Why Citizens Prefer High- Over Low-Skilled Immigrants. Labor Market Competition, Welfare State, and Deservingness

Transcription

1 European Sociological Review VOLUME 30 NUMBER DOI: /esr/jcu061, available online at Online publication 10 June 2014 Why Citizens Prefer High- Over Low-Skilled Immigrants. Labor Market Competition, Welfare State, and Deservingness Marc Helbling 1, * and Hanspeter Kriesi 2 Abstract: While various studies have already shown that people prefer high- over low-skilled migrants, we know surprisingly little why this is so. This article tries to close this gap by investigating three explanatory models. (i) According to the labour market competition model, citizens oppose immigrants with the same skill levels who are perceived as competitors on the job market. (ii) According to the welfare state model, low-skilled immigrants use of public services is disproportionally higher than their contribution to tax revenues contrary to high-skilled immigrants. (iii) According to the deservingness model, high-skilled immigrants are preferred, as low-skilled immigrants are considered as lazy people who would be as well off as natives if they only tried harder. As one of the first studies outside the United States, these arguments are tested by means of an experimental online survey in Switzerland. Respondents were randomly assigned to evaluate low- and high-skilled immigrants. We find that different groups prefer high- over low-skilled immigrants for different reasons: While the labour market competition model does not play a role, the welfare state model only holds for natives who are well off in regions with low taxes. Finally, attitudes on deservingness explain preference of high-skilled immigrants only if the respondents have a high income. Introduction In 2010, Thilo Sarrazin, a prominent member of the German Social Democrats and former member of the executive board of the German Federal Bank published a book with the title Germany is abolishing itself that became one of the most popular and most widely cited books in decades in Germany. In his book, Sarrazin (2010), among other things, criticized Germany s immigration policy and started a nation-wide controversy about the costs and benefits of immigration. He argued that Germany should attract more high-skilled instead of low-skilled immigrants who, according to him, only take advantage of the welfare state. In an earlier interview in the German cultural quarterly Lettre International he claimed that the only thing Turkish immigrants are good at is to work in grocery stores (Berberich and Sarratin 2009), and this became one of the most quoted statements in this debate. This debate has only been the most prominent one of a series of recent debates on immigration in Western Europe. Immigration has become one of the most controversial political issues in most Western European countries over the past decade, and it has often involved debates about more or less preferred immigration groups. Since the late 1970s, West European states have tried to restrict immigration to high-skilled migrants for mostly economic reasons. With increasing competition, state actors have sought to attract more high-skilled immigrants (Ruhs, 2011). At the EU level, new directives (e.g., EU Blue Card) exist to make member states more attractive for highly qualified migrants (Cerna, 2008). Moreover, various studies have shown that not only governments but also ordinary people prefer high- over low-skilled immigrants, and they do this irrespective of their skill levels, education, income, ethnocentrism, or their cultural and economic environment (Sniderman 1 WZB Berlin Social Science Center, Reichpietschufer 50, Berlin, Germany and 2 Department of Political and Social Sciences, European University Institute, S. Domenico di Fiesole, Italy. *Corresponding author. marc.helbling@wzb.eu ß The Author Published by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved. For permissions, please journals.permissions@oup.com. Submitted: March 2013; revised: April 2014; accepted: April 2014.

2 596 HELBLING AND KRIESI et al., 2004: pp ; Hainmueller and Hiscox, 2007, 2010; Hainmueller et al., 2011; Harell et al., 2012; Hainmueller and Hopkins, 2012; see, however, Helbling 2011; Facchini and Mayda, 2012; Malhotra et al., 2013). While these findings confirm popular debates about the preference of high-skilled immigrants, we know relatively little about why this is so. The aim of this article is therefore to test a series of arguments why people prefer high- over low-skilled immigrants. To explain negative attitudes towards immigrants commonly, a differentiation between cultural and realist (or economic) threat arguments is made in the literature. According to Stephan et al. (1998: p. 560), cultural threat can be defined as the perceived harm caused by immigrants with distinct morals, norms, and values. These explanations help us understand attitudes towards immigrants in general, and it has been shown that cultural factors have a higher explanatory power than economic factors (Hjerm and Nagayoshi, 2001: p. 819; Malhotra et al., 2014: pp. 5 6; see also Card et al., 2012). In this article we are, however, not interested why immigrants are opposed in general but why high-skilled are preferred over low-skilled immigrants. To understand these diverging attitudes that concern first and foremost an economic and not a cultural aspect we primarily focus on economic arguments or norms related to work ethics. 1 According to the realistic group conflict theory threat posed by out-group centres on the economic power and material well-being of the ingroup and its members (Hardin, 1995; Stephan et al., 1998: p. 560). This general economic approach will be differentiated in this article along three strands of theories: We first replicate the widely investigated labour market competition model according to which natives oppose immigrants with similar skill levels, as they are perceived as competitors on the job market. We then examine the welfare state model. Following this second argument, high-skilled immigrants are preferred over low-skilled, as the latter s use of public services especially with regard to welfare assistance and health services is often disproportionally higher than their contribution to tax revenues. Finally, we test the deservingness model that has hardly received any attention so far. It might be that low-skilled immigrants are opposed as they are considered lazy people who would be as well off as natives if only they tried harder. This allows us to test an argument that lies between economic and classic cultural explanations and focuses on work ethics. To test our arguments we conducted an experimental online survey in Switzerland in the early fall Switzerlandisacrucialcase to study attitudes towards immigrants, as it has one of the highest shares of immigrants in Europe (>20 per cent). The right-wing populist Swiss People s Party is currently the biggest political party in Switzerland, and due to the direct democratic institutions there have been several popular votes on immigration issues over the past decades (Kriesi et al., 2005; Skenderovic and D Amato, 2008). All these factors make immigration a salient political issue. The Labour Market Competition Model According to the labour market competition model, people resent immigrants with similar skill-levels. Thus, low-skilled natives prefer high-skilled immigrants, whereas high-skilled natives prefer low-skilled immigrants. While a lot of studies have already shown that people with low education are more xenophobic than people with higher education and prefer high-skilled over low-skilled immigrants, it is still disputed whether the labour market competition model also holds for people with higher education. Various studies have suggested that well-educated people harbour more positive feelings towards newcomers in general (Wagner and Zick, 1995; Vogt, 1997; Hagendoorn and Nekuee, 1999; Hjerm, 2001; Scheve and Slaughter, 2001; Heyder, 2003; Mayda, 2006). However, the particulars of how, exactly, education reduces xenophobia, remain disputed. Hello et al. (2006) set out to test various arguments concerning education s impact on negative prejudices. They found that cognitive sophistication and open-mindedness had a negligible importance in explaining the educational effect. In their study, perceived economic threat turned out to be the most important factor. In a similar vein, Halperin et al. (2007) found that education s impact on attitudes towards immigrants was strongly mediated by perceptions of economic threat. In other words, bettereducated and positioned people appear to be less prejudiced against immigrants because they normally do not compete with them in the job market. According to this argument it is, however, assumed that immigrants are low-skilled in general. As a consequence, low-skilled natives fear the fall of their wages and increased unemployment rates. Because high-skilled natives do not compete with these immigrants, they have no reasons to fear them. But what happens when immigrants are also highly skilled? If Hello et al. (2006) and Halperin et al. (2007) are right and the labour market competition model plays a role, we should observe that high-skilled natives prefer low-skilled over high-skilled immigrants.

