particularly pronounced over issues such as race and immigration. Here the social taboos surrounding articulation
of negative opinions are stronger and thus the unravelling effects will be more quickly and explosively felt. Such
an explanation of anti-immigrant voting while it relies on grievance intensification, differs in that it is a
contextually driven phenomenon. Simply put, the decision to support an ERAI party is one’s perceptions that
others may be planning to do the same thing.
Overall we contend that these theories of mobilization present complementary rather than competing
understandings of anti-immigrant voting. Indeed, if one fits their logic together it is arguable that they form a
linear progression in accounting for how anti-immigrant voting becomes more widespread in society. Initially,
there will be those with strong personal grievances against immigrants, either of a materialistic or cultural nature
who act on those sentiments without recourse to any political or social cues. For many people, however, while they
may feel resentment toward immigrants, they will not act on those feelings until they begin to sense that the
government and established parties are not dealing with the problem adequately. Finally, there are a larger group
of voters who harbor anti-immigrant sentiments but will only act on those feelings provided they perceive others to
be similarly inclined.
MODELLING ANTI-IMMIGRANT ATTITUDES
To test whether and how opposition to immigrants provides these parties’ electoral support, it is necessary
to first examine the structure of anti-immigrant attitudes at the individual level. Most of the work on the question
of the structure of racial attitudes has been done in the US context. Extensive social-psychology research has
identified two main types of prejudice toward racial outgroups: (1) realistic conflict opposition which argues that
whites’ negative attitudes to blacks form as a result of increasing conflict between groups over scarce resources
such as jobs, power, money, welfare benefits, and housing (LeVine and Campbell 1972; Kinder and Sears 1981;
Bobo 1983; Bobo and Kluegel 1993)
; and (2) a more symbolic type of prejudice established through pre-adult
socialization that ascribes negative character traits to the racial outgroup based on little or no interaction (Allport
1954; McConahay and Hough 1976; Kinder and Sears 1981).
This understanding of prejudice has been examined in the West European context by a number of authors
(Pettigrew, 1998; Knigge, 1996; Pettigrew and Meertens, 1995; Husbands, 1988) who have identified a similar
bifurcation in racial attitudes. Knigge (1996), in the most direct application of the US concepts, found the realistic
conflict explanations most persuasive in explaining Europeans opposition to expansive immigration policies during
the 1990s. While the evidence from the US context from the 1980s and 1990s was more supportive of the symbolic
9
Convention