Exploring the Dynamics of Xenophobia in the Nordic Countries 1

In the last few decades xenophobic and extreme right‐wing political movements have become increasingly strong electoral forces in many European countries. The Nordic countries have long been viewed as among the most tolerant countries in the world, with exemplary protection of minorities. Nevertheless, in Denmark, Norway, Sweden, and Finland, xenophobic parties also moved into first place during the past decade. Both national and international laws require governments to protect people against discriminatory treatment, but developing effective policies to cope with discrimination requires a clear understanding of the factors that trigger xenophobia. Despite a substantial body of cross‐ national research on the subject, the causes continue to be debated. The article reviews the relevant evidence in an effort to move closer to a clear understanding of causes of xenophobia, particularly in reference to the Nordic countries. Social identity theories, group threat theories, theories of nationalism and value theories all provide us with potentially useful cognitive explanations of xenophobia. To explain the perceived increase of xenophobic sentiments requires a dynamic theory of value change. The article draws on all these approaches, concluding that relatively secure people tend to be more tolerant than less secure once. Summing them up, I conclude that existential security/insecurity is the major cause of non‐xenophobic/ xenophobic attitudes. To test this hypothesis I utilize the data of the World Value Survey project, which covers all the Nordic countries over fifteen years. First, I compare the results of elections to the Received 20 February 2018 © 2018 Olga Iakimova Accepted 29 March 2018 yakimova.ola@gmail.com Published online 3 April 2018 1 The work was funded by Russian Science Foundation (RSF). Grant number 17–18–01194.


Why Worry about Xenophobia?
The people of Western societies generally claim to favor equality and opportunity for all.But since the 1990s, xenophobic, deeply conservative and extreme right-wing political movements have emerged as increasingly strong electoral forces in much of Europe.The 2014 elections to the European Parliament saw a dramatic surge of support for xenophobic, authoritarian and anti-Europe political parties: these parties gaining a record-breaking 52 seats, a major gain over the 37 seats that they won in the 2009 elections (European Parliament, 2014).
The Nordic countries have long been viewed as among the most tolerant countries in the world, with exemplary protection of minorities.Nevertheless in Denmark (Danish People's Party), Norway (The Progress Party), Sweden (Sweden Democrats), and Finland (The Finns Party), xenophobic and anti-European parties also moved into first place, winning a large share of the vote than the major parties that have governed these countries for decades.
Because of xenophobic attitudes held by individuals in strategic positions, immigrants are widely perceived as an "outgroup" and discriminated against in the labour or housing markets (Rydgren, 2004).The expansion of xenophobic beliefs threatens the democratic structures of Western countries and may lead to their political destabilization.Moreover, increasing xenophobia is undermining support for the European Union.
As a complex social phenomenon, xenophobia exists at two levels.At its "private-domain" level, xenophobia is an excessive fear of those who are different from oneself.This level is essential; therefore, generally xenophobia has been defined as a fear of "others".At the "public-domain" level, fears manifest themselves as a dislike or hatred of a particular group of people, such as foreign immigrants.These fears often are given some plausible rationalization.Thus, van der Veer, Yakusko, Ommundsen, and Higler (2011) identify five kinds of rationalization that people use to explain their fear of foreign migrants.For instance, people may say that they dislike them because they fear migrants' "political disloyalty" or they do not want to "lose their cultural identity." From an objective point of view, these xenophobic beliefs are often irrational, because of their incongruence with reality.In the distant past, in hunting and gathering societies or early agrarian societies, "xenophobia could be realistic under conditions where it literally was a question of one tribe or other surviving.For example, under conditions where there was just enough land to support one tribe, and another tribe comes along" (Inglehart, 2017, p. 21).Today, xenophobia departs from the behavioral norms of civilized society, in which people are expected to relate with one another with respect and dignity.Xenophobia can have severe negative consequences.On the individual level, it brings psychological trauma to its victims.On the societal level, xenophobic attitudes may lead to increasing crimes rates and intensification of intergroup and intercultural conflicts that threaten social stability.On the economic level, it may bring destruction of property and can scare away potential foreign investors.Finally, in international politics level xenophobia tends to produce a negative image of the offending group or country.Given these undesirable consequences of xenophobia, the question arises: Why do people engage in xenophobic behavior even in the world's richest countries in times largely free of armed conflicts, natural disasters and poverty?

Interpretations of Xenophobia in Contemporary Social Theories
To answer this question we need to understand the causal chain that leads to prejudice and overt xenophobia.Various theories scrutinize the issue of international migration, such as theories of nation and nationalism, group threat/competition theories, theories of social identity, theories of value and value change.
