Output list
Journal article
Published 2024-12
British Journal of Sociology, 75, 5, 731 - 752
Despite a large literature consistently showing a relationship between higher levels of education and lower levels of ethnic prejudice, some points of contention remain. First, it remains unclear whether education has a causal effect on attitudes, mainly due to a lack of longitudinal studies. Second, due to the majority of studies on prejudice being conducted in Europe and North America, we do not know to what extent the inverse relationship between education and prejudice is generalizable beyond the "global North." To answer these questions, I study attitudes toward immigrants in Chile in the years 2016-2022, using six waves of the Chilean Longitudinal Social Survey. Chile provides new variations in economic and cultural factors, with its stable albeit highly unequal economy, and increased immigration from culturally similar countries which shed light on possible scope conditions of the so-called liberalizing effect of education. I analyze whether attaining more education has an effect on reducing levels of perceived economic and cultural threat. The findings show that increases in education are associated with both lower levels of perceived economic and cultural threat, with education having a stronger effect on the latter.
Journal article
Education and Inter-Ethnic Attitudes among Recent Immigrants in the Netherlands
Published 2024-03
Journal of International Migration and Integration, 25, 1, 109 - 131
Recent research shows that better educated and structurally integrated immigrants do not articulate more positive attitudes toward the ethnic majority than immigrants who have lower levels of educational attainment, described as evidence of an "integration paradox." While these findings have important implications for theories of immigrant integration, they stand in contrast with theories of intergroup relations, e.g., intergroup contact theory. Importantly, these findings also challenge the strong theoretical expectation that higher levels of education generate more positive intergroup attitudes, that is, the universality of the educational effect. Using four waves from 'New Immigrants Survey Netherlands' (NIS2NL) survey, I investigate attitudinal differences toward both the ethnic majority and other ethnic minorities in the Netherlands for four recent immigrant groups by focusing on the highest level of education from their country of origin. First, I analyze whether the relationship between education and outgroup attitudes differs toward the ethnic majority and toward ethnic minorities. Second, I look at how attitudes toward outgroups change over time. Findings indicate that immigrants with higher levels of educational attainment hold more positive attitudes toward other ethnic minority groups, and these attitudes are stable over time. Attitudes toward the ethnic majority, however, are initially very positive but become less so over time, regardless of level of education. The findings shed new light on the universality of the educational effect on interethnic attitudes by showing that higher levels of education among immigrants have a potential "liberalizing" effect only toward minority groups, but not toward the ethnic majority.
Journal article
Unpacking the liberalizing potential of higher education: An analysis of academic majors, anti-Black prejudice, and opposition to immigration
Published 2024
Ethnic and Racial Studies
In this article, we challenge the prevailing assumption about the impact of higher education on attitudes toward racial and ethnic minorities by examining whether educational effects are monolithic or manifold instead. Using data from the General Social Survey (1972-2021), we use a variety of measures of education (years, levels, sectors, and majors) to unpack the relationship between higher education and intergroup attitudes, specifically anti-immigration attitudes among native-born Americans and anti-Black attitudes among non-African Americans. Results show that some higher education graduates hold out-group attitudes that are not much different from those without any higher education. Narrowing our focus to respondents only with higher education, we find significant variation in out-group attitudes across educational sectors and academic majors. These results have implications for how we understand previous scholarship on prejudice and higher education, which may have overestimated the impact higher education has, in general, on prejudice.
Book chapter
Processes and pathways of stigmatization and destigmatization over time
Published 2024
Migration Stigma: Understanding Prejudice, Discrimination, and Exclusion
Book chapter
Revisiting group threat theory using insights from stigma research
Published 2024
Migration Stigma: Understanding Prejudice, Discrimination, and Exclusion
Journal article
A Forgotten Figure: Hans L. Zetterberg at Columbia and the Transfer of Knowledge Between the United States and Sweden
Published 2022-09
The American Sociologist, 53, 3, 341 - 363
The main purpose of this paper is to provide a biographical sketch of the late Hans L. Zetterberg and a historical background to a translation of an essay based on a lecture given by Zetterberg in Stockholm in 1995. In it, he recounts his time at the Department of Sociology at Columbia University in the years 1953–1964. This essay is full of insights into an inspiring and formative period for Zetterberg in the United States, particularly in the stimulating milieu that was Columbia, at this time the center of American sociology led by Robert K. Merton and Paul Lazarsfeld. In the introduction to this translated essay, I give a brief overview of the establishment of sociology as a discipline in Sweden, and the transfer of knowledge between the United States and Sweden (and Europe, more broadly), embodied in Hans Zetterberg. In the post-WWII years, American sociology, which had a strong positivistic imprint, played an important role in shaping the beginnings of Swedish sociology. However, the transfer of knowledge went both ways, with Zetterberg, a semi-central and often neglected figure, being both a significant contributor to sociology at Columbia in its period of greatest prominence, and in his native Sweden.
Journal article
Correction: Does Higher Education Have Liberalizing or Inoculating Effects? A Panel Study of Anti-Immigrant Sentiment before, during, and after the European Migration Crisis (Jan, 10.1093/esr/jcab062, 2022)
Published 2022-08
European Sociological Review, 38, 4, 677 - 677
In part 11, "Supplemental methods information", the notation for the county-level (k) is now consistent throughout the algebraic formula and corresponding key. The footnote referenced has been deleted. The author whose algebraic formula for cross-classified models has been adapted for the model used by the authors has been acknowledged. Also in part 11, the sections "Fixed effects" and "Random effects" have been updated. In the References section, "Leckie, G. (2013). Module 12: Cross-Classified Multilevel Models. LEMMA VLE, University of Bristol, Centre for Multilevel Modelling. Accessed at https://www.cmm.bris.ac.uk/lemma/" was originally omitted. These errors have now been corrected.