the classic gender gap. First, each individual is thought of as male or female, and second, he or she lives in a more male or more female context. From such parameters, he or she has to choose whether to support the arrival of new men or new women. We consider the result of this calculation as environmental xenophobia, because it does not reject immigrants individually, but rejects the demographic trend that spontaneous immigration produces. Notice that the two mechanisms can be reduced to one if they are described in terms of demographic change due to immigration. If this change favors men, women are expected to be more intolerant, and vice versa. 3. Data and method 3.1. Case study and data description According to the OECD, France is in the top five countries in number of immigrants, and for ten years, immigration has been an important issue in France. Natives holding traditional values and conservatives have paid considerable attention to this issue. On the other hand, considering its level of development, France is poorly ranked in the Gender Gap Index. In 2007, it was 51st in the general ranking, 61st
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in economic participation and opportunities for women and 67th in political empowerment of women. According to this measurement, France is the worst ranked country countries receiving a high number of immigrants This paper uses individual data based on the latest wave of the World Values Survey conducted in 2008 in France (n = 3071) and the aggregate data provided by the French Institute for statistics and economic data (INSEE). The latter aims to describe the environment of people and relates to the smallest French administrative scale i.e. the county (département). 3.2. Measuring attitudes toward immigrants: from simple intolerance to complex empathy Previous studies measure attitudes toward immigrants with good or bad opinions about their number (Givens, 2004; Hainmueller & Hiscox, 2007; Mayda, 2006; O’Rourke & Sinnott, 2004). In the WVS survey, two questions focus on the number of immigrants. The first is well known in the literature (see Givens, 2004; Simon & Lynch, 1999), while the second is formulated for the first time in the last wave in 2008 and is centered on immigrants as a threat. To distinguish both indicators, we call the former soft intolerance, and the latter hard intolerance. The first question measures the general attitude about the number of immigrants living in France. The broadest question summarizing both positive and negative attitudes towards immigration consists in agreeing with the statement “Today in France, there are too many immigrants.” Respondents choose between five responses: strongly agree, agree, neither agree nor disagree, disagree and disagree strongly. We compute these items to obtain a variable using three values. The soft intolerance variable takes the value +1 when respondents strongly agree and agree with the statement. It takes on the value of zero when they neither agree nor disagree and takes the value of -1 otherwise. We assume these opinions indicate the degree of soft intolerance towards immigrants. Majorities (46%) of respondents are softly intolerant of immigrants, whereas less than a third are softly tolerant (23% are neutral). The second attitude measurement is a more prospective and a more normative opinion on the number of immigrants. Respondents place themselves on a ten point scale in which 1 corresponds to the statement “In the future, the proportion of immigrants will become a threat to society” and 10 for the other side of this statement. The idea of threat is sufficiently broad to analyze such a statement as a general attitude instead of a specific belief. However, the message is stronger than in the first statement. It is plausible to think that there are too many immigrants, without considering them a threat, but the opposite belief is unlikely. Once again, this question is re-coded in a three-value variable. Since the majority of people place themselves at 5 on the scale, this point is the null value. Above this threshold, the variable takes the value -1 and below this point it takes the value 1. To distinguish this intolerance from the soft one, we consider it as hard intolerance. The population is more equally distributed across the three items than previously, since the proportion of tolerant and intolerant people is the same, around 39% (21% are
