In this study, I investigate how the issue of immigration affects Latino voter turnout. I hypothesize that U.S. Latino citizens who view immigration as highly important and helpful to the United States will be more likely to turn out to vote in midterm and presidential elections. In addition to a contextual analysis on elections in Arizona and California, I perform a probit regression analysis on survey data from Pew Hispanic's 2004 National Survey of Latinos on Politics and Civic Participation. The results are mixed with respect to the initial expectations. While respondents who view immigration as important and helpful are more likely to turn out than those who view immigration as important and hurtful, the results suggest that respondents who find immigration as unimportant may not be less likely to turn out. Further, there are some differences between Latino subgroups, although these differences are minor. Ultimately, the hypotheses presented in this study find moderate support.

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The aim of this study is to quantify the extent to which political correctness, understood as an implicit social convention of restraint on public expression, operates within a community. Due to a scarcity of prior experimental research in the area, a new method was developed for the purpose of the study. Using random selection, the treatment consists of exposing groups averaging 10 individuals to a survey on diversity and immigration matters. The effect is measured as the discrepancy in attitudes that is revealed between anonymous and non-anonymous responses to the treatment survey. Control groups are similarly exposed to a survey on traditional left-right matters. The discrepancies are then compared. The results are controlled for possible influence by factors including group size, sex ratio, and length of study. The general effect of the treatment is not statistically significant, possibly as a result of small sample size. Further analysis shows a significant positive correlation between the proportion of women and the extent of attitude discrepancy. On one interpretation, this means that women in the population are on average more responsive to political correctness than men. Due to the population’s skewed characteristics, the results are not generalised. Future researchers in the area are advised to draw their sample from a more representative population, to investigate additional subject matters and to collect more sophisticated data, in particular on the level of the individual.

This study examined Americans' perceptions of immigrants as threats and their implications on immigration policy views as well as immigrants' actual involvement in crime. Images of immigrant groups result from the perceived threats they pose to the crime rate, economy, political power, and nativism (Blumer 1958). I argued that these perceptions result in opposition to immigrants and support for stronger measures to exclude undocumented immigrants. Of special interest for this study was the "criminal immigrant" stereotype. Previous studies demonstrate that immigrants are not highly crime-involved even when they experience additional stressors during their adaptation processes. Yet, according to Agnew's (1992) general strain theory, immigrants may be prone to criminality due to additional strains they experience while adjusting to the new country. However, many immigrants, through transnational activities maintain ties with family and friends overseas, thereby making the immigration experience less stressful. I argued in this study that immigrants' underinvolvement in crime is partly due to their transnational ties, which may serve a protective role as social support and thus condition the effects of strains. To examine the implications for policy views of perceptions of immigrants and immigrants' actual crime involvement, the 2004 General Social Survey (GSS) and the Children of Immigrants Longitudinal Survey (CILS) were used. The hypotheses were tested by conducting univariate, bivariate, and multivariate analyses. Overall, perceived immigrant threat affects opposition to immigrants and support for stronger measures to exclude undocumented immigrants. Among the various groups examined, the levels of opposition to immigrants differ from that of support for stronger measures to exclude undocumented immigrants. In terms of immigrants and crime, immigrants were not disproportionately involved in crime, as is widely believed by the American public. Contrary to hypotheses, however, immigrants' strains were not significant predictors of crime, and transnational ties did not condition the effects of strains on crime. It is recommended that future research be designed using more comprehensive data set(s) that represent and reflect the growing immigration population in the United States. Particularly, research should include measurements of micro-level social dynamics specific to immigrants such as additional measures of transnational ties and resilience.

The research on natives’ attitudes regarding immigration has increased during the past decades. The overall findings question the common theory of labor market competition and that native attitudes are affected by personal economic considerations. In the same time an increased concern in the political debate has become immigration. In many countries, there is a growth and progress of political parties with a far-right orientation that disapproves and attempts to prevent immigration. We examine data on attitudes towards immigration from eight rounds of the European social survey (ESS) which covers the years between 2002-2016. We study if the attitudes in Europe towards immigration from poor non-member countries of the European Union have changed during the 21th century and examine if the massive acceleration of refugee applications during the refugee crisis in 2015 has had an impact on the attitudes towards immigration. We estimate different models to examine how different factors are associated with individuals' attitudes towards immigration. Furthermore, we test if the labor market competition model holds for the seventh round of ESS due to limitation in data. We find that natives’ attitudes have not become worse in Europe, and that the refugee crisis in 2015 has not made the attitudes worse. We find that the factors that are associated with individual attitudes towards immigration are to a large degree connected with cultural values and beliefs, and that individuals with more years of schooling are more likely to favor immigration regardless of where the immigrants come from. These findings are consistent with the growing body of empirical findings that considers that cultural values and believes are the main drivers of attitudes towards immigration, and that actual effects of immigration on income and employment are quite small. These findings put the labor market competition premise in forming immigration attitudes into question.

After the attack on Ukraine in 2022, the European Union member states have experienced a major migration wave. This gave the EU opportunity to activate the Temporary Protection Directive for the first time, a framework that was created due to the effects of the Yugoslavian civil war in 2001 and which gives refugees certain rights upon arrival in any EU member state. This is also valid in Sweden. However, Sweden has recently been subject to a change in government which pursues a more restrictive migration policy, and an increasingly harsh and discriminatory rhetoric against migrants. Despite this, Ukrainian migrants seem to be exempt from the negative rhetoric pursued by Swedish political parties. This study aims to review whether and how the Swedish parliament justifies this seemingly preferential treatment. The research adds to the discussion on refugees and migrants in Sweden, particularly to the debate on xenophobia and threat perceptions against migrants, by using the theory of “new racism” and the integrated threat theory. The study applies comparative critical discourse analysis on perceptions of refugees and migrants in general, and towards Ukrainian refugees in particular, as expressed in the Swedish parliament from 2015-2023. The data used were gathered from discussions, debates, and protocols on policy regarding migration and integration in the Swedish parliament. The findings showcase a difference in the discourse around Ukrainian refugees and other, where the discourse about Ukrainians is more positive. This has implications for other refugee and migrant groups in Sweden, and in other EU countries. The discourse conducted by the Swedish parliament can incite violent sentiments in the Swedish population and promote further segregation in society.

Opportunities that we have in today's world are sharply evolving, and the world is changing all together with these changes. This development is noticeably observed within the topic of global movement of (not only) population, which has changed fundamentally, both economically, politically and socially. Today's so much diversified form of migration, which has lost its transparency it used to has, is a very up to date and debated topic currently almost all over the world. Because of high importance of the topic "migration" it is often subject of research and number of surveys. One of the most examined area within the topic migration is attitudes of people towards immigration and immigrant, oftentimes together with investigating cause leading to particular attitude. Due to the international reach of the topic, these attitudes are often subject of cross-national research or national research, which, however, use data from international surveys. There is a clear disparity across European states in these attitudes towards immigration and, above all, the immigrants themselves. Given this nature of cross-national surveys measuring attitudes towards immigrants, it is important to focus on the measurement quality, which is becoming increasingly complex in the perspective of international research. It is...