3 WHY CITIZENS PREFER HIGH- OVER LOW-SKILLED IMMIGRANTS 597 Facchini and Mayda (2012) came to such a conclusion: They found that the higher the education level of the respondent, the lower is the probability that s/he is in favour of high-skilled immigrants. In a similar vein, Helbling (2011) has shown for Switzerland that while highly educated Swiss show more positive attitudes towards low-skilled immigrants from the Balkans, this effect disappears when they are asked about high-skilled immigrants from Germany. Finally, in a study by Malhotra et al. (2014) it has appeared that high-skilled immigrants are opposed in sectors in which labour market competition exists. Others have however shown that high-skilled immigrants are always preferred irrespective of the respondents skill levels (Sniderman et al., 2004: pp ; Hainmueller and Hiscox 2007, 2010), and this applies even if respondents work in industries that rely upon labour migration (O Connell 2011; Hainmueller et al., 2011). According to these studies, at least for high-skilled natives, the labour market competition model can be ruled out (Hjerm and Nagayoshi, 2011). O Connell (2011: p. 238) argues among other things that even if economic concerns are also relevant for people with high skills their greater work specialization protects and insulates them from direct competition with immigrants. In sum, we test the classic labour market competition argument according to which low-skilled (high-skilled) natives prefer high-skilled (low-skilled) immigrants, as immigrants with the same skill level might be perceived as competitors on the job market (H1). The Welfare State Model The second main reason why high-skilled immigrants might be preferred over low-skilled ones is that the latter s use of public services especially with regard to welfare assistance and health services is often perceived as disproportionally higher than their contribution to tax revenues. Although high-skilled migrants are net contributors, low-skilled migrants might pose a net burden on public finance, which in turn might lead to either increased taxes for native citizens or a reduction of welfare state services and benefits (Hanson, 2005; Hanson et al., 2008; Facchini and Mayda, 2009). According to Facchini and Mayda (2009: p. 296) it may be that, much more than poor natives, rich natives prefer high-skilled immigrants over low-skilled immigrants for tax reasons. Owing to progressivity in taxes, rich natives suffer more from a tax increase that might be required if the demand for welfare state benefits increases. On the other hand, it may also be possible that the state does not increase taxes but adjusts the transfer of welfare benefits. An increased demand might then lead to lower per capita expenses and thus to an erosion of welfare state benefits. To avoid such a scenario, poor natives would prefer high-skilled over low-skilled immigrants. The rich natives fear of increasing taxes and the poor natives fear of lower welfare benefits might depend on the tax regime of the state where they live. Hainmüller and Hiscox (2010) find that it is in high-fiscal exposure states that the preference of high-skilled over low-skilled migrants is decreasing in respondents income level. Hanson et al., (2007) show that rich natives are less in favor of immigration especially in states with high immigration rates and generous welfare state programs. Because states might adjust their spending obligations, the wealthy citizens fear being burdened with higher taxes. Facchini and Mayda (2009) confirm this finding and show that the income is negatively correlated with support for immigration in countries where low-skilled immigrants make up a large share of the total immigration inflow. According to Hanson et al. (2007), opposition among rich natives towards immigration due to the progressive regimes should be especially high in settings with generous welfare state programs. One might, however, argue that, owing to a ceiling effect in high tax states, increasing taxes as a result of low-skilled immigration should rather be expected in low tax states. While it is politically more difficult to raise taxes when they are already relatively high, tax increases may be more realistic in states with low taxes. If taxes are already high, the state may rather resort to a reduction of transfer benefits, which, as discussed above, is rather more likely to lead to resistance against immigration on the part of poor natives. Moreover, in a country like Switzerland it is relatively easy for rich people to move from one region to another to avoid high state and local taxes. Some studies have shown that there is a fiscal competition between Swiss cantons and between Swiss cities, and that especially high-income earners choose their place of residence depending on the amount of income taxes they have to pay (Kirchgässner and Pommerehne, 1996; Feld and Kirchgässner, 2001; Schmidheiny, 2005, 2006). Tax concerns are therefore very salient among the Swiss with high incomes who have moved to low tax regions. This might be less the case for rich Swiss in high tax regions. The fact that they still live in these cantons is an indication that they are less concerned about taxes. This reasoning leads us to expect that it is the rich natives especially in low tax states who are afraid of low-skilled immigrants as they fear rising taxes. In sum, we will first test whether rich natives prefer high-skilled immigrants, as they pay higher taxes and