neutral). This confirms that the statement “immigrants are a threat” is more extreme and thereby, more difficult for people to agree with. However, soft and hard intolerance are quite well correlated (Table 1). The two previous questions are based on two statements showing adversity to the number or proportion of immigrants. The third measurement is more empathetic and positive. For contact theory, empathy is the key concept explaining the acceptance of immigrants, and the question used here is “to what extent do you feel concerned about the living conditions of immigrants in France?”, with the answers: very much, much, to a certain extent, not so much and not at all. We use a measure to control for the overall empathetic aptitude of the respondent. A respondent may feel general empathy toward all kinds of vulnerable people. For these respondents, the measurement of their empathy toward immigrants can be affected by their general empathy towards people. To restrict the measurement to empathy specifically towards immigrants, we use a relative measurement that is defined by the division of the score given to the question described above, by the average score given to the other vulnerable populations, such as elderly people, unemployed people, sick and disabled people and children from poor families, in an identical question. Note that men are, on average, slightly but significantly less empathetic than women with regard to vulnerable populations (2.4 vs. 2.3), while both genders have the same level of lack of empathy regarding immigrants (3.2). Subsequently, although relatively, women are less empathetic than men toward immigrants, they are absolutely as empathetic as men with immigrants. The variable of relative empathy toward immigrants goes from 0.36 to 5. Its average value is 1.4 with a standard deviation of 0.59. The score 1 indicates a neutral position, and people concerned as much by immigrants as by other disadvantaged kinds of people. On average, respondents are less empathetic with immigrants than with any other kind of population. And the higher the value is, the higher the intolerance of respondents towards immigrants. This third indicator, called relative empathy, is conceptually different from the other two, it is correlated with them (Table 2). In other words, our three indicators illustrate three different ways of describing the general attitude of intolerance towards immigrants. First, according to the soft intolerance variable, the distribution of respondents is similar to the distribution according to the hard intolerance variable (Table 1). Second, the average value of the relative empathy variable increases with the value of both the soft and hard intolerance variables (Table 2). 3.3. Independent variables To estimate the three attitude measurements toward immigrants, we distinguish the level of measurement: individual variables or aggregated variables at the county level. Moreover, we distinguish two sub-samples according to the sex of the respondent. In other words, we run three estimations. The first treats the population of the respondents, the second the men of the survey, and the last, the
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Table 1 Relationship between soft and hard intolerance.
Variable: “Immigrants Are a Threat” (hard intolerance)
% of obs.
Variable: “Too Much Immigrants” (soft intolerance)
−1 tolerant 0 neutral +1 intolerant
−1 tolerant 23.48% 4.4% 3.42%
0 neutral 8.99% 7.98% 5.83%
+1 intolerant 6.84% 8.82% 30.25%
Source: French Values Survey (2008). Table 2 Relationship between the measurements of intolerance and relative empathy. Mean value of relative empathy in regard with Measure of intolerance Variable: “Too Much Immigrants” (soft intolerance) Variable: “Immigrants Are a Threat” (hard intolerance)
−1 tolerant 1.19 1.26
0 neutral 1.34 1.40
+1 intolerant 1.65 1.62
Source: French Values Survey (2008).
women of the survey, as in the study by Amuedo-Doranted and Puttitanun (2011). We use this approach instead of introducing interactive variables because there are too many explanatory variables that would be impacted by the sex of the respondent, especially dummy variables. 3.3.1. The gender gap and its structural causes To test the gender gap, we use respondent’s gender as a simple independent variable in the estimations on the overall sample. For split sample estimates, the gender gap is captured by estimation intercepts. According to the structural approach, the impact of gender should disappear when skills, income, education or age are controlled. Respondent’s skill level is measured by coding the answers to questions on respondents’ occupation using the International Labour Organisation’s International Standard Classification of Occupations (ISCO88) coding scheme. Individual income is coded in six categories. Similarly, we also measure educational level with categories adapted to the French educational system. Age is controlled for as well. 3.3.2. Relative sex ratio effect To test the relative sex ratio effect, we use an index of gender proportion in the county of the respondent. The county sex ratio is defined: Relavite Sex Ratio =
men among migrants/women among migrants men among natives/women among natives
