A new report from the Economic and Social Research Institute (ESRI) has acknowledged a “recent rise of anxiety around immigration,” noting that higher residential segregation of migrants is associated with more negative attitudes in Ireland.
The report, published on Tuesday, notes that in rural areas, attitudes to migrants are less positive than in urban areas.
It further states: “Yet where rural residents live among a higher proportion of migrants, they tend to report more positive attitudes, which is supportive of contact theory.
“Contact theory states that positive contact between groups improves attitudes towards the other group. Higher residential segregation of migrants (i.e. where migrants are more clustered, instead of more spread out among the non-migrant population) is associated with more negative attitudes.”
This, the report says, may be due to “more limited opportunities for contact in segregated communities, or inflated perceptions of the size of migrant communities.”
The paper is based on a nationally representative sample of adults fielded by the Department of Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth in Spring 2023, matched to 2022 Census data. In addition to Census 2022 small area data, data was matched on communities from other sources including: the number of refugees from Ukraine; the location and occupancy of international accommodation centres; GP places per person; housing affordability and the supply of and demand for primary school places. 1,210 Irish-born individuals responded to the interview on immigration attitudes.
The report states: “While some communities perceive immigration more negatively than others, positive social contact can play a key role in improving attitudes and therefore social cohesion. This has important implications for policies aimed at improving migrant integration, but also indicates that broader economic and social policies and factors (such as disadvantage, segregation, urban/rural settlement) play a key role in social cohesion and attitudes towards immigration. The findings about pressure on services indicate that it may not be direct local experiences that impact attitudes, but may instead be concern about pressure on services in Ireland as a whole.”
Report author Fran McGinnity said: ‘This research shows that local communities can generate both obstacles to, but also opportunities for, social integration between non-migrants and migrants. Communities are spaces where migrants and non-migrants not only encounter each other but can also form lasting social ties. This could be as next-door neighbours, as parents of children going to the same school, or in community groups. This kind of positive social contact between migrants and non-migrants can go a long way to generating positive relations between groups as well as building stronger, more cohesive communities in the long run.’
Report co-author Keire Murphy said: ‘This report gives important insight into what makes anti-immigrant sentiment more likely. Echoing international findings, socio-economic factors like community-level disadvantage seem to matter, implying that the broader social and economic context is important for attitudes towards immigration.’