Hate in Context

Week 3: Economic Causes and Hate Crime

Violeta Haas

Department of Political Science

School of Social Sciences and Philosophy

Trinity College Dublin

This Week

  1. Theoretical backdrop
  2. Part I — Riaz (2023)
  3. Part II — Bestenbostel & Peralta (2026)
  4. Outlook

Theoretical backdrop

Which theory?

David

Rose

We're the Millers meme: escalating pay comparisons

Casey

Kenny

Group discussion (≈5 min)

David

Rose

We're the Millers meme: escalating pay comparisons

Casey

Kenny

In groups of 3-4:

  1. What does relative deprivation theory say?
  2. How does this meme connect?

Submit your definition via TCDpolls: Blackboard → Week 03 → POU44653 Week 3: Relative Deprivation Theory

Your Definitions

Let’s take a look at your definitions!

Relative deprivation theory

Definition

People feel deprived when they compare themselves (or their group) to a relevant standard and judge that gap as unfair (Pettigrew, 2016).

Theory ingredients

In the meme

A comparison to a relevant standard

Rose vs David’s $500k; Casey vs Rose’s $30k; Kenny vs anyone getting paid

An appraisal of disadvantage

“only giving me…” / “I’m only getting…” / “Wait you guys are getting paid?”

A sense that the gap is unjust → anger / resentment

The faces (Rose, Casey; Kenny’s shock)

Discontent tracks relative standing, not only absolute standing

Rose may be well off in absolute terms ($30k), yet relatively deprived and angry

Relative deprivation theory

What counts as a relevant standard?

  1. Other people — family (meme), coworkers, neighbors, peers
  2. Other groups — “my group vs theirs”
  3. One’s own past — “we used to have X”
  4. Expectations/entitlement — what one thinks one deserves

→ RD also depends on which referent is salient (Walker & Pettigrew, 1984; Pettigrew, 2016).

Part I — Riaz (2023)

Dissecting the paper: 9 steps

Recall from Week 1 — when preparing a paper, identify:

  1. Research question
  2. What is explained (Y)
  3. Main explanatory factor (X)
  4. Theoretical argument/central concepts
  5. Methods/research design
  1. Main findings
  2. Real-world implications
  3. Contribution to the literature
  4. Critique and limitations

1. Research question

Does inequality foster xenophobia?

Puzzle: Immigration triggers xenophobic backlash in some places but not others. Why?

Riaz’s (2023) answer: local economic inequality intensifies backlash against immigration.

2–3. Y and X

Y (outcomes)

  • Xenophobic hate crimes (2012–2019)

X (Treatment)

  • Refugee inflow in 2015

Moderator

  • Local post-tax income inequality (Gini from 2010 tax registry)

Wait… what’s a moderator?

Moderator vs mediator

Moderator: a factor that changes the strength (or direction) of the relationship between X and Y.

Here: refugee inflow → hate crime is stronger where inequality is high.

X refugees Y hate crime Mod inequality modifies (+)

Mediator: a factor on the causal path from X to Y: X affects Y (partly) through it.

Example: parental education → child’s education → child’s income

X parental education Med child’s education Y child’s income

4. Theoretical considerations

Causal chain

Local Inequality 1 Relative Deprivation 2 Nationalism & Xenophobia 3 Backlash against immigration

Step 1: Inequality → relative deprivation

Local income inequality increases perceptions of relative deprivation (Walker & Pettigrew 1984):

Theory ingredients

In Riaz (2023)

A comparison to a relevant standard

Assumed: People in the same municipality compare on income

An appraisal of disadvantage

Assumed: For low-income natives, comparisons look worse where local inequality is high

A sense that the gap is unjust → anger/resentment

Assumed: That gap is pereived as unfair/grievance

Discontent tracks relative standing, not only absolute standing

Evidence: holding income constant, people in high-inequality municipalities report lower income satisfaction (SOEP)

→ Claim: when local inequality is high, relative deprivation is more pronounced and more frequent.

