Conferences

This paper explores the predictors of prejudice and opposition towards anti-racist policies in Europe, using data from European Social Survey 2002. Two different levels of predictors are considered: individual level, and contextual level. At the individual level threat perception and social values were selected as predictors, and at the contextual level we considered three dimensions: economic factor, immigration factor and political factor. The questions addressed are: 1) what are the predictors of prejudice at both individual and contextual level?; 2) what is the impact of prejudice on opposition towards anti-racist policies?; 3) is there a mediating role of threat perception on the relation between prejudice and opposition to anti-racist policies? Results show that 1) differences between countries concerning racial prejudice and opposition to anti-racist policies mainly occur at the individual level—only a small part of the differences between countries occur at an aggregate level, being share vote in extreme right the contextual variable that showed some predictive power, but only on opposition to anti-racist policies; 2) at the individual level, the adhesion to the values of self-transcendence and conservation are the best predictors of prejudice; 3) Concerning opposition to anti-racist policies the best predictors are prejudice, perception of symbolic threat and adhesion to self-transcendence values; 4) Although there is a direct effect of racial prejudice on opposition to anti-racist policies, this relationship is partially mediated by perceptions of threat, mainly by symbolic threat.