A review of these theoretical approaches provides us with an insight that xenophobic attitudes usually (1) have objective sources and triggers; (2) are spread among particular groups of people and (3) can be observed in particular periods of time (Appendix, Table 1).
Most scholars agree that people's attitude toward immigrants is closely linked with the presence of ethnically different newcomers in their immediate environment.This happens because xenophobia is a phenomenon of interpersonal and intergroup interaction and thus, links with the issue of ingroup/outgroup demarcation where perceiving immigrants as an outgroup means perceiving them as a threat.Given that most developed contemporary societies are multiethnic, xenophobia can be interpreted as tensions induced by multi-ethnic society where ethnically different newcomers are visible, making it possible for them to be perceived as an outgroup and consequently, as a threat.
According to theories of nation and nationalism, xenophobia is considered as an expression of the nationalist ideology.In this theoretical approach, the nation-state can be interpreted as being conducive to xenophobia toward foreigners because its very idea presupposes a constitutive intergroup division between "us" and "others".Consequently, ingroup/outgroup demarcation is natural for the nation-state and its institutional order is a form of social closure (Anderson, 1983;Brubaker, 1992).The belief that the state with its territory and culture belongs to the people who have been united into a nation develops a nationalistic ideology with a xenophobic worldview, where ethnic migrants are perceived as competitors for collective goods of indigenous population such as real rights of political participation and social support (Wimmer, 1997).
This statement resonates with a key idea of Blumer's (1958) the group threat/ competition theory, which claims that within a society there is always a resource stress.As a result, access to desired resources is limited and cannot be available to all groups.In these circumstances if an outgroup exists, it is perceived as a competitor for scarce economic resources and, consequently, as a threat.
However, the physical presence of an ethnically different group is only the first step in the causal chain to overt xenophobia.Hjerm and Nagayoshi (2011) argue that the size of the minority group per se does not trigger it.What really matters is the composition of immigrant population in terms of their cultural origin and religious belonging.Accordingly, a large proportion of culturally very distinct Muslim immigrants strengthens xenophobia among the majority population of European countries, because they are viewed as a threat to values cherished by Western peoples.
Taking into account all the above, at this point of analyses one can ask: Does the existence of the nation state make xenophobia inevitable?Is it possible to cope with the problem of ethnic ingroup/outgroup demarcation?
The role of nation-state in supporting xenophobic attitudes toward foreigners among its citizens examined in studies on national identity and national pride.Following the commonly proposed division between ethnic and civic components of society, researchers who work in this realm of social science argue that different forms of national identity and pride influence people's attitudes towards "others" in different ways.
For example, Smith (1991) suggests dividing national identity into two salient patterns: (1) the civic national identity and (2) the ethnic national identity where civic identification is assumed to be better than ethnic one because in the first case people living in a society can unite under common political rules and values in the name of democracy.Hjerm (1998) goes further and introduces two more types of national identity: (3) the multiple national identity, when individuals base their national identity on both civic and ethnic factors at the same time, and (4) the pluralistic national identity when people have only a weak sense of national identity.
Hjerm concludes that having an ethnic national identity, together with a multiple national identity is associated with an increased risk of being xenophobic, while having a civic national identity or, being a pluralist, decreases that risk.The same is true for national pride.Hjerm divides an individual sense of pride into political (civic dimension) and natio-cultural (ethnic dimension)2 and demonstrates that the political dimension of national pride shows a negative correlation with xenophobia, while the natio-cultural dimension positively correlates with it (Hjerm, 1998, pp. 341, 344).On the whole, researches on national identity and national pride give empirical support to the assumption that to decrease the risk of xenophobia, the separation of civic and ethnic in nation-state is desirable.
Apart from a way of one's self-identification and the dimension of national pride they have, people's attitudes toward outgroups are influenced by their values.Researches on people's values linked with their attitudes toward ethnic groups provide us with knowledge about some important features of those who hold either tolerant or xenophobic attitudes toward immigrants.Thus, Leong and Ward (2006) demonstrate that only certain cultural values are really conducive to xenophobia.According to their findings, these values are uncertainty avoidance, power distance, mastery and masculinity.Conversely, individualism and harmony can be considered as desirable for a society if it aims to prevent xenophobic sentiments among its members.
