Trust, Life Satisfaction and Opinions on Immigration in 15 European Countries

Jeroen Boelhouwer, Gerbert Kraaykamp, Ineke Stoop, Jeroen Boelhouwer, Gerbert Kraaykamp, Ineke Stoop

• Publisher: Netherlands Institute for Social Research
• Year: 2020
• eBook ISBN: 9781000160963
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Social Science Research & Methodology
• Index: Social Sciences

Europe is in flux. The economic crisis, large migration flows, and terrorist attacks have put pressure on international solidarity and attitudes towards civil liberties such as freedom of movement. To what extent do European countries favour immigration and receiving refugees? To what extent do they trust policymakers and one another? Are there shared values, beliefs, and attitudes among Europeans from different countries? This report analyzes the most recent data from the European Social Survey (ESS), a large-scale biennial study of attitudes and values in 15 European countries, with special attention to attitudes towards immigration.

1 Trust, life satisfaction and opinions on immigration in 15 European countries

Ineke Stoop, Jeroen Boelhouwer, Gerbert Kraaykamp

1.1 Opinions in a changing Europe

The European landscape has been changing rapidly in recent decades. The internal market of the European Union (eu) is now a single market in which the free movement of goods, services, capital and persons is assured, and in which citizens are free to live, work, study and do business. National social policies increasingly operate within the framework of various European policies. Furthermore, the introduction of the euro has had a significant impact on national economies. More recently, Europe has experienced a deep financial and economic crisis, with serious consequences for countries and their inhabitants. Being part of Europe (or the eu) influences our lives in other ways, too. Increasing labour market mobility has changed the social and economic landscape all over Europe. Additionally, a large number of migrants are entering Europe, and this is having a considerable impact on social conditions, and presumably on attitudes, opinions and beliefs. Recent events, such as the terrorist attacks in Paris, the Greek debt crisis and the threat of attacks in Brussels, have — once again — made European citizens aware of the delicate balance between aspects such as freedom of movement, privacy and national security.

Information on how people live and how they cope, the degree to which they trust institutions and one another, and how they feel about their society, is of key importance in assessing the impact of social, economic and cultural changes.

Civil liberties and basic human values are at the core of Europe’s major institutions. The Council of Europe advocates freedom of expression and of the media, freedom of assembly, equality, and the protection of minorities. According to Article 2of the eu Lisbon Treaty, “The Union is founded on the values of respect for human dignity, freedom, democracy, equality, the rule of law and respect for human rights, including the rights of persons belonging to minorities.” Increasingly, politicians and scientists have become aware of the impact of the values, attitudes, norms and beliefs of European citizens on the social fabric of our societies, on the way we live, and on the cooperation of individuals and countries.

Meaningful key questions when analysing values, attitudes and beliefs are: What values do people pursue? Do they trust one another, and their national institutions? Are they satisfied with their lives? And what are their attitudes towards immigrants and refugees?

At European level, such questions refer to differences and similarities between countries: Are European countries becoming more similar over time as regards attitudes and values? And to what extent are inhabitants of other European countries similar to Dutch citizens, and to each other? Can individual European countries be characterised by shared values and beliefs, or is the variation in opinions and attitudes within countries as great as the variation between countries?

In October 2015 The Netherlands Institute for Social Research|scp published a report entitled Nederland in Europees perspectief (‘The Netherlands in a European perspective’) (Boelhouwer, Kraaykamp & Stoop 2015) in collaboration with researchers from Radboud University Nijmegen. The report compared the opinions on democracy and migration, trust in institutions, social trust and life satisfaction of the Dutch to those of other Europeans. It also included more in-depth studies on longitudinal trends in life satisfaction, political trust in times of economic crisis, gender roles and the relationship between attitudes towards migrants and the eu. The analyses in the report were based mainly on data from the European Social Survey (ess) covering the period from 2002 to 2013. More recent ess data have now become available for 15 countries, extending the time span to 2015 and also including detailed new information on attitudes in European countries towards immigrants. The availability of this data prompted the production of this short English-language report, which includes an update of a comparison of Dutch citizens with other Europeans on issues of trust and life satisfaction (chapter 2), followed by a new chapter with an analysis of trends in attitudes of European citizens towards immigration (chapter 3). The results presented in chapters 2 and 3 should be seen as descriptive rather than explanatory.

