Good for the Common Good: Sociotropic Concern and Double Standards toward High- and Low-Skilled Immigrants in Six Wealth
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Good for the Common Good: Sociotropic Concern and Double Standards toward High‑ and Low‑Skilled Immigrants in Six Wealthy Countries Rueyling Tzeng1 · Ming‑Chang Tsai2 Accepted: 6 July 2020 © Springer Nature B.V. 2020
Abstract Immigration policy has conventionally implied a double standard, in which high-skilled immigrants are more acceptable due to their potential contribution to the national economy, little welfare burden, and better cultural adaption, while low-skilled ones are not favored, because of a belief in their limited contribution to the common good. In contrast to the egocentric interest explanation, we emphasize the importance of such sociotropic concerns and suggest that acceptance of immigrants with different skill levels is an outcome of perceived growth and distributional impacts or threatened cultural boundaries. Drawing data from the 2011 Transatlantic Trends: Immigration survey, we performed seemingly unrelated regression modelling to compare natives’ attitudinal responses in six wealthy countries. We found that in addition to the evidence that high-skilled immigrants are favored over low-skilled ones, the worry about welfare burden to the nation is one of the main factors causing locals to dislike low-skilled immigrants. The public who perceive immigrants’ threats to the national economy in terms of taking jobs away in general are also likely to disfavor high-skilled immigrants. Expectations of cultural assimilation are somewhat detached from acceptance of high-skilled immigrants. As the research results imply clear limitation of the double-standard perspective, we propose a new scheme for understanding both double- and single-standard views and incorporate these variations into the sociotropic theory and future research design. Keywords Attitudes toward immigration · Sociotropic concerns · Self-interest · Double standard · Welfare usage · Cultural threat
* Ming‑Chang Tsai [email protected] 1
Institute of European and American Studies, Academia Sinica, Taipei, Taiwan
2
Center for Asia–Pacific Area Studies, RCHSS, Academia Sinica, 128 Academia Rd, Sec. 2, Nangang, Taipei 11529, Taiwan
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R. Tzeng, M.-C. Tsai
1 Introduction Over the last two decades, admission of skilled immigrants has become a policy preference over low-skilled immigrants (Mukhopadhyay and Zou 2020; Helbling and Kriesi 2014). This double standard in judging which sort of people from abroad are welcome seems to be prevalent across the globe. Skilled immigrants are considered to increase a nation’s competitiveness (Kerr 2019; Brücker et al. 2012), while lower-skilled ones are utilized to fill manual jobs avoided by natives1 and to cater to temporary needs of the labour market. Many nations have attempted to attract “the best and the brightest” talent from around the globe by loosening immigration regulations, sometimes even enticing them with favourable policies. In contrast, the entry and continued stay of low-skilled immigrants within a contractual period are accepted only reluctantly
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