4 598 HELBLING AND KRIESI thus reduce tax burdens (H2a) or whether poor natives prefer high-skilled immigrants, as they fear lower per capita welfare benefits (H2b). More specifically, we will then investigate whether rich natives particularly prefer high- over low-skilled immigrants in states with low fiscal exposure as they fear increasing taxes (H3a), and whether poor natives are particularly opposed to low- in comparison with high-skilled immigrants in cantons with high taxes, as they fear an erosion of the welfare state (H3b). The Deservingness Model Low-skilled immigrants might also be opposed because some people tend to think that such immigrants are simply less ambitious and would be as well off as natives if only they tried harder. This is not a classic economic argument as in the previous two models but an argument that concerns natives ideas about work ethic. This argument has hardly been discussed in the literature so far. It does not draw on a developed theoretical model but rather builds on results from studies in related fields. Several US studies have shown that there is a close relationship between racial stereotypes and opposition to welfare (Quadagno, 1994; Peffley et al., 1997; Gilens, 1999; Fox, 2004). In an experimental study, Gilens (1999) shows, for example, that people consider it much more likely for a white than for a black unemployed mother to try hard to find a job. He also shows that Americans substantially overestimate the percentage of blacks among the poor and argues that welfare and poverty have become racialized. Van Oorschot (2006) has shown that for Europe, in general (from all countries and social categories), migrants are considered least deserving when compared with other vulnerable groups. The sentiment of migrant undeservingness does not seem to depend on the welfare state model of a given country: in generous welfare states, such sentiments are not stronger than in other states. It appears that such sentiments do not simply reflect economic or fiscal concerns but also rely on more general (cultural) values. Häusermann and Kriesi (2012) have shown that in Europe, cultural conflict not only involves issues such as cultural liberalism, immigration, and EU integration but also issues regarding welfare chauvinism and welfare misuse. One could also argue that the sentiment of undeservingness reflects a specific work ethic (Bommes and Geddes, 2000: pp ). As Williamson et al. (2011) have shown, concerns of freeloading underlie Tea Party opposition to government spending. For this reason, Tea Party activists resent not only unauthorized immigrants but also young unemployed people (natives) who make no effort to find a job. In a similar vein, Petersen et al. (2010) have shown in experimental studies that young men s claims for welfare support are much less supported than claims by old men who have worked all their life. It thus appears that both ethnic/racial and social factors play a role when it comes to deservingness. It is possible that low-skilled immigrants are above all resented for reasons like this, which do not equally apply to high-skilled immigrants. Especially rich natives who are successful and who potentially see themselves as high achievers may resent low-skilled immigrants because they consider them as lazy and little ambitious, and because they believe these low-skilled immigrants would be better off if only they tried harder. Williamson et al. (2011) show that views on deservingness play an important role for opposing immigration, but not necessarily among rich people. Lamont (2000) has shown that working-class people draw a sharp boundary between themselves and the unemployed poor even if the economic differences between them are relatively small. It is plausible to assume that such people are convinced that, at least, they have tried hard to be successful even if they failed to live up to their ambitions, while they believe that the others have not done so (Steensland, 2006: p. 1274). In sum, it is possible that both natives with low and high incomes prefer high-skilled immigrants, as they consider low-skilled immigrants as people who do not work hard enough and take advantage of the welfare state without deserving it (H4). This may, however, apply to rich natives more than poor natives because they consider themselves as high achievers and think that everyone can be as well off as they are if they only tried harder (H5). Design and Data Our predictions can only be tested when we confront natives with both low- and high-skilled immigrants. The problem of most studies in this field has been so far that they investigated attitudes by means of regular surveys (Scheve and Slaughter, 2001; Hanson et al., 2007; Facchini and Mayda, 2009). In these surveys, respondents have been asked about their attitudes towards immigrants in general under the strong assumption that respondents have low-skilled immigrants in mind when they are asked to take a position. However, even if this assumption is true, we do not know to what extent attitudes towards low- and high-skilled immigrants diverge. The only solution to this problem is thus to adopt an experimental design that allows us to randomly assign

