Political Activism and Other Predictors of Immigration-Status-Based Prejudice: Secondary Data Analysis of the World Values Survey

Abstract

Political activism is motivated by the desire for equity in the distribution of social values, raising curiosity about how activism plays out in matters of prejudicial sentiments. Therefore, this work was designed to examine the prediction of immigration-status-based prejudice by activism in a cross-national data context. The data used are secondary data from Wave 7 of the 2017-2021 World Values Survey (N=76 897) and the 2017-2020 European Values Survey (N=58 103), which were conducted in 81 different countries. Binary logistic regression featuring the Adjusted Odds Ratio (AOR) and the 95% confidence interval (CI) were used to analyze data. Results show that 21.7% of respondents were prejudiced against immigrants while the mean±SD of political activism was 6.46±2.26 (min.=4, max.=12). Politically active respondents were significantly less likely to have prejudice against immigrants (AOR=0.861; 95% CI=0.855, 0.866; p<0.01). Political activism remains a backing for diversity, social inclusion and other elements of left-wing political orientation which align with democratic norms.

Keywords

• Political Activism
• Immigration
• Prejudice
• democracy
• Immigrants

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