Naam student: Thomas van Manen Kooij Studentnummer: 6073808
Docent: dhr. dr. Armèn Hakhverdian Tweede lezer: dhr. dr. Eelco Harteveld
Vak: Masterscriptie: A global crisis of democracies? Change and continuity in 21st century politics.
Datum: 22 Augustus 2019
Woorden: 9499
Perceptions on immigration: sign of the times?
“Innumeracy, an ability to deal comfortably with the fundamental notions of number and chance, plagues far too many otherwise
knowledgeable citizens”
John Allen Paulos, 1988
“Politics is an important part of life. You can’t escape it, nor should you. But in a way it’s a success of these populist movements that have
reduced our lives to political dimensions”
Abstract
There seems to be a distortion between people’s perception of immigration and reality. This thesis looks into the possible link between political trust and innumeracy. Innumeracy is the tendency of people to over or under-estimate the percentage of immigrants or foreign-born people in their country, in this case the Netherlands was used as a case-study. The vast majority of people overestimate (and sometimes underestimate) the percentage of foreign-born people. Where previous research already gave some answers to explain this tendency, this article offers a new angle in this field of research by exploring the possible link between the level of political trust people have and their tendency to over or under-estimate the percentage of foreign-born people in the Netherlands. The data showed that people who distrust politics, also estimate the number of foreign-born people higher, compared to people who do have political trust. This points to a clear link between political trust and innumeracy.
Introduction
We live in a rapidly changing and globalizing world and immigration is among the most pressing questions in contemporary politics, located right in the heart of heavily polarized and heated debate. Chances are this debate will only intensify and polarize further in coming years. An article by Kriesi et al. (2006) explains that a shift towards a cultural dimension in politics is happening in past years. The cultural dimension in politics is becoming increasingly important and immigration is in part responsible for this shift in terms of political debate. The ongoing process of globalization creates so-called winners and losers in society and this can be explained by two categories, of which increasing cultural competition is most important for this thesis (Kriesi et al. 2006: 922; van der Brug and van Spanje 2009: 309).
Increased cultural competition is closely linked to a growth of migratory flows of ethnic groups with different cultural backgrounds in past years (Kriesi et al. 2006: 922). “In the 1970’s, the cultural dimension mainly structured issues related to cultural liberalism, but nowadays the issues of (resistance to) immigration and (opposition to) European unification have become important new elements of the cultural dimension” (van der Brug and van Spanje 2009: 310). The problem that arises is the fact that the debate on immigration is influenced by the perception people have of immigration and vice versa, which might lead to overestimation of foreign-born people in their country when asked about it in a survey. This thesis seeks to answer the question why people overestimate the number of foreign-born people or immigrants in their country (see Figure 1). Previous research already illustrated that perceptions may be more powerful than
reality (Wong 2007). This calls for a closer look into the world behind the statistics, numbers and percentages that seem so important for our understanding of immigration.
It seems like a lot of the fuzz around the topic of immigration is based on all sorts of statistics and polls, where citizens are asked questions like ‘Out of every 100 people in [country], how many do you think were born outside [country]?”.1 It is exactly questions like
this one, which is used as the prime focus for this thesis, that people by and large fail to answer correctly. Respondents often times give estimates that are completely off and the question is, why this happens? This tendency to over or under-estimate is called innumeracy, which basically means mathematical illiteracy and it derives in part from limitations in cognitive processing (Sides and Citrin 2007: 2; Herda 2010; Alba et al. 2005; Kunovich 2017: 481). Innumeracy is important to investigate, because it influences the way people think and directly affects their normative behaviour. People might adjust their voting behaviour accordingly and this directly affects the democratic process in a country. There seems to be a lack of attention for factual questions about immigration, which causes innumeracy among people. Previous research shows that people overwhelmingly over-estimate the size of minority groups, like figure 1 also illustrates (Sides and Citrin 2007: 3).
Figure 1. The spread of innumeracy across a number of countries, illustrating the prevalence of the
phenomenon. Note: the fact that respondents in all surveyed countries overestimated the share of immigrants. Source: Our World in Data by Max Roser, data by Sides and Citrin (2007).
Possible explanations as to why innumeracy occurs, range from misperceiving actual sizes of the immigrant population, to issues with who exactly is labelled as an immigrant, to actual problems caused mainly by the design of survey-based research. One issue called the demography-threat-prejudice linkage of research conducted in the U.S.A. pointed towards the problem of American citizens “misperceiving the sizes of the major racial and ethnic minority groups, inflating their numbers well beyond any demographic reality” (Alba et al. 2005: 902; Nadeau et al. 1993). Next, there is the trouble with the terms ‘immigrant’ and ‘immigration’. If these are not clearly defined by the government or their institutions, people make up their own minds, which also distorts the outcome of surveys and therefore is a cause of ‘innumeracy’. The European Social Survey from which the prime question for this thesis was picked, uses the term foreign-born people which can be seen as more explicit, instead of immigrants, but as the data will show later on, people still don’t get the percentages right.
Another example is the difficulty with survey-based research of translating “a perception into numerical terms” (Alba et al. 2005; Kunovich 2017: 481). Furthermore, research has shown that people in general have a tendency towards what I call ‘ethnic bias’.
When people are asked to think about immigrants, they are less inclined to think about people with the same ethnic background (Herda 2015: 1628).
While these are all relevant explanations for innumeracy, this thesis suggests an additional explanation for innumeracy on immigration numbers that has been overlooked by previous research: political trust. In anticipation of the conclusion, this thesis shows that political trust is an important factor in explaining innumeracy of people. Whether you trust politics or not might affect your view on society and your thoughts on the number of foreign-born people in your country. This is because of the assumption that if you distrust politics and politicians, chances are you will not trust the political institutions that come up with the immigration numbers and this will affect your innumeracy. What also adds to the growing distrust in politics among certain citizens is the gradual pull back of government from society. In order for a society to thrive, public institutions, be they formal or informal, are needed where people come together and engage with one another. This creates the opportunity for people to get involved with their community (Putnam et al. 1994). Finally, there is the problem of a steady decline in political party memberships over the years in the Netherlands.2 This means less
representation in politics and a weakening civil society (van Schuur and Voerman 2010). As a final point, possibly adding to this distrust in politics, we could look at the rise of the internet and the increasing power of social media platforms creating so-called filter bubbles (Mounk 2018). All sorts of stories, often times fake news, are posted without any legitimate control whatsoever, possibly adding to the distrust people might have. Taking all this into account, I believe the factor of political trust is definitely one to further investigate.
In investigating the relation between innumeracy and political trust this thesis takes the Netherlands as a case study and takes the following steps. First, a theoretical section will set out the current literature on innumeracy. I have divided this part into cognitive factors, ideological factors and political trust. Secondly, I will explain the case selection and data. Thirdly, I will present the results of the data analysis. To make the analytical section as clear as possible, I chose to split this part up into: cognitive factors, ideological factors and political trust. All three sections will explain reasons for the