Step 2: Relative deprivation → nationalism

Relative deprivation increases incentives for national (vs. class) identification (Shayo 2009).

“The ordinary English worker hates the Irish worker as a competitor who lowers his standard of life. In relation to the Irish worker he regards himself as a member of the ruling nation and consequently he becomes a tool of the English aristocrats and capitalists against Ireland, thus strengthening their domination over himself. He cherishes religious, social, and national prejudices against the Irish worker. His attitude towards him is much the same as that of the ‘poor whites’ to [Black people] in the former slave states of the U.S.A. […] This antagonism is the secret of the impotence of the English working class […] It is the secret by which the capitalist class maintains its power.”

Karl Marx, letter to Sigfrid Meyer and August Vogt, 9 April 1870

Why switch from class to nation?

The question is which group provides higher status and feels more cohesive

  • Under high inequality, class (“we workers”) is a low-status identity for working-class natives
  • Nation (“we Germans/English”) offers comparatively high status (Marx’s: “regards himself as a member of the ruling nation”)
  • Refugee inflows change the composition of the working class: “we workers” now includes people who may feel culturally distant → class feels less cohesive
  • National identity then wins: higher status esteem + more cohesive

Argument

→ Inequality is already there, refugees don’t create the status problem, but relatively low-income natives may perceive class identity less cohesive, so national identification increases.

Step 3: Nationalism → stronger backlash

Nationalism and xenophobia in high-inequality places translate into more hate-crime:

  • Perpetrator pool: higher xenophobia → more potential hate-crime offenders (attitudes are common among perpetrators, even if most xenophobes never offend)
  • Social environment: communities with more xenophobic sentiment can make hate crime feel more “legitimate” or as acting “on behalf of” the community (see Dancigier et al. 2022, Dancygier 2023)

5. Methods/Research design

(Self-)selection and confounding

Places 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, or political considerations)

→ Hangartner et al. (2019) use geographic distance to Turkey as an instrument to guard against confounding introduced by (self-)selection.

How does Riaz deal with this?

Administrative Selection, is actually the solution…

  • Germany’s quasi-exogenous allocation rules: refugees are allocated to municipalities largely proportional to population and independent of refugee individual traits → similar refugee intensity by design

Local inequality

Riaz Figure 2: local inequality

5. Difference-in-differences

Difference-in-differences diagram: intervention effect as gap between observed and counterfactual outcome trends

In Riaz (2023):

  • Outcome → xenophobic hate crimes
  • Pre/post → before vs after 2015 refugee inflow
  • “Intervention” line (blue) → onset of the large-scale inflow (2015)
  • Intervention group (red) → high-inequality municipalities
  • Comparison group (green) → low-inequality municipalities
  • Counterfactual (dotted) → path high-inequality places would have followed if intervention wouldn’t have happend (assumed)
  • Intervention effect → extra post-inflow rise in hate crimes in high- vs low-inequality places, i.e., total difference between control and treatment minus (assumed)counterfactual

Figure 3: Hate crimes over time

Does the partial check speak for parallel trends?

Riaz Figure 3: hate crimes over time by inequality

Pre-2015: paths between low- and high-income inequality regions look parallel. After 2015: stronger surge where inequality is high.

6. Findings

Riaz Figure 4: effect of inequality on hate crimes

7–8. implications/contribution

  • Reducing inequality may improve within-group relations and reduce xenophobia
  • Relative deprivation, not only absolute hardship matter

9. Critique (≈5 min)

In groups of 3–4: - collect your critiques of Riaz (2023).

Your Critique

What did not convince you?

Income is somewhat invisible

Relatively deprived individuals will not directly observe the income of their neighbours, peers, or co-workers.

Especially not in Germany

Never ask a German their income

United States

Germany

What they see instead

Status symbols, not pay slip:

🚗 🏠 ✈️ ⌚ 👜 📱

  • these track wealth, not only current income
  • So measured income inequality is an imperfect proxy for how people assess relative economic deprivation

→ Riaz’s (2023) Gini is a useful local measure but the comparison is filtered through visible status, not pay slips.