1.2 Data: The European Social Survey

The European Social Survey (ess¹) is an academically driven cross-national survey that has been conducted every two years across Europe since 2002. The ess measures attitudes, beliefs and behavioural patterns of citizens in more than thirty nations. The main aims of the ess are:

– To chart stability and change in social structure, conditions and attitudes in Europe and to interpret how Europe’s social, political and moral fabric is changing.

– To achieve and spread higher standards of rigour in cross-national research in the social sciences, including in areas such as questionnaire design and pre-testing, sampling, data collection, reduction of bias and reliability of questions.

The topics covered in each round of the ess are as follows:

• Moral and social values

• Social capital and social trust

• Political values and engagement

• Citizen involvement and democracy

• Trust in institutions

• Health and well-being

• Immigration

• Crime

• Household circumstances

• Socio-demographic characteristics

• Education and occupation

• Social exclusion

In addition to these general topics, each round focuses on a specific theme, enabling the survey to cover a wide range of topics and to adapt to changing circumstances. So-called ‘rotating modules’, selected following a Europe-wide competition, are designed by leading academic specialists in association with questionnaire design specialists from the ess team. A specific module dealing extensively with the issue of immigration was fielded in both Round i (2002/’03) and Round 7 (2014/’15).² The complete questionnaires are available in each language on the ess website. An average of 1,881 respondents were interviewed in each country, ranging from 1,224 in Slovenia to 3,045 in Germany.

One drawback of the ess is that the data collection period differs somewhat across countries. Ideally, data should be collected in the period September-December in each round. In some countries, however, the necessary funding is notyet available at that time, while in others fieldwork may take longer than expected in a bid to enhance response rates. For this reason, at present information is only available from 15 countries.³ A second complete release is expected in May 2016.⁴ The present data cover the following countries:

• Austria

• Finland

• Norway

• Belgium

• France

• Poland

• Czech Republic

• Germany

• Slovenia

• Denmark

• Ireland

• Sweden

• Estonia

• The Netherlands

• Switzerland

1.3 Comparing countries and measuring trends

Comparing countries is complicated because different sampling frames are used in different countries, response rates — and possibly nonresponse bias — vary, concepts may be more or less relevant depending on the country, questionnaires are fielded in different languages, and interviewers in some countries may have received better training than in others. In addition, making comparisons at a country level may hide potentially large variations within countries. This publication largely ignores these methodological caveats, and simply aims to provide an up-to-date snapshot of trust, life satisfaction and attitudes towards immigrants in 15 European countries.

The ess was set up to compare countries and to measure trends over time. According to O’Shea, Bryson and Jowell (2003), the aim is to measure changes in climate, i.e. underlying shifts in values over time, rather than changes in the weather. It was thus never the aim of the ess to deliver rapid measurements of public responses to topical issues. Political scientists have shown that traumatic events, such as the assassination of President John F. Kennedy in the U.S. or the filmmaker Theo van Gogh in The Netherlands, 9/11, or the mh17 plane crash, can have an impact on the opinions of the general public. The direction of the change in opinions is however hard to predict, and in many cases any effects die out fairly quickly (scp/ wodc/ cbs 2005:202; Stoop 2007; Dekker 2015). The fleeting effects of high-impact events have also been pointed out by media analysts. Greenslade (2015) describes how the images of a drowned boy in Turkey drastically increased positive humanitarian newspaper stories on migration immediately after the photographs were published in some European countries but not in others. In all countries, these effects vanished from the newspapers within two weeks.

The fairly long duration of the fieldwork in the ess may therefore mitigate the impact of sudden events on opinions. Moreover, the fieldwork period differs across countries and the data were collected before the most recent influx of refugees into the eu and before the terrori...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Preface
• 1 Trust, life satisfaction and opinions on immigration in 15 European countries
• 2 The mood in Europe: opinions on democracy, trust, migrants and life satisfaction
• 3 Opinions on migration in a European perspective. Trends and differences
• Publications of the Netherlands Institute for Social Research | scp