5 WHY CITIZENS PREFER HIGH- OVER LOW-SKILLED IMMIGRANTS 599 respondents to two groups that receive questions about low- and high-skilled immigrants. Especially outside the United States there have so far been only few studies that have investigated attitudes towards immigrants by means of an experimental design (see Sniderman et al., 2004; Sniderman and Hagendoorn, 2007). Our design comes close to the study by Hainmueller and Hiscox (2010) and has been developed by Shanto Iyengar at Stanford University and has already been applied in some country studies (see Harell et al., 2012; Iyengar and Messing, 2012). In Switzerland the survey has been fielded in early October 2011 over a period of 11 days and covers a random sample from an online panel of persons of Swiss origin, aged between 16 and 74 years, in the Swiss German- and French-speaking population who use internet at least once a week for private purposes. 2 Participants are randomly assigned to a pair of vignettes describing potential immigrants. They are told that the vignettes represent brief excerpts from actual applications for a work permit, and they are asked to decide whether the applicant should get a work permit. In case he got a permit, the respondent should also decide for how long he should get it, and whether, eventually, he should get Swiss citizenship. Finally, the respondents were asked to give a general assessment of the applicant. The vignette in each case consists of a photo accompanied by a brief description of the applicant s background. For the photos, we took advantage of morphed images images of our two immigrants that vary their skin color. The experimental design is based on factorial analysis: the description manipulates four attributes skin color (light vs. dark), skill level (low vs. high), marital status [married (with two sons and a daughter) vs. single], and nationality (Serb vs. Kuwaiti), which are presented to the respondents in a randomized fashion. Appendix 1 provides an example of such vignettes. For the present article, we focus on only one of the four factors skill level. We, however, control for the other three attributes to make sure that they do not interfere with our explanatory variables. Our key independent variable is the experimental frame that was presented to the respondents. It is a dichotomous variable, coded one if the respondent received a vignette for a low-skilled immigrant, and zero if he or she received a vignette for a high-skilled immigrant (see Appendix 2). Because every respondent provided answers for two vignettes, we constructed a stacked data file that includes two cases for each respondent one each for each vignette, which doubles the number of observations in the data set (N ¼ 2,468). 3 Accordingly, we conducted multilevel analyses (full information maximum likelihood estimates) to take into account the nested structure of the data; respondents corresponded to the upper and the vignettes to the lower level. The two groups of respondents are identical in all observed and unobserved characteristics that might explain the dependent variable. Detailed balance checks confirmed that all factors used in the analyses were distributed evenly across the two groups. For the present analysis, our dependent variable is the general assessment of the applicant, whom the respondents evaluated on a scale from 0 (very negative) to 100 (very positive attitude towards the applicant) (see Appendix 3 for detailed question wordings). Additional independent variables include an indicator each for skill level and income of the respondent. 4 Following many other studies in this field we take education as a proxy for skill levels (e.g., O Conell 2011). Respondents were asked to indicate their highest education out of a list of 13 educational levels that are commonly used in Swiss surveys going from no education to university degree. We created and tested two categorizations. First, we divided the 13 categories into two groups [from primary school up to commercial diploma vs. (vocational) maturity up to university] and thereby differentiated between low- and high-skilled persons. Second, we created a variable with four levels that divides each level of the dichotomous indicator into two levels (low: without vs. with vocational training; high: A-level vs. university). We thus end up with a second variable that differentiates between unskilled, mediumskilled, high-skilled, and very high-skilled respondents. To measure income, respondents were asked to put themselves in one of three categories indicating whether their monthly income is <6,000 Swiss Francs, between 6,000 and 10,000 or >10,000. To operationalize deservingness, respondents were asked to indicate their agreement with the following statement: Economic success is a question of individual effort. If immigrants would make a greater effort, they would be as well off as the Swiss. Four response categories ranged from disagree completely to agree completely. For the test of the welfare state model we created two indicators that allow us to divide Swiss cantons into groups with high and low taxes as well as high and low social expenditures. The first indicator differentiates between cantons whose tax rates are above or below the national average. Taking the average for Switzerland as 100, the index varies between 52.4 and The indicator for social expenditures differentiates between cantons whose expenditures are above and below the national mean. It measures social assistance expenditures per capita and varies between 47 and 582 Swiss Francs. 5 We resorted to data that is available for the most recent period. For tax burden we use data from the year For the data on social assistance expenditures per capita we retained data from the year 2008.

6 600 HELBLING AND KRIESI One might object that distinguishing tax regimes only at the cantonal level does not do sufficient justice to the complexity of Swiss tax regimes, as Swiss taxes may also vary at the local level within a given canton. It is true that our indicator captures only part of the variation in the tax regimes to which respondents are exposed. Unfortunately, while we know in which cantons the respondents live we do not dispose of the respective information for the local level. However, the cantonal tax regimes are at least as important as the local ones (Kriesi, 1998: p. 66) and cantonal tax rates vary substantially for both low and high incomes (Feld and Kirchgässner, 2001; Gilardi and Wasserfallen, 2014). This means that we can be pretty confident that if tax regimes play a role at all, cantonal tax regimes have at least some impact on attitudes towards low- and high-skilled immigrants. Moreover, we also test the impact of the cantonal welfare regimes to test the robustness of the influence of the tax regimes. Besides these main explanatory variables, we include a series of control variables for the concepts that are most often tested in the literature on xenophobia and which we could operationalize with the items included in the survey (see for example Fetzer, 2000). While some of these variables have an impact on attitudes towards immigrants (as one would expect), more detailed analyses have shown that including them in our models does not alter our main findings. We control for age and gender and include dummy variables for the three other attributes of the immigration candidates (skin color, nationality, and marital status) and measurements for political and cultural factors. Especially regarding the welfare state model we account for whether respondents would vote for the Social Democrats or the right-wing populist Swiss People s Party. It might be that people in cantons with higher welfare expenditures are more left-wing than in other regions and therefore more willing to pay higher taxes or accept higher welfare expenditures. Finally, we also control for general attitudes towards immigrants and cultural threat perception. Respondents indicated on a feeling thermometer ranging from 0 to 100 how they feel about immigrants in general. Moreover, they indicated to what extent they agree with the statement that on the whole, the increasing cultural diversity in Switzerland due to immigration has been good for the country. Results Labour Market Competition Model Our main results are presented in Table 1 and some additional findings in the Appendix in Tables A1 and A2. The models show regression coefficients and (between brackets) their standard errors. We run multilevel models with full information maximum likelihood estimates. 6 Positive effects stand for increasingly positive feelings towards the candidate. The main effects that confirm or disconfirm our hypotheses are highlighted. Although we discuss the three explanatory models one by one, in each model we also included the variables of the other models to avoid an omitted variable bias. Such a bias is especially likely for the variables education and income that might potentially influence each other. Some of the (interaction-) terms, especially in Models 5 and 9 with the three-way interactions, are of no theoretical interest (even if they need to be included in the models) and will therefore not be discussed. As of the control variables, the findings correspond to earlier findings in the literature (see Fetzer, 2000): 7 older persons oppose immigrants more than younger persons. Men also seem to be more xenophobic, the effect is, however, not significant in our models. Moreover, we see that people who vote for the right-wing populist Swiss People s Party are more opposed to immigrants, whereas those who vote for the Social democrats are more in favour of them (the effect is, however, not significant). As one would expect, people who resent immigrants in general or perceive them as a cultural threat are also opposed to individual labour migrants. As of the other frames used in the survey, only nationality plays a role. In Models 1 and 2, we first test Hypothesis 1 of the labour market competition model according to which low-skilled (high-skilled) natives prefer high-skilled (lowskilled) immigrants. If the labour market competition argument were correct, we should observe preference of high-skilled immigrants only among low-skilled natives. High-skilled natives, on the other hand, should show more positive attitudes towards low-skilled immigrants. In Model 1, we included the low-skilled frame variable plus the main effects of education, income, tax regime, and deservingness, while we included all relevant twoway interactions in Model 2. Unsurprisingly, high-skilled immigrants are preferred over low-skilled immigrants (Model 1). Respondents that are shown the vignette of a low-skilled immigrant have more negative feelings than respondents who assess the description of a high-skilled immigrant. We further see that, as one would expect, higher education leads to more positive feelings, while the other variables show no effect. As it appears in Model A1.1 in the appendix where we included the lowskill variable alone, the effect of the skill vignette is not affected by the other variables. In Table A2 in the appendix where we present different split models without interaction effects (see below) we see that the effect