This ratio indicates the proportion of men immigrants to women immigrants relative to the proportion of native men to native women. If the ratio is one, then the proportion of men immigrants compared to women immigrants is identical the native population. If the ratio is greater than one, there are relatively more men within the immigrant population than in the native population. On the other hand, if the ratio is less than one, men are scarcer. Contrary to simple ratios, the relative sex ratio captures the demographic changes due to immigration. For example, male dominated migration does not modify the county’s sex ratio, if this county is male-dominated. Therefore, this relative sex ratio allows us to know whether the sex ratio has changed, compared to the situation without immigrants. On average, the ratio per county is 1.06, indicating that the immigrant population is slightly more male-dominated
than the native population. The minimum sex ratio is 0.88 and the maximum is 1.50, indicating a large disparity. The variance of the ratio of immigrants is much higher than that of natives. The native ratio varies from 0.88 to 0.98, whereas the immigrant ratio varies from 0.82 to 1.40. So, immigration affects the sex ratio in the county, but not necessarily positively. 3.3.3. Gendered sensitivity to contact and competition We test contact theory using the share of immigrants within the overall population in the respondent’s county. According to Digiusto and Jolly’s (2008), this measure correctly indicates the likelihood of meeting an immigrant once we control for the size of the agglomeration where respondents live. Concerning the labor-market competition hypothesis, the most appropriate contextual variable is the unemployment rate per county, which influences competition because natives feel less threatened by immigrants when they live in an economically dynamic environment. Gendered sensitivity to the context can be observed in sub-samples, and we can establish the extent that contact and competition affect men and women differently. Finally, we also introduce control variables such as immigrant parents’ nativity, the natural log of agglomeration size, and marital status. 3.3.4. Estimation strategy If we use the same explanatory variables to explain the three kinds of tolerance, our three attitude measurements toward immigration have two different natures. The two soft and hard intolerance variables are polynomial variables taking into account three growing values. Thus, for these variables, we use an ordered probit model with estimation based on maximum log-likelihood. For the last variable about relative empathy, due to its continuous nature, we use standard OLS method of estimation. The main statistical issue of our estimations is the fact that we use both individual and local variables. In this case, the introduction of variables measured at a higher geographical level may induce heteroscedasticity, and the error terms may be correlated with unobserved county characteristics. To solve this problem, we use clustering correction standard errors.
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Table 3 Estimations of soft intolerance. Overall sample Coef. (s.e.)
Women Coef. (s.e.)
Men Coef. (s.e.)
% of immigrants Relative sex ratio Unemployment rate Gender (1 if female) Age
−0.003 (0.004) −0.56*** (0.20) 0.06*** (0.01) 0.10** (0.04) 0.01*** (0.002)
−0.004 (0.01) −0.72*** (0.24) 0.05*** (0.02) − 0.01*** (0.002)
−0.002 (0.01) −0.25 (0.28) 0.07*** (0.02) − 0.01*** (0.002)
Education (elementary excluded) Junior high school High school College Undergraduate Refuse, do not know Native parent
−0.42*** (0.07) −0.19** (0.08) −0.64*** (0.09) −0.94*** (0.09) −0.46** (0.21) −0.19*** (0.05)
−0.46*** (0.09) −0.32*** (0.09) −0.75*** (0.13) −1.14*** (0.14) −0.73*** (0.26) −0.13 (0.08)
−0.41*** (0.12) −0.05 (0.12) −0.55*** (0.14) −0.75*** (0.13) 0.01 (0.32) −0.25** (0.08)
Marital situation (single excluded) Domestic partner Married Monthly income (less than 1000 euros excluded) 1000–1500 euros 1500–2000 euros 2000–2500 euros 2500–3000 euros More than 3000 euros Refuse, do not know Skills (low skill excluded) No object High skill Log(size agglomeration) Cut 1: from −1 to 0 Cut 2: from 0 to +1 Pseudo R2 N
0.16*** (0.06) 0.12** (0.06) 0.01 (0.07) −0.11 (0.08) −0.09 (0.07) −0.23** (0.10) −0.11 (0.08) 0.02 (0.09) −0.02 (0.09) −0.18*** (0.05) −0.12** (0.05) −0.79 (0.25) 0.13 (0.25) 0.08 3071
0.22** (0.09) 0.18** (0.08) 0.12 (0.10) −0.09 (0.11) 0.03 (0.10) −0.17 (0.13) 0.04 (0.11) 0.02 (0.11) 0.003 (0.12) −0.25*** (0.07) −0.05 (0.06) −1.08 (0.34) −0.41 (0.33) 0.09 1647
0.04 (0.09) −0.01 (0.09) −0.16 (0.12) −0.17 (0.12) −0.28** (0.12) −0.33** (0.13) −0.30** (0.14) 0.002 (0.14) −0.09 (0.13) −0.08 (0.08) −0.20** (0.08) −0.45 (0.36) 0.21 (0.37) 0.08 1424
Source: French Values Survey 2008 for individual data and INSEE (French Institute of statistics and economic studies), Census 2006, adjusted for 2008. Notes: The dependent variable consists in agreeing with the statement “Today in France, there are too many immigrants”. This takes the value +1 when respondents strongly agree and agree with the statement. It takes a null value when they neither agree nor disagree, and it takes the value of −1 otherwise. Cell entries in the top panel are ordered probit coefficients with standard errors (in parentheses) corrected with the cluster method (by county). * p < 0.10. ** p < 0.05. *** p < 0.01.
