Immigrants’ wellbeing in Europe: how it changes with the hostility and hospitality of their environment

Sedovicova, Michaela (2023) Immigrants’ wellbeing in Europe: how it changes with the hostility and hospitality of their environment. PhD thesis, London School of Economics and Political Science.

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Abstract

Current research on the effect of exposure to the destination population on immigrants’ life outcomes shows that they change under different circumstances, and the results are inconclusive. Intergroup contact theory proposes that distinguishing between positive or negative contact is essential in determining the direction of its effect. My thesis focuses on this difference and, measured through aggregated non-migrants’ attitudes towards immigrants, examines how hostility or hospitality in immigrants’ areas of residence affects their wellbeing. The research on non-migrants’ attitudes is plentiful. However, limited research focuses on immigrants’ own views and experiences as subjects with their own agenda. Applying Intergroup theory, my doctoral project answers the overall question, “How does hostility of non-migrants relate to migrants’ subjective wellbeing?”. I study this relationship using progressively more granular spatial data. In the first paper, I conduct a comparative study of European countries and regions within them using European Social Survey data. Then, in the second paper, I employ smaller spatial units at the municipal level focusing on immigrants and ethnic minorities in England and Wales employing Understanding society data. Finally, I turn my attention to the mechanisms behind this relationship. Using qualitative data, I explore immigrants’ experiences in an emerging destination, Slovakia, testing if the patterns existing in the old destinations repeat in a new context. My research advances the current understanding of immigrants’ integration by calling attention to individuals’ wellbeing as a subjective measure of integration. Understanding how immigrants relate the destination context and interactions with the destination population to their life satisfaction is informative to public and integration policies. Investigation of attitudes towards immigrants is conducive to our knowledge of what creates social and cultural boundaries in destinations and which immigrants, depending on their individual characteristics, are allowed to surpass them and become accepted members of society. My last paper makes a theoretical contribution to our understanding of the impact of host society responses and structural discrimination by recentring the research in a geographical context where typically only native emigration has been studied.

Item Type:	Thesis (PhD)
Additional Information:	© 2023 Michaela Šedovič
Library of Congress subject classification:	J Political Science > JN Political institutions (Europe) J Political Science > JV Colonies and colonization. Emigration and immigration. International migration
Sets:	Departments > Social Policy
Supervisor:	Platt, Lucinda and Özcan, Berkay
URI:	http://etheses.lse.ac.uk/id/eprint/4625

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