7 WHY CITIZENS PREFER HIGH- OVER LOW-SKILLED IMMIGRANTS 601 Table 1 Test of the models Labour market Welfare state model Deservingness model competition model (1) (2) (3) (4) (5) (6) (7) (8) (9) All All All High taxes Low taxes All Low income Middle income High income Low-skill frame 6.681*** 9.554* *** * (1.055) (4.516) (5.605) (7.512) (4.960) (7.023) (5.698) (7.348) (8.500) Education 2.352* (1.155) (1.601) (2.040) (2.548) (1.587) (2.957) (2.332) (3.157) (1.578) Education frame (2.211) (2.836) (3.447) (2.190) (4.107) (3.192) (4.396) (2.180) Income *** (0.753) (1.039) (1.378) (1.559) (1.338) (1.332) Low taxes *** *** (1.082) (1.074) (4.401) (2.080) (1.677) (1.818) (4.378) Income frame *** (1.447) (1.904) (2.198) (1.864) (2.287) Income low taxes 7.132*** 7.124*** (1.989) (1.979) Low taxes frame *** *** (6.117) (6.093) Income frame taxes *** *** (2.811) (2.804) Deservingness (0.700) (0.937) (1.239) (1.424) (0.932) (1.894) (1.463) (1.480) (0.927) Deservingness frame 4.236** 3.485* 6.387** 4.606*** * 7.876*** (1.300) (1.671) (2.049) (1.292) (2.479) (1.961) (2.293) (2.938) Deservingness income ** (6.254) Deserv. frame income 6.708** (2.138) Age 0.198*** 0.196*** 0.193*** 0.177** 0.186*** 0.365*** 0.164** *** (0.038) (0.038) (0.048) (0.061) (0.038) (0.068) (0.058) (0.075) (0.038) Men (1.105) (1.098) (1.403) (1.737) (1.089) (2.102) (1.665) (2.001) (1.086) Vote Social Democrats (1.343) (1.335) (1.779) (2.012) (1.325) (2.818) (1.937) (2.308) (1.320) Vote Swiss People s Party 3.963* 3.858* 4.545* * 7.666** *** 3.737* (1.562) (1.554) (1.986) (2.494) (1.539) (2.762) (2.370) (2.889) (1.531) (continued)

8 602 HELBLING AND KRIESI Table 1 Continued Labour market Welfare state model Deservingness model competition model (1) (2) (3) (4) (5) (6) (7) (8) (9) All All All High taxes Low taxes All Low income Middle income High income General xenophobia 0.461*** 0.454*** 0.458*** 0.464*** 0.458*** 0.480*** 0.408*** 0.498*** 0.460*** (0.032) (0.032) (0.041) (0.051) (0.032) (0.061) (0.048) (0.060) (0.032) Cultural threat perception 4.801*** 4.865*** 5.363*** 3.543** 4.835*** *** 3.346* 4.895*** (0.809) (0.804) (1.013) (1.306) (0.797) (1.557) (1.170) (1.496) (0.793) Skin frame (1.058) (1.050) (1.348) (1.644) (1.043) (1.994) (1.589) (1.830) (1.038) Nationality frame 3.381*** 3.381*** 4.371*** 1.864* 3.381*** 3.688*** 2.932*** 3.775*** 3.381*** (0.494) (0.494) (0.638) (0.772) (0.494) (0.952) (0.732) (0.935) (0.494) Marital status frame * (1.048) (1.043) (1.340) (1.647) (1.034) (1.989) (1.566) (1.847) (1.028) Constant *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** (3.416) (4.055) (5.122) (6.609) (4.274) (6.506) (5.487) (6.811) (4.254) N 1,864 1,864 1, , ,864 Intraclass correlation LLR *** *** *** *** *** *** 211,68*** *** *** Log Likelihood 7, , , , , , , , , Significance: ***P < 0.001, **P < 0.01, *P < 0.05, P < 0.1. Notes: Multilevel models with full information maximum likelihood estimates. Dependent variable is evaluation of immigrant (feeling thermometer) varying between 0 and 100. For more information on the dependent and independent variables (descriptive statistics, wording, and answer categories) see Appendices 2 and 3.