Another statistical concern deals with the standard post-estimation tests on ordered probit estimations on the parallelism hypothesis and the relevance of the dependent variable categories. These issues are treated after the estimations and the results obtained make us confident about the robustness of our estimations. For each measurement of intolerance, we adopt a twostep approach in order to test the gendered sensitivity hypothesis. First, we run the estimation on the overall sample, 3071 observations. Then we run the same estimation on two sub-samples: women and men, containing 1647 and 1424 observations, respectively. 4. Results 4.1. Estimations of soft intolerance Estimates for the ordered probit estimation of soft intolerance are presented in Table 3. First, we observe the gender gap holds even with structural controls, and the associated coefficient is significant (first column). The magnitude of the gender gap is high, and
the predicted probability of a man (respectively a woman) being tolerant is 0.31 (respectively 0.28) whereas the predicted probability of a woman (respectively a man) being intolerant is 0.47 (respectively 0.43). This result is consistent with previous studies that indicate a higher level of intolerance among women than men (Mayda, 2006; O’Rourke & Sinnott, 2004). Soft intolerance effects are similar by gender, and there are only minor differences across individual variables. On the other hand, the relative sex ratio effect is both significant and negative for women, but not for men. Thus, the impact of relative sex ratio in column 1 is only explained by the female reaction and not by the male reaction to the relative sex ratio. Fig. 1 presents predicted probabilities of women considering there are too many immigrants or not according to the relative sex ratio of the county, and the predicted probability of women being intolerant equals the probability of being tolerant when the relative sex ratio is roughly 1.5. Tolerance is more widespread when the ratio increases. There are five differences between men and women. First, low skilled women have greater of intolerance than
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Table 4 Estimations of hard intolerance. Overall sample Coef. (s.e.)
Women Coef. (s.e.)
Men Coef. (s.e.)
