Terrorist Events and Attitudes toward Immigrants: A Natural Experiment

Using a quasi-experimental research design, this study examines the effect of terrorist events on the perception of immigrants across 65 regions from nine European countries. I first elaborate a theoretical argument that explains the effect of events and points at economic conditions, the immigrant population’s size, and personal contact as mediating factors. To evaluate this argument, I use the fact that the terror attack in Bali on October the 12th 2002 occurred during the fieldwork period of the European Social Survey (ESS). The findings from this natural experiment reveal considerable cross-national and regional variation in the effect and its temporal duration. The analysis on the regional level supports the argument about contextual variations in the response to the event, and a second analysis based on the 2004 Madrid bombing confirms my conclusions. Implications of the findings for societal responses to terror attacks, the literature on attitudes towards immigrants, and survey research are discussed. ⇤I thank Peter Bearman, Tom DiPrete, Anna Mitschele, Alix Rule, Merlin Schaeffer, and Sy Spilerman for their support and their helpful comments on various drafts of the manuscript. Earlier versions of this paper were presented at ASA 2012, the Social Science Research Center Berlin (WZB), Diane Vaughan’s second year practicum, Peter Bearman’s research group, and the Networks and Time workshop at Columbia. Direct correspondence to Joscha Legewie, Columbia University, Department of Sociology – MC9649, 606 W 122nd Street, New York, NY 10027 ([email protected]).