Lecture | LIMS seminar
Ethnic Bias in Immigration Preferences: Experimental Evidence from Britain
- Date
- Wednesday 19 February 2025
- Time
- Serie
- Leiden Interdisciplinary Migration Seminars 2024-2025
- Address
-
Johan Huizinga
Doelensteeg 16
2311 VL Leiden - Room
- Conference room (2.60)
Abstract
This talk explores how ethnic bias influences public attitudes toward immigration in the United Kingdom. He examines two key propositions:
- citizens may have an ethnic bias in favour of white immigrants over nonwhite immigrants;
- this bias might be stronger for low-skilled immigrants than for highly skilled ones.
Using a vignette experiment fielded on a representative sample of the UK population randomizing the ethnicity of visa applicants but keeping other characteristics constant, the findings show that—contrary to expectations—bias based on ethnicity was present when it comes to high-skill immigrants (with white candidates receiving higher ratings than black candidates); however, no significant ethnic bias was observed for low-skilled immigrants. Respondents who are more opposed to immigration tend to reject both black and white low-skilled immigrants equally but display greater bias against highly skilled black immigrants.
LIMS
The Leiden Interdisciplinary Migration Seminars (LIMS) aim at fostering further discussion across disciplines on migration-related topics and creating an open dialogue between the speakers and the attendees. The seminars are a platform for those at Leiden University working on migration-related topics. LIMS is associated with Social Citizenship & Migration (SCM), one of nine interdisciplinary programmes launched by Leiden University in 2020.
Interested in attending? Registration is not necessary. For inquires, or to participate in future events, contact Dr. Andrew Shield.