9 WHY CITIZENS PREFER HIGH- OVER LOW-SKILLED IMMIGRANTS 603 of the vignette remains stable across high and low tax regions. The insignificant interaction effect in Model 2 shows, however, that the preferences of high-skilled natives are not different from those of low-skilled natives. A significant positive coefficient would have confirmed the argument according to which well-educated natives have particularly positive attitudes towards low-skilled immigrants. The findings show that this is not the case and thereby confirm the results of Hainmüller and Hiscox (2010). 8 We can therefore confirm Hypothesis 2, while natives with low education resent immigrants with similar skills for this is clearly not the case for natives with high education. We also see in Model 2 that including the main twoway interaction terms affects the direct effect of the lowskill frame that becomes positive (however, significant only at a relatively low level). Because three interaction terms are included in this model, this effect stands for a specific group of respondents that take the value 0 on the three variables that interact with the frame variable. These are people with low education and low income who do not agree that immigrants could be just as well off as Swiss people if only they tried harder. In Table A1 in the Appendix we see that partly the interaction with income but especially the interaction with the deservingness variable explains away the low-skill effect. In other words, people for whom deservingness aspects are not salient do not make a difference between low- and high-skilled immigrants or even have a slight tendency to prefer low- over high-skilled immigrants (see below). 9 How can we explain that the labour market competition model works, if at all, only for low-skilled natives? We have no definitive answer and can only lay out some hypotheses: as suggested by O Connell (2011) whose argument we already referred to above, high skills are more specialized than low skills, which may make the high-skilled feel more protected from competition. Conversely, it might be easier to switch from one lowskilled job to another one. Thus, low-skilled natives may feel more threatened than high-skilled natives by immigration even if the new arrivals have different jobs. It might also be that predispositions towards the two groups of high- and low-skilled immigrants are biased against the low-skilled because public debates most often focus on them. The fact that radical-right political parties have mainly mobilized against low-skilled immigrants may make them appear as a bigger threat than high-skilled immigrants. More recently, in Switzerland, we have also witnessed mobilization against the increase of high-skilled immigrants from Germany. This mobilization was, however, much more limited than the mobilization against low-skilled immigrants from the Balkans or Muslim countries (Helbling, 2011). Welfare State Model To test the welfare state model in more detail, we need to investigate how different income levels and tax regimes affect attitudes towards immigrants (see Models 2 5). We first test whether rich natives prefer high-skilled immigrants, as they pay higher taxes and thus want to reduce tax burdens, or whether poor natives prefer high-skilled immigrants, as they fear lower per capita welfare benefits (Hypotheses 2a and 2b). In Model 2, we find some support for the first argument: the interaction effect between income and migrants skill level is negative and significant, even though at a relatively low level. It thus appears that low-skilled immigrants opposition is higher among rich than poor natives. This finding is not affected by the other interaction models as it appears in Model A1.3 in the Appendix where the other interaction effects are excluded. As our discussion of the literature suggested, such fears of tax increases might vary across settings with different welfare state or tax regimes. While some US studies show that rich natives are particularly opposed to immigrants in states with high fiscal exposure, we have suggested that rich natives are particularly opposed to low-skilled immigrants in states with low taxes (Hypotheses 3a and 3b). As we see in Models 3 and 4, which distinguish between respondents from cantons with high taxes and low taxes, our expectation is born out: while in high-tax regions income does not play a role, it has an effect in low tax cantons: the higher the level of income, the stronger the respondents opposition to low-skilled immigrants (and the higher the preference of high-skilled immigrants as the main income effect shows). That the difference between high- and low-tax regions is significant becomes clear in Model 5 where we run a three-way interaction model. While the interaction between income and low-skill frame is not significant, the negative and significant three-way interaction terms shows that the effect starts playing a role when a person moves from a high- to a low-tax region. 10 This implies that the rich natives are particularly afraid of rising taxes in low-tax cantons, where they have taken residence precisely to avoid such rising taxes. On the other hand, it also appears that even in high-tax cantons poor natives are not afraid of lower welfare state benefits; this again confirms Hypothesis 3a. To test the robustness of these first results in further analyses we introduced an additional distinction between cantons with welfare benefits above and below the national

10 604 HELBLING AND KRIESI Graph 1 Welfare state model, predicted values Note: Values vary between 0 (negative) and 1 (positive attitudes). average. The results show that it is in cantons with low welfare benefits that rich natives particularly resent lowskilled immigrants (results not shown). 11 To give some more substantive interpretation to these results, Graph 1 displays the predicted values of the main variables of interest when all other factors in this study are controlled for. We computed the predicted values for all three income levels differentiating between cantons with high and low taxes and whether respondents have been shown the description of an immigrant with low and high skills (Models 3 and 4 in Table 1). The graph does not provide any new information but illustrates in a straightforward way the findings of the rather complex interaction models. We immediately notice that attitudes towards highskilled immigrants are more positive in almost all contexts. We also see that in cantons with high taxes, attitudes towards both groups become more positive the more the income increases. More importantly, the gap between both groups remains stable across income groups, which shows that in these cantons there is no interaction effect between the preferences of highskilled immigrants and income. In low-tax cantons we, however, clearly observe an interaction effect: while attitudes towards both immigrant groups are almost the same for people with low income, the gap grows bigger the more the income increases. While attitudes towards high-skilled immigrants increase along the income of the respondents, attitudes towards lowskilled immigrants become slightly more negative, if anything at all. Other studies that have investigated diverging effects across regions looked at tax and welfare regimes in combination with the relative size of the immigrant population in the regions (Hanson et al., 2007; Hainmüller and Hiscox 2010). According to these studies, states with high fiscal exposure not only have above-average taxes and welfare expenditures but also above-average immigration rates. These studies argue that in such states high taxes and welfare expenditures might be directly related to the strong presence of immigrants. We doubt, however, that a strong presence of immigrants has such an effect and argue that taxes and welfare regimes have an impact on attitudes irrespective of how many immigrants live in a canton, especially given the fact that in our survey experiment we asked about prospective migrants; immigration rates can rise in regions with both many and few immigrants. Moreover, as we know from a series of studies, immigration rates as such do not necessarily have an