One more important aspect that theories emphasize is the fact that xenophobic discourse receives varying amounts of support over time.Overall, the majority of scholars have agreed on two points.Firstly, there are specific periods of time when a surge of xenophobia can be easily observed: times of economic crises or recession almost always provide a breeding ground for socially detrimental outcomes.Secondly, a xenophobic interpretation of social crisis does not appeal equally to all members of society.Wimmer (1997) argues that such an interpretation is common among downwardly mobile groups, which members are dependent on a state support and are most threatened by a loss of their social status in times of crisis.Aydin, Kruger, Frey, and Fisher (2013) show that economic uncertainties and fear of social and financial decline make particular groups of individuals feel social exclusion that, in turn, leads them to displaced aggression manifested in intolerance towards minority groups.Taking ideas like these into account, Esses, Dovido, Jackson, and Armstrong (2001) developed the Instrumental Model of Group Conflict, which demonstrates that xenophobia towards foreign migrants is not a general ethnic prejudice but a distinct kind of prejudice based on zero-sum beliefs concerning competition.In other words, xenophobia, as a fear of "others", has a rational nature.In view of the above, xenophobia can be considered as a kind of a coping strategy in times of crisis for particular groups of people.
To summarize, theoretical and empirical studies reviewed above claim that anti-immigrant attitudes have objective sources and that even though people are not averse to immigrants, they may become more or less xenophobic under some specific conditions.This manifests itself, for instance, in the so-called "immigration dilemma" which means that in hard times of crises members of majority population perceive immigrants negatively regardless of whether the newcomers do well in the society or not.In the former case, their success may be explained as coming at the expense of natives; and in the latter case, immigrants are seen as detrimental to national well-being system (Esses et al., 2001).
Nevertheless, regardless of whether these studies interpret xenophobia as an element in a political struggle for collective goods of a nation-state or a coping strategy of those who feel socially excluded in times of economic crises, and whether scholars see xenophobia as a function of national identity based on ethnicity or a function of particular values shared by individuals in the state, they do not offer any clear explanation of how these values and identities are shaped, what changes them, and why such changes occur.As a result, the theories provide us with static, cognitive explanations of factors underlying xenophobic sentiments among public.However, if we want to explain the dramatic surge in support of xenophobic parties and the perceived increase of xenophobic sentiments in Western countries requires a dynamic theory of value change.
Almost 50 years ago, Inglehart proposed a theory of value change, which holds that relatively secure people tend to be more tolerant than less secure ones (Inglehart, 1971).If people grow up experiencing high levels of existential security (that is, taking survival for granted) they tend to hold Postmaterialist and Self-expression values that make them relatively open to change and tolerant of outgroups.On the contrary, if people are shaped by existential insecurity during their pre-adult years, they tend to develop Materialist and Survival values that encourage an authoritarian xenophobic outlook, strong in-group solidarity, and rejection of outsiders (Inglehart & Welzel, 2005;Inglehart & Norris, 2004).
Confirming this interpretation, Inglehart and Welzel (2005) find that high levels of existential security during one's formative years leads to an intergenerational shift toward self-expression values, and thus to higher levels of tolerance.This means, that at every time point, the younger generations are more Postmaterialist than the older ones.
Nevertheless, tolerance levels do not change overnight.In keeping with this hypothesis, we would expect to find a time lag between economic development and a society's level of xenophobia.A society's current level of xenophobia will be more accurately predicted by its level of economic development several decades before the survey (during the pre-adult years of the median respondent) than by its level of economic security at the time of the survey.
Inglehart and Welzel's theory of value change also demonstrates the presence of clear period effects in response to current economic and social conditions: in time of existential insecurity people tend to shift toward more Materialist (Survival) and xenophobic views -and with economic recovery, they shift back toward their longterm baseline (Inglehart 1990;Inglehart & Welzel 2005).
Accordingly, I hypothesize that existential insecurity is the major cause of xenophobic attitudes.This article tests this hypothesis in the Nordic countries that simultaneously (1) are among the prosperous in the world, (2) have experienced substantial flows of migrants, and (3) have experienced the rise in support of rite-wing political movements over last decades.All these criteria meet Sweden, Denmark, Norway, and Finland (in slightly different terms in the context of richness).

The Issue of Immigration and the Rise of Right-Wing Populism in the Nordics
The Nordic countries are among the world's richest.They are renowned for their gender and economic equality, high levels of trust, social cohesion, extensive welfare programs, powerful unions, relatively low unemployment rates, and so on (Mulvand & Stahl, 2015;Booth, 2014).The Nordics sustainably continue to flourish, regularly lead the global rankings, be it in education, happiness or quality of life, and appear to be centers of innovation.The "Nordic Model" of welfare state is an exemplary model of society for many across the world.For decades, public has seen these countries as the "quintessential tolerance and human rightbased" (Armback, 2015).
