How Income and Discrimination Shape the Acceptance of Newcomers in Europe: A Comparative Analysis of Native-Born and Immigrant Populations

The purpose of this study was to investigate how income and belonging to a discriminated group are associated with perceptions of threats posed by immigrants, and with the willingness to accept newcomers of a different/same race or ethnicity as most people of the receiving country, or newcomers who came from poor countries outside Europe. The study transcended Borjas's theory of 'competing and complementary' to newcomer groups of native workers, expanding it from the economic and labor spheres to the symbolic cultural and social spheres, and extending this theory to the foreign-born European population. The study used data from the European Social Survey Round 10 Data. Three local population groups in the EU were examined: the native-born population, immigrants from non-EU countries living in the EU, and migrants from EU countries living in other EU countries. The study revealed that for native-born people, the salient factor predicting their perceived threats and willingness to accept newcomers was income, and for non-EU veteran immigrants, the salient factor was the feeling of belonging to a discriminated group. Economically disadvantaged native-born people in the EU were a group competing with newcomers. However, disadvantaged and discriminated non-EU immigrants were complementary to newcomers. The study showed that a disadvantaged group may be either competing or complementary to newcomers, depending on the origin of the group's members rather than on the origin of newcomers.