11 WHY CITIZENS PREFER HIGH- OVER LOW-SKILLED IMMIGRANTS 605 impact on attitudes towards immigrants (Strabac and Listhaug, 2008; Hopkins, 2010; McLaren, 2010). We reproduced the models by Hanson et al. (2007) as well as Hainmüller and Hiscox (2010) as far as possible by differentiating between cantons with both high/low taxes/welfare expenditures and immigration rates. 12 We got the same results as in Models 3 and 4 when we selected among the cantons with high taxes and welfare expenditures those that also have a high immigration rate. That immigration rates do not change the findings has also become clear when we differentiate between cantons with high and low immigration rates (without taking into account their tax or welfare regimes): whether there are many or few immigrants in a canton does not have an impact on how natives with high or low incomes position themselves towards low-skilled immigrants. Deservingness Model In the last empirical part we investigate to what extent natives prefer high-skilled immigrants because they consider low-skilled immigrants to be people who do not work hard enough and who take advantage of the welfare state without deserving it (see Models 2 and 6 9). It becomes clear in Model 2 that opinions about deservingness drive attitudes towards low-skilled immigrants. While there is no direct effect of deservingness (see Model 1), the interaction term is highly significant. In other words, deservingness only plays a role when respondents are confronted with low-skilled immigrants. While opinions on deservingness play a role in general, it appears in Models 6 8 that the effect varies across income levels: the interaction effect between deservingness and the low-skill frame becomes stronger the higher the income of the respondents. While for lowincome natives, deservingness considerations do not play a role at all for their attitudes towards immigrants with the same skill level, the attitudes toward low-skilled immigrants among rich natives depend on such considerations. These results are also confirmed in Model 9 where we introduce a three-way interaction for the conditioning of the income effect by the combination of frame and deservingness. More detailed analyses have shown that especially the gap between low- and middleincome groups is significant. Confirming Hypothesis 5, it appears that especially for people who are successful in life, opinions about deservingness shape their attitudes towards low-skilled immigrants. In Graph 2 we computed the predicted values for people who agree or disagree with the statement that immigrants are lazy, differentiating between people with low and high income and whether respondents have been shown the description of an immigrant with low and high skills (Models 6 and 8 in Table 1). 13 Unsurprisingly, we see that in general respondents have more negative feelings towards immigrants if they think they are lazy. It becomes, however, more interesting when we compare the variance within the two groups: among the people who think immigrants are not lazy (upper part of Graph 2), we observe that attitudes towards low- and high-skilled immigrants hardly vary between persons with low and high incomes. By contrast, among the people who believe that immigrants are lazy (lower part in Graph 2), natives with low income hardly differentiate between low- and high-skilled immigrants, but there is a clear gap among rich natives. Their attitudes towards low-skilled (but not towards highskilled) immigrants become much more critical. Conclusions Starting from the observation that in general people prefer high- over low-skilled immigrants, this article provided a nuanced account of why this is so. We rejected the labour market competition model, and with regard to the welfare state model we saw that rich natives in regions with low taxes or low welfare expenditures are particularly likely to prefer high- over low-skilled immigrants, while poor natives hardly make a distinction between low- and high-skilled immigrants. In high tax cantons, we found no such income-dependent effect. To the extent that context makes a difference in the Swiss case, it is the rich who are particularly context-sensitive. We suggest that this is because they tend to choose their residence with tax and spending considerations in mind. Finally, attitudes on deservingness also explain negative attitudes towards low-skilled immigrants among the well-off. This group of people that is particularly successful in life seems to be convinced that everyone can be successful if they only tried harder. This study developed and tested more detailed arguments than previous studies, in particular, by accounting for welfare state regimes that might constitute a relevant context to understand attitudes towards low- and high-skilled immigrants. In addition, we also tested arguments with regard to deservingness, a field that has been largely neglected so far. Finally and unlike many other studies in this field and as one of the first outside the United States (see, however, Sniderman et al., 2004), our experimental survey enabled us to directly measure individual attitudes towards low- and high-skilled immigrants. By doing so we went beyond most existing work that analysed attitudes towards immigrants in general. While there is a long tradition of studies on prejudice and

