Thread by @HannahAlarian

Do mandatory integration policies affect immigration attitudes for better or for worse? Michael Neureiter and I explore this question in our latest piece in @scmrjems (and now in briefly in this thread!) tandfonline.com/eprint/CNXBX7E… (1/11)

Why would mass immigration attitudes be affected by mandatory integration policies you might ask? For some, this might mean improved attitudes toward immigration “if they learn our language/culture” (2/11) nytimes.com/2019/09/19/wor…

Some politicians may even say this rather overtly as did Danish PM Rasmussen in his latest New Years address
stm.dk/_p_14611.html
(3/11)

Others alternatively worry that a focus on immigrant integration is a tool of anti-immigrant parties to keep anti-immigration salient, consistently reminding the public that immigrants are not like “us” (4/11) nytimes.com/2019/07/06/wor…

So which is it, we wondered. Do civic and linguistic requirements help shift public attitudes toward the concept of immigration itself? Is it the reverse? And if there is an effect - which groups of migrants benefit (or suffer) from these policies most? (5/11)

Hand-coding mandatory civic and linguistic integration requirements across 14 W. European countries btwn 2007-14, we find no significant effect of such policies possessing ANY effect on mass immigration attitudes regardless of their origin (6/11)

Perhaps, we wondered, our null is because citizens aren’t fully aware of their country’s integration policy. We therefore added a survey in the UK, experimentally manipulating awareness of integration policy components (7/11) ec.europa.eu/home-affairs/n…

Still, we find neither a substantial nor a significant effect of mandatory language or civic integration requirements on citizen attitudes toward immigration regardless of origin (8/11)

A few important limitations of/conclusions from our #nullresult. Maybe the perception of “poorly” integrated immigrants overshadows any effect of policy. Alternatively, the UK may be unique here and not indicative of integration policy and imm. attitudes across Europe (9/11)

Still, in conjunction with previous research, we do not see integration policy doing a lot for either immigrants (cf. @ThatSaraGoodman) or natives. So we are left wondering - where are the integration policy effects? So much more to unpack and understand! (10/11)

And that concludes my very first self-promotion article thread. Go read the article! #nulleffectsmatter

tl,dr: We find no substantial effect of language or civic integration policies on public support for immigration (11/11)