Conferences

The goal of this paper is to discuss the combination of subjective and objective indicators to measure the attitudes towards immigration. This will be done by using a question of the European Social Survey (2002) that asked respondents to give an estimate of the number of foreign born out of every 100 nationals in each country. The answers to that question can be combined with an “objective” indicator, namely, the actual number of foreign born in each country. This offers a good occasion to study how subjective and objective indicators can be combined.

In addition to the ESS data, the Spanish case will be studied in greater depth. The same question that was asked in the 2002 round of ESS was included in a survey on attitudes towards migration in 2007 and 2008 (the surveys were carried out by CIS, Centro de Investigaciones Sociológicas), and, in 2008 the question also made reference to the region where the interviewee lived. These data will be analysed to check on how this subjective and objective indicators can be combined in order to further understand and interpret other attitudes to migration (also included in the survey).