The Politics of Immigration and Exclusion

Does Accommodating Radical Right Positions Help Social Democratic Parties?

Speaker: Stuart J. Turnbull-Dugarte, University of Southampton

Social democratic parties across Europe have increasingly adopted restrictive immigration rhetoric in response to the electoral successes of radical right parties; however, the consequences of such accommodation remain contested. Stuart J. Turnbull-Dugarte, Associate Professor of Quantitative Political Science, will explore this topic by discussing the design and results of a study examining how attitudes may have changed following UK Labour leader Keir Starmer’s “Island of Strangers” speech, in which he adopted a significantly tougher stance on immigration.

The study compares opinions before and after hearing the speech, and concludes that exposure significantly altered perceptions of Labour, making it appear more anti-immigration and right-leaning. Crucially, these shifts carried a cost: the likelihood of intending to vote for Labour declined following the speech, with no evidence that Labour’s adoption of nativist rhetoric reduced the appeal of the radical-right party Reform UK.

The findings highlight the risks of strategic convergence, showing that accommodation of exclusionary rhetoric by social democratic parties does more damage to their own electoral prospects than those of their radical-right competitors.

Racism without racists: Colour-blind ideology in post-Brexit Britain

Speaker: Maria Sobolewska FRSA, University of Manchester

Those who are ‘ideologically colour-blind’ do not express explicitly negative views of racial minorities but instead reject the argument that racial discrimination is a significant social problem (Bonilla-Silva 2003). In the UK, it has been shown that this ideology is as widespread among white voters as it is in the US, with previous research indicating that few racial minorities will subscribe to colour blindness.

In this seminar, Maria Sobolewska, Professor of Political Science, will present the design and findings of a study demonstrating that both white voters and voters of ethnic minority backgrounds can hold colour-blind views, and that these views shape their political attitudes in similar ways.

Maria will also examine how colour-blind attitudes correlate with political views and racial attitudes, and whether it predicts discriminatory behaviour to policies aimed at addressing race inequality, and political choice.

Facts against femonationalism: how to stop radical right normalisation

Speaker: Katharina Lawall, University of Reading

How can liberal democratic actors counter the normalisation of the radical right? While much research documents how radical right ideology and anti-immigration positions have moved into the political mainstream across many Western democracies, far less is known about the counter-strategies that can be used to combat the normalisation of exclusionary policy agendas.

In this seminar, Katharina Lawall, Quantitative Social Scientist, will present the design and findings of a study that tests the effectiveness of different forms of counterspeech to a prominent radical-right normalisation strategy: femonationalism - presenting an anti-immigration position through the more acceptable frame of gender equality.

Katharina will delve into the experiment, in which nearly 4,000 German adults were exposed to anti-immigration rhetoric with a gender-equality justification in a short, news-style video, followed by alternative rebuttals, with the findings highlighting fact-based counterspeech as most effective for reducing support for femonationalist and anti-immigrant views.

Housing, childcare, and employment: How cumulative discrimination compounds inequality

Speakers:

• Valentina Di Stasio, European University Institute
• Stefanie Sprong, Universiteit Utrecht
• Dan Muir, Youth Futures Foundation
• Katy Neep, Youth Futures Foundation

Ethnic, racial and religious minorities experience discriminatory behaviour and prejudicial attitudes across multiple areas of their lives, with these experiences accumulating over the life course.

In this seminar, Valentina Di Stasio, Professor of Sociology, and Stefanie Sprong, Postdoctoral Research Fellow, will present the EqualStrength project, a Horizon Europe-funded project that aims to investigate cumulative and structural forms of discrimination through cross-national field experiments conducted in nine European countries.

The speakers will discuss the breadth of their research, ranging from analyses of setting-specific discrimination, such as hiring discrimination, to examinations of cumulative and structural discrimination that unfold simultaneously across multiple life domains, including childcare, employment, and housing, and that carry over across generations.

They will also share how the findings provide valuable insights into a potential pathway through which the effects of discrimination are passed on from one generation to the next.

Dan Muir, Senior Economist, and Katy Neep, Head of Employer Engagement and Partnerships, will close the seminar by providing insight on future research and the impact of discrimination research on policy.