Recently, however, the international media have reported on the racism and hate crimes in Scandinavia that seem to be linked with the rise of right-wing political movements in the region.The Danish Progress Party, the Sweden Democrats, the Finns Party and Norway's Progress Party have all seen their support trend upwards in election after election over the past two decades (Appendix, Table 2).
Thus, the results of elections to the National Parliaments show an increase in the ratings of support of the Danish People's Party (a 9-point increase over the last 14 years), Finns (+17 percentage points since 1999), and Sweden Democrats (+13 over the last 16 years).Norway's Progress Party has a relatively large number of supporters and has won from 15 to 23 percent of votes over the past two decades.The same goes with the elections to the European Parliament.The result of the Danish People's Party in 2014 was improved by 21 percentage points in comparison with 1999, the Finns demonstrated a 12-point increase and Sweden Democrats -a 9-point increase.
Increasingly, the political climate in the Nordics has been dominated by rightwing populist parties that propagate anti-immigrant and anti-Muslim rhetoric, and ethnically intolerant and violently charged language creeping gradually into the mainstream.Thus, Hege Ulstein -the chief political writer of the Oslo newspaper Dagsavisen -says: "The way people talk about Islam and Muslims here has slowly, inch by inch over the years, moved so that things that would have caused total outrage 10 years ago only cause mild annoyance today -things like 'there is something in the Muslim culture that threatens us and we have to send them away'.You couldn't say then, and you hear it in the Parliament and in the newspapers now" (Saunders, 2011).
Owing to Ander Breivik atrocities against an "Islamic colonization" in 2011, the Norwegian Progress Party came under fire since their strong stance against immigration fed xenophobia and might have influenced the terrorist.Norwegian politicians at large agreed to tone down in the debates on immigration then, but on the eve of scheduled elections, they all shifted back to their common practice of populist rhetoric (Ladegaard, 2013).Thus, a study of Wiggen (2013) based on content analyses of academic literature, mainstream media and online discussions in Norway before and after 2011 shows that the public debate on immigration is fundamentally negative in the country, and xenophobia toward Muslim immigrants is visible in the media and everyday life.
Although Sweden remains the only European country where the majority has a positive attitude toward non-EU immigration (European Social Survey, 2017), the rise in the popularity of the right-wing populism fuels xenophobia there as well.During 2014, about three hundred attacks on beggars and in Roma camps were reported, which is 23 percent higher than a year before.A UN report published in 2015 highlighted the rise of Afrophobic hate crimes in the country -1,075 in 2015 versus 980 in 2014 (Armback, 2015).
The issue of immigration, populist rhetoric and stance against ethnic migrants are three factors that unite the four above mentioned right-wing parties.Their growing influence has moved in parallel with the four Nordic countries' changing population composition and their electorates' attitudes to immigration (Nardelli & Arnett, 2015).According to Eurobarometer's results (European Commission & Eurobarometer, 2015) immigration is currently seen by Europeans as the most important issue facing the EU (38 %).This item is mentioned by half of the population of Denmark (50 %) and Sweden (48 %), and the Finns mentioned it as the third most important issue facing the EU (24 %).At the same time, immigration remains the most important concern at national level only for Denmark, mentioned by 35 % of Danes.It is the fourth main nation concern for Swedes (28 %) and only the sixth -for Finns (6 %).
To summarize, the extraordinary wealthy Nordic countries today all have sizable right-wing populist movements dominated by xenophobic sentiments.Taking this into account as an example of welfare chauvinism, currently, the attempts are made to tie the relative success of the Scandinavian welfare states with their cultural and ethnic homogeneity, and therefore, to demonstrate that the "Nordic Model" is inherently racist (Mulvand & Stahl, 2015).For example, National Review's Kevin Williamson, attacking Bernie Sanders for his usage in the political campaign ideas of Nordic social democracy, argues that white homogeneity accounts for the Scandinavian welfare state and that to save and protect the homogeneity and, consequently, the welfare state, the population of these countries has been overtly xenophobic toward ethnic migrants: "The nastier of Europe's anti-immigrant and ethno-nationalist movements argue that ethnic solidarity is necessary to preserve the welfare state…", or "Nations of Northern Europe were until recently ethnically homogenous, overwhelmingly white, hostile to immigration, nationalistic, and frankly racist in much of their domestic policy" (Williamson, 2015).