% of immigrants Relative sex ratio Unemployment rate Gender (1 if female) Age
−0.02*** (0.005) −0.71** (0.32) 0.06*** (0.01) −0.02 (0.03) 0.01*** (0.002)
−0.02*** (0.01) −0.92*** (0.37) 0.07*** (0.02) − 0.003 (0.002)
−0.01 (0.01) −0.37 (0.40) 0.06*** (0.02) − 0.01*** (0.002)
Education (elementary excluded) Junior high school High school College Undergraduate Refuse, do not know Native parent
−0.30*** (0.08) −0.04 (0.08) −0.45*** (0.10) −0.71*** (0.10) −0.70*** (0.27) −0.29*** (0.06)
−0.30*** (0.09) −0.10 (0.10) −0.50*** (0.12) −0.84*** (0.13) −0.72* (0.40) −0.28*** (0.08)
−0.37*** (0.13) −0.004 (0.11) −0.42*** (0.14) −0.63*** (0.15) −0.75** (0.31) −0.29*** (0.08)
0.12 (0.09) −0.01 (0.08)
0.12 (0.09) −0.02 (0.09)
Marital situation (single excluded) Domestic partner Married Monthly income (less than 1000 euros excluded) 1000–1500 euros 1500–2000 euros 2000–2500 euros 2500–3000 euros More than 3000 euros Refuse, do not know Skills (low skill excluded) No object High skill Log(size agglomeration) Cut 1: from −1 to 0 Cut 2: from 0 to +1 Pseudo R2 N
0.14** (0.06) 0.02 (0.05) 0.07 (0.09) −0.03 (0.09) 0.03 (0.09) 0.06 (0.11) −0.04 (0.11) 0.19** (0.09) 0.04 (0.08) −0.15*** (0.05) −0.10** (0.05) −0.76 (0.40) −0.17 (0.40) 0.06 3071
0.18* (0.10) 0.01 (0.11) 0.15 (0.12) 0.19 (0.17) 0.02 (0.15) 0.30** (0.13) −0.06 (0.1) −0.17*** (0.06) −0.06 (0.07) −1. 11 (0.45) −0.46 (0.45) 0.07 1647
−0.09 (0.16) −0.10 (0.14) −0.13 (0.12) −0.09 (0.14) −0.13 (0.15) 0.05 (0.15) 0.17 (0.13) −0.13* (0.07) −0.16** (0.07) −0.36 (0.48) 0.17 (0.47) 0.06 1424
Source: French Values Survey (2008) for individual data and INSEE (French Institute of statistics and economic studies), Census 2006, adjusted for 2008. Notes: The dependent variable consists in agreeing with the statement “In the future, the proportion of immigrants will become a threat to society”. This takes the value +1 when respondents tend to agree with the statement. It takes a null value when they neither agree nor disagree, and it takes the value of −1 otherwise. Cell entries in the top panel are ordered probit coefficients with standard errors (in parentheses) corrected with the cluster method (by county). * p < 0.10. ** p < 0.05. *** p < 0.01.
high skilled ones but is not observed for men. Second, income is significant and negative for men but not women. Third, the size of the agglomeration an individual lives is negatively related with the intolerance of men but not women. Fourth, there is a negative relationship of education and intolerance, which may be more valid for women than for men. Finally, the marital situation only impacts the intolerance of the women. 4.2. Estimations of hard intolerance Table 4 demonstrates that hard intolerance confirms results obtained with soft intolerance. The differences concern the contact effect and the gender gap. Since the coefficient associated with the sex variable is not significant, women are no more intolerant than men. Note that this result is not explained by individual or contextual control variables. This means that when intolerance is hard, no differences are observed between men and women. This result may be associated with the above mentioned radical right gender gap (Gidengil et al., 2005; Givens, 2004). Indeed, apart from xenophobia, values associated with
radical right parties in Western Europe are more widespread among men. This indicates radicalism is a typically male feature. Therefore, xenophobia is no longer a feminine feature when it becomes radical. On the other hand, in line with contact theory, the percentage of immigrants in a county has a negative relationship with intolerance (column 1), but this effect is significant only for women (columns 2 and 3). Thus, women’s attitudes are more influenced by contextual variables than men’s. As above, there is a competition effect for both genders, which is demonstrated by the positive coefficient on the unemployment rate. The magnitudes of the effects are coherent with those of the soft intolerance estimation. Finally, Table 4 confirms that the relative sex ratio effect of intolerance exists for women. The predicted probability of intolerance is greater than for being intolerant when the relative sex ratio is greater than 1, but the first probability decreases with the ratio, while the second increases (Fig. 2). As for soft tolerance, the relative sex ratio increases the predicted probability of being tolerant. Compared to the relative sex ratio effect on soft intolerance, Fig. 2 shows
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.8 .6 .4 .2 0
PREDICTED PROBABILITY
1
328
0
1
2
3
4
RELATIVE SEX RATIO TOLERANT
NEUTRAL
INTOLERANT
Source: French Values Survey 2008 for individual data and French Institute of statistics and economic studies (INSEE ), Census 2006, adjusted for 2008. Fig. 1. Predicted probabilities of soft intolerance and relative sex ratio for women.
