Minority rights in an age of immigration: democracy, deservingness and elite influences

The project seeks to advance knowledge on citizens views about the principle of minority rights protection, about immigrants as a minority group, and factors affecting them. Accordingly, it examines the following research questions: (1) Is citizens commitment to minority rights protection conditional on the target (the specific minority group) and the content of protection (the type of right)? More specifically, are non-native minority groups (i.e., immigrants) perceived by citizens as less entitled to rights protection than native minority groups? Does this gap vary by the type of rights? What individual-level factors explain differences in these evaluations? (2) How are citizens views about minority rights protection influenced by political elites? Can political speech shape both peoples understanding of this liberal-democratic principle and their tolerance toward immigrants as a minority group? If so, how? By examining these questions, the project seeks to break new theoretical and empirical ground in the study of mass commitment to liberal-democratic norms in diverse democracies. To this end, it introduces several key theoretical and methodological innovations. Theoretically, it introduces novel theoretical and conceptual frameworks that capture the multidimensionality of the concept of minority rights protection. In addition, it offers original theorising on perceptions of deservingness of rights protection. Beyond individual-level dynamics, it integrates a focus on contextual political dynamics to further inform knowledge about the ability of political actors to shape public opinion and to strengthen liberal-democratic commitment among citizens. The project will be structured in two broad work packages (WPs) focusing on individual-level and contextual political dynamics, respectively. Empirically, the project proposes an integrated approach in terms of methodology and case selection. It combines experimental designs and observational research, single-country and multi-country studies, to improve internal and external validity. The first WP will entail a multi-country survey experiment and original public opinion data collection in four countries (Italy, Germany, Romania and Spain), chosen to reflect variation in exposure to immigration, politicization of minority issues and far-right politics. The use of experimental research is well suited to overcome endogeneity. At the same time, the multi-country setup will allow drawing conclusions about the generalizability of the findings beyond a single-country context. WP2, which focuses on elite influences on voters, will comprise two closely connected sub-packages. Each will include survey experiments in single countries purposively selected from the larger set included in WP1, in combination with observational analyses of existing and new data from a larger number of European countries. Findings from this project have important implications for democratic quality and intergroup relations in diverse democracies.