To some extent, it is possible to agree that "welfare chauvinism" is a sort of contemporary malaise in the Nordic political climate but the causes of this phenomenon cannot be traced to any inherent xenophobia of Scandinavians.As is evident from the theoretical analyses presented at the beginning of this article, populist and overtly xenophobic parties draw their support from groups of people who have become uprooted from relatively secure lives as a consequence of deindustrialization and welfare retrenchment.Moreover, as the preliminary results of my study demonstrate, the people of the Nordic countries are not getting more xenophobic toward foreign migrants in the course of time.On the contrary, they have become more tolerant.

The Dynamic of Xenophobic and Non-Xenophobic Attitudes toward Immigrants in the Nordic Countries
Let us measure whether there has actually been an increase in xenophobic attitudes in Sweden, Denmark, Norway and Finland by comparing surveys carried out over 15 years using the data of World Value Survey (WVS).To do so, I combine two WVS's attitudinal indicators that measure xenophobia3 into a scale where "0" means tolerant (non-xenophobic) attitude toward immigrants and "2" means strongly xenophobic attitude.
According to the empirical data, the population of the Nordic countries can be characterized as relatively tolerant/non-xenophobic in comparison with other European countries.At the same time, depending on the country, from 30 to 80 per cent of the respondents express a score equal to or higher than "1" (at least one xenophobic answer).Moreover, the data distribution in Table 3 exhibits a clear overall trend.In all Nordic countries, non-xenophobic categories showed noticeable increases, whereas xenophobic ones -decreased.In this context, it is interesting to look at national distribution of xenophobic/non-xenophobic answers (Appendix, Table 3).
The most tolerant country seems to be Sweden -with about 74 percent of non-xenophobic answers and only 2 percent of xenophobic in survey 2010-2012.Very close to Sweden are two other Nordic countries -Denmark and Norway, that in the end of the 21 st century's first decade not only had very small xenophobic populations (4 percent respectively) but also have been demonstrating a trend toward decreasing numbers of intolerant citizens during the past twenty years.Finland is on the relatively negative side with increasing level of xenophobic attitudes from 4 to 14 percent over the last decade.
This brief description shows that xenophobic/non-xenophobic attitudes toward immigrants are dynamic, and differ from each other even in geographically close and economically similar countries; secondly, these attitudes have variated during the last decade.The reasons require further in-depth analysis.
The hypothesis that a society's current level of xenophobia will be more accurately predicted by its level of economic development several decades before the survey than by its level of development at the time of the survey is counter-intuitive.Normally, the strongest predictor of a phenomenon at time X is an independent variable measured shortly before time X; earlier measures will tend to show less impact.Because xenophobic attitudes partly reflect deep-rooted orientations Olga Iakimova 26 based on the level of security or insecurity that one experiences during one's preadult years, these attitudes show sizeable intergenerational differences that reflect a country's conditions several decades before the survey.Preliminary analyses tend to support this hypothesis.
The data in Table 4 suggests that people's attitudes are sensitive to the conditions they experienced during their pre-adult years, producing a time-lag of several decades between society's attaining high level of economic security, and accepting foreigners as neighbors who have equal rights to jobs.Table 4 also demonstrates that a society's level of Self-expression values at the time of the survey is the strongest predictor of its current level of tolerance; a massive body of research demonstrates that Self-expression values themselves reflect the extent, to which people are shaped by high level of economic, physical, and social security during their formative years -from one to five decades before the survey (Inglehart, 1997;Inglehart & Welzel, 2005;Inglehart, 2018).
To sum up, the massive surge of votes for xenophobic parties in the Nordic countries might seem to imply that it reflects an equally massive surge of xenophobic attitudes, but this is not the case.Xenophobic attitudes show the opposite trend.On the contrary, the surge of xenophobic votes are to a great extent a protest vote motivated by the economic decline and unemployment linked with the Great Recession, reaction to Euro crises, and crumbling of the welfare state, which coincides with unprecedented levels of immigration.
In past decades, a large share of the population of developed countries, including Scandinavia, has experienced a decline of real income and the rise of income inequality.The Great Recession of 2008-2012 led to heightened insecurity and further contributed to a rising sense of xenophobia especially in the countries that experienced large flows of immigration in recent years.In this context, the rising support for xenophobic parties in contemporary Nordic politics does not reflect increasingly xenophobic mass attitudes.It reflects two analytically distinct, but causally related consequences of neoliberal globalization -mass immigration and deterioration of welfare services.: 1989-1993;II: 1994II: -1999;;III: 1999III: -2004;;IV: 2005IV: -2007;;V: 2008-2009;VI: 2010VI: -2012

Table 3 . The dynamics of attitudes toward immigrants in the Nordic countries
Source: World Value Survey (1989-2012) * Wave: I