Understanding Support for Diversity: The Role of Fundamental Beliefs

Abstract Understanding popular responses to immigration and sociocultural diversification is an important concern. Sometimes they are seen as key to a new cleavage dividing democratic societies. Previous research has often focused on attitudes towards levels and types of new migration, and mainly analysed hostility towards immigration. Yet European societies have also accommodated sociocultural diversification resulting from decades of immigration. How can we understand the support for such diversity? In this paper, we argue that such positivity towards diversity, or diversity assent, is associated with fundamental beliefs about the development of society. Employing novel data from a survey of around 3000 residents of German cities and multiple statistical techniques, we demonstrate that multiple dimensions of diversity assent are associated with specific fundamental beliefs, but not quite in the way one might expect. Importantly, egalitarian and pro-diversity beliefs are not in conflict but are positively associated. The most important basis of diversity assent is humanitarianism, a belief that captures not only a willingness to help the needy but also a general orientation towards an inclusive society. By disentangling the relationship between underlying beliefs and attitudes towards different dimensions of diversity support, the paper contributes to a better understanding of responses to societal diversification and the ways they are interlinked with more general social developments.