for both men and women, income is not related with tolerance. Second, high skills have an impact for men and women. Third, the impact education is similar across the sub-samples, and, respondent’s age is only significant for men. On the other hand, this is also a difference with the relationship of size of the agglomeration remains the same:
.8 .6 .4 0
.2
PREDICTED PROBABILITY
1
that the effect on hard intolerance is stronger and, without a change in the relative sex ratio, women are as likely to be tolerant as intolerant. This result confirms the previous point that the overall impact of the relative sex ratio is due to the negative influence of the ratio on female intolerance. Four comparisons between men and women have changed compared to the soft intolerance results. First,
0
1 TOLERANT
2 RELATIVE SEX RATIO NEUTRAL
3
4 INTOLERANT
Source: French Values Survey 2008 for individual data and French Institute of statistics and economic studies (INSEE ), Census 2006, adjusted for 2008. Fig. 2. Predicted probabilities of hard intolerance and relative sex ratio for women.
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Table 5 Estimations of relative empathy. Overall sample Coef. (s.e.)
Women Coef. (s.e.)
Men Coef. (s.e.)
% of immigrants Relative sex ratio Unemployment rate Gender (1 if female) Age
−0.006** (0.002) −0.04 (0.11) 0.02*** (0.01) 0.05** (0.02) 0.004*** (0.001)
−0.01*** (0.003) −0.27** (0.13) 0.02** (0.01) − 0.003*** (0.001)
−0.005 (0.004) 0.39** (0.16) 0.03** (0.01) − 0.005*** (0.001)
Education (elementary excluded) Junior high school High school College Undergraduate Refuse, do not know Native parent
−0.11** (0.05) −0.11** (0.05) −0.22*** (0.05) −0.23*** (0.04) −0.11 (0.28) −0.12*** (0.02)
−0.07 (0.07) −0.13* (0.07) −0.22*** (0.08) −0.23*** (0.07) 0.14 (0.35) −0.13*** (0.03)
−0.19*** (0.05) −0.09* (0.05) −0.23*** (0.06) −0.25*** (0.05) −0.63*** (0.14) −0.11*** (0.03)
0.04 (0.03) 0.01 (0.03)
0.07* (0.04) 0.03 (0.04)
−0.03 (0.05) −0.12*** (0.04) −0.08* (0.05) −0.14*** (0.05) −0.11** (0.05) −0.04 (0.05)
0.04 (0.06) −0.07 (0.06) −0.04 (0.06) −0.14** (0.06) −0.07 (0.06) −0.003 (0.07)
Marital situation (single excluded) Domestic partner Married Monthly income (less than 1000 euros excluded) 1000–1500 euros 1500–2000 euros 2000–2500 euros 2500–3000 euros More than 3000 euros Refuse, do not know Skills (low skill excluded) No object High skill Log(size agglomeration) Constant Adjusted R2 N
−0.07* (0.04) −0.07*** (0.02) −0.02 (0.02) 1.36*** (0.14) 0.09 3071
−0.06 (0.05) −0.08** (0.03) −0.02 (0.03) 1.70*** (0.18) 0.09 1647
−0.01 (0.04) −0.03 (0.05) −0.15 (0.09) −0.18** (0.08) −0.15* (0.09) −0.15* (0.09) −0.17* (0.10) −0.11 (0.09) −0.08 (0.06) −0.04 (0.04) −0.02 (0.03) 0.94** (0.31) 0.12 1424
Source: French Values Survey 2008 for individual data and INSEE (French Institute of statistics and economic studies), Census 2006, adjusted for 2008. Notes: The dependent variable is the division of the score given to the question “to what extent do you feel concerned about the living conditions of immigrants in France?” by the average score given to the other vulnerable populations (elderly people, unemployed people, sick and disabled people and children from poor families) in an identical question. Cell entries in the top panel are OLS coefficients with standard errors (in parentheses) corrected with the cluster method (by county). * p < 0.10. ** p < 0.05. *** p < 0.01.
male intolerance increases but there is no relationship with female intolerance.
