Hate in Context

Week 2: Demographic Change and Hate Crime · LENS preview

Violeta Haas

Department of Political Science

School of Social Sciences and Philosophy

Trinity College Dublin

This Week

  1. Theoretical backdrop — contact & group threat
  2. Part I — Hangartner et al. (2019)
  3. Part II — Cikara et al. (2022)
  4. Part III — Dancygier et al. (2022) (forthcoming)
  5. Putting the readings together (forthcoming)
  6. Policy implications (forthcoming)

Theoretical backdrop

Group discussion (≈8 min)

In groups of 3–4:

  1. What is contact theory? What does it predict when minority presence grows and under what conditions?
  2. What is group threat theory? What does it predict and what kinds of “threat” might it include?

Contact theory

[discussed in class]

Group threat theory

[discussed in class]

Part I — Hangartner et al. (2019)

Most or least likely case?

Hangartner et al. study Greek islands during the 2015–16 refugee crisis.

For each theory, is that setting a most likely or least likely case for the mechanism to be activated and why?

Hangartner et al. (2019): the setting

[discussed in class]

Identification strategy

X exposure Y hostility U island traits Z distance

Selection problem: Regions with more refugee arrivals often already differ:

Self-selection

  • Refugees might choose places with jobs, co-ethnic networks, or a reputation for being welcoming

Administrative selection

  • Authorities may send refugees to some municipalities and not others (e.g. available housing, reception capacity, or political considerations)

→ X and Y share many causes! Naive X–Y comparison mixes exposure with pre-existing differences. Confounding (U)!

Identification strategy: the instrument

Hangartner et al. Figure 3: Map of the Aegean Sea showing refugee arrivals per capita by island

Z distance X exposure Y hostility U island traits

Instrument Z: distance to Turkey.

  • Geography pushes boats to closer islands, not (self-)selection: welcomingness or admin readiness.
  • Two-stage least squares (2SLS): (Z → Y) / (Z → X)
    • First stage (Z → X): how distance changes exposure
    • Reduced form (Z → Y): how distance changes hostility
  • Must hold: distance only affects hostility through exposure.

→ Exclusion restriction: fails if being close to Turkey changes hostility for any reason other than more arrivals.

2 min. discussion with neighbour

Suggest an instrument Z (shifts X & affects Y only through X).

[discussed in class]

Disclaimer

IV solves confounding in theory; in practice the fights are about weak Z, who the effect is for (LATE), and whether exclusion is believable.

Additional resource: Scott Cunningham, Causal Inference: The Mixtape (IV chapters).

Findings

Hangartner et al. Figure 4: 2SLS estimates of refugee exposure on hostility, policy preferences, and behaviour

Findings: islands closer to Turkey (more exposure) show higher:

  • exclusionary attitudes/hostility
  • anti-asylum & anti-immigrant policy preferences
  • behaviour (petition/donate against refugees)

Puzzle: contact and group threat were both weak here. Yet, hostility still rose. What’s left is mere exposure: even a brief, chaotic presence of arrivals (with little lasting settlement) can harden attitudes → situational social threat.

Part II — Cikara et al. (2022)

Ebbinghaus illusion

Which hollow circle is bigger?

Ebbinghaus illusion: two equal hollow circles surrounded by differently sized dots

[discussed in class]

Group reference dependence

RQ: How does demographic change affect local intergroup dynamics?

Argument: Group reference dependence hypothesis

Violence and negative attitudes toward each minoritized group depend on the number and size of other minoritized groups in a community, i.e., their relative ranks in size.

2 min. discussion with neighbour

  1. What role do stereotypes or essentialized properties (e.g., unchangeable group characteristics) play in this framework?

[discussed in class]

  1. What psychological finding about how people judge group sizes do they build on to focus on ranks rather than absolute size?

[discussed in class]

Let’s try it out!

Part 1: Rank by size (≈3 min)

[discussed in class]

Part 2: Mapping vs. Metric Knowledge (≈5 min)

[discussed in class]

Solution

[discussed in class]

Findings

Cikara et al. finding on size-based rank and hate crime

Findings: higher size-based rank → more hate crime victimization…

  • Strongest for the largest local minority (1st), smaller for 2nd and 3rd
  • Holds when ranks change over time (blue estimate)

→ Attitudes and behaviours are not only about stereotypes or groups’ essentialized properties, but relative size rank matters.

Findings

Cikara et al. regional rank encoding

Scales (small → large): LSOA → MSOA → LAD

→ Rank is most likely encoded via local experience, not only national demography (effect stronger for smaller regional units).

Open questions

If people learn relative group size from everyday life, what would they actually notice?

[discussed in class]

Example: public holidays as cues

NBC News: NYC makes Diwali an official school holiday

→ NYC adds Diwali to the school calendar in recognition of the city’s growing South Asian and Indo-Caribbean communities.

Part III — Dancygier et al. (2022)