12 606 HELBLING AND KRIESI Graph 2 Deservingness model, predicted values Note: Values vary between 0 (negative) and 1 (positive attitudes). xenophobia, more recently researchers have started to look at whether and how people make a distinction between different immigration groups (see, for example, Sniderman and Hagendoorn, 2007; Kalkan et al., 2009). More particularly, a differentiation between attitudes towards Muslim immigrants and other immigrants is often made and it is analyzed whether these differences, if they exist at all, can be explained by cultural factors and values (Helbling, 2012). This study makes an important contribution to this growing literature by differentiating between attitudes towards low- and high-skilled immigrants. It seems to be common knowledge that high-skilled immigrants are preferred over low-skilled immigrants. It is therefore all the more astonishing how little we know why this is so. While attitudes towards immigrants in general can also be explained to a large extent by cultural factors we have argued and shown that factors related to economic and welfare concerns as well as work ethic help us explain diverging attitudes towards low- and high-skilled immigrants. Moreover, we have also seen that poorly and well educated as well as poor and rich natives oppose low-skilled immigrants for different reasons. These findings help us better understand the complexity of xenophobia and prejudice. We saw that certain explanatory factors only hold for certain people in certain contexts. While it appeared that diverging attitudes towards low- and high-skilled immigrants can be explained with economic factors, cultural factors might also play a role and should be tested in further studies. As we have already argued, sentiments of migrant undeservingness not only reflect economic or fiscal concerns but also more general (cultural) values. More generally, one might argue that a high-skilled person is also considered to have different values and cultural predispositions from a low-skilled person. Thus, they might also be preferred, as people consider them more liberal, less religious, more open-minded, etc. (see Card et al., 2012: pp ). Further studies should also take a more comparative perspective. Comparing different cantons already allowed us to test the impact of some crucial contextual factors. Given the fact that Switzerland is a rich country with relatively low unemployment and high immigration rates, we might find different results in a country with different socio-economic and cultural conditions. As we have seen, so far most studies in this field have been conducted in the United States. We have seen that our single-case study confirmed some of the findings but disconfirmed others. The United States and Switzerland

13 WHY CITIZENS PREFER HIGH- OVER LOW-SKILLED IMMIGRANTS 607 can be differentiated along a range of factors including immigration history, welfare state regime, labour market, and size. A truly comparative study across countries could help us understand which of these factors play an important explanatory role and which of our findings can be generalized to other countries. Notes 1 To be clear, we do not argue that economic arguments are more promising than cultural ones to understand attitudes towards immigrants in general (especially in light of a series of existing studies that have shown otherwise). However, even if cultural arguments have a higher explanatory power to explain opposition towards immigrants in general, we think that economic arguments are more promising to explain why people make a difference between low- and high-skilled immigrants. As will become clearer below we control in our models for cultural arguments. 2 The survey has been executed by the LINK Institute in Lucerne. The online panel consists of 100,000 active participants. According to the institute s own statement it provides the only internet panel in Switzerland that has been fully recruited by means of computer-assisted telephone interviews. Neither self-selection nor multi-source sampling was possible. There might, however, still be a bias regarding the use of Internet. For this reason non-frequent Internet users are over-sampled. The questionnaire has been pretested by means of qualitative and quantitative interviews. The survey lasted about 10 min. 3 We get, however, substantially the same results when we retain only the first or second vignette of each respondent. 4 There is a correlation between income and education that is, however, relatively low (r ¼ 0.32). More detailed analyses have shown that introducing them in the same model does not substantially affect the results. 5 We also created an index that measures the percentage of people depending on social assistance. It varies between 1.0 and 5.6 per cent. This index is highly correlated with the measurement of social assistance expenditures per capita and thus leads to the same results. 6 We run multilevel fixed-effects linear regressions in Stata with the xtmixed command. Because the dependant variable varies between 0 and 100, the regression coefficients can be directly read as percentage point changes. 7 With some exceptions, the effects of the control variables remain stable across the models. Because the control variables are not the main focus here and for lack of space we do not discuss the exceptions. More detailed analyses have shown that the control variables do not affect our main findings substantially. 8 As a robustness test we dropped the linearity assumption and replaced the education variable with a set of dummy variables that differentiate between four levels of education (low-, medium-, high-, and very high-skilled) (results available from the authors). The findings are by and large the same with regard to the interaction effects. 9 For space reasons and since because is not the focus of this article, we cannot discuss this finding in detail. It might be that people who strongly disagree that immigrants are lazy show some solidarity towards those immigrants (low-skilled) who are highly resented in public debates. 10 While the direct effect of the low-skill frame was relatively weak in Model 2, we see in Models 3 and 4 that this effect is extremely strong in low-tax regions but negligible in high-tax regions. Again, there is no space here to discuss this particular effect, as it is of no theoretical interest in this article. It might be that people with low income and education who strongly disagree that immigrants are lazy show a lot of solidarity towards low-skilled immigrants in cantons where taxes are low. 11 As a further robustness test we dropped the linearity assumption and replaced the income variable with a set of dummy variables that differentiate between three levels of income plus the respective interactions with the frame variable (the lowest income level serves as the reference category) (results available from the authors). The findings are by and large the same: the higher the income, the more are high-skilled immigrants preferred over lowskilled ones, but only in cantons with low taxes or low welfare expenditures.

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17 WHY CITIZENS PREFER HIGH- OVER LOW-SKILLED IMMIGRANTS 611 Appendix 1 Example of a low-skilled immigrant Survey vignettes Example of a high-skilled immigrant Radoslav Simikic comes from Serbia. He would like to come to Switzerland to work here as an engineer. He would like to bring with him his young family and hopes that they can all become Swiss citizens. He is 28 years old and lives currently in Belgrade. Radoslav Simikic and his wife have two sons and a daughter. His parents are old and depend on his financial support. Radoslav Simikic got his university degree in machine engineering at the University of Belgrade. After obtaining his degree he was employed with Balkan Contractors. After advanced training, he worked there in the design department for large infrastructure projects. He is taking German/French lessons. Notes: Differences between the vignettes were not highlighted in the survey. Radoslav Simikic comes from Serbia. He would like to come to Switzerland to find work in landscaping. He would like to bring with him his young family and hopes that they can all become Swiss citizens. He is 28 years old and lives currently in Belgrade. Radoslav Simikic and his wife have two sons and a daughter. His parents are old and depend on his financial support. Radoslav Simikic graduated from Karic School a vocational high school in Belgrade. He has worked as a street cleaner, a farm worker, and in various construction jobs. He is learning German/French by talking regularly with his friends who speak the language.