4.3. Estimations of relative empathy We believe that empathy has a more complex relationship with tolerance for two reasons. First, this is no general concern about the number of immigrants but a question with native’s empathy for immigrants. Second, the relationship is no longer absolute but relative since it considers empathy for immigrants given the empathy for other categories of people. Compared to previous results, empathy also increases as the respondent becomes less tolerant. Notably, Table 5 illustrates that women are less relatively empathetic with immigrants than men, which confirms the gender gap. On the other hand, relative empathy increases with income, education, and skill levels; however, it decreases with age. Concerning contextual effects, column 1 validates both the contact effect, and the competition effect. As for hard intolerance, columns 2 and 3 show that the competition
effect is similar for women and men, while the contact effect affects only women. The relative sex ratio effect is noteworthy and has a significant and negative impact on female empathy and has a significant and positive impact on male empathy. That means that we observe an opposing influence of the proportion of men in the immigrant population related to the proportion of men in the native population. Women are more empathetic to immigrants when the proportion of male immigrants is higher than in the native population. On the contrary, men are more empathetic when the proportion of women among immigrants is higher. From this perspective, male empathy decreases and female empathy increases when immigrant populations are maledominated relative to native populations. Finally, as in the previous estimations, women are more tolerant when they are high-skilled, and education has a similar impact for both genders. As a result, the estimations of the relative empathy towards immigrants confirm previous observations. There has been a gender gap, gendered sensitivity, a relative sex ratio effect, and a gendered sensitivity of the relative sex ratio with French attitudes toward migration by gender.
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5. Conclusion This article focuses on the acceptance of immigrants by natives. The central issue is not how many immigrants there are, but rather who they are. The existing literature analyzes the impact of immigrant characteristics on intolerance. In this paper, we include the relationship with gender. There are three gendered attitudes toward immigrants. Men and women have different tolerance level. They are not equally sensitive to typical explanations of xenophobia. While the competition hypothesis influences both genders, contact theory works only for females, and female intolerance decreases with the probability of interacting with an immigrant. Moreover, sex ratio among immigrants has a significant and inverse relationship for males and females on lack of empathy. These results point out two caveats. First, intolerance measures only matter in understanding why people are intolerant. What is related with strong immigrant rejections do not affect empathy with them. However, these aspects of xenophobia have the same causes. Second, when men and women are considered separately, the gender gap holds. In nearly all our results, the difference between male and female models is high, and women are more intolerant. In this respect, the gender sensitivity and relative sex ratio do not eliminate the gap in gender intolerance, which remains unanswered. While some aspects of this gender gap are understood using individual and contextual structural variables, attitudinal approaches are also likely to be decisive (Gidengil et al., 2005). Finally, we have tested the existence of gendered attitudes towards immigration in France, but we have not tested the impact of the extent of patriarchal structure on the gendered attitudes to immigration. We presume that the ideal condition for developing sensitivity to relative sex ratio is when society promotes different roles between genders. Under this condition, we expect strong intra-sexual competition and a subsequent rejection of same-sex immigrants. Similarly, the more distant a society is from this condition, the less sensitive natives are to the relative sex ratio. In traditional societies, interfaith or interracial sexual relationships have often been forbidden for women but not for men. In such societies, attitudes towards foreigners are explicitly gendered, sometimes even by law. Acknowledgements We would like to thank Eric Dubois for his helpful work on data, Camille Bromley and Anna Jeannesson for their work on the text, and a referee for his valuable comments. Any remaining errors are ours. References Allport, G. W. (1954). The nature of prejudice. Reading, MA: Addison Wesley. Amir, Y. (1969). Contact hypothesis in ethnic relations. Psychological Bulletin, 71, 319–342. Amuedo-Doranted, C., & Puttitanun, T. (2011). Gender differences in native preferences toward undocumented and legal immigration: Evidence from San Diego. Contemporary Economic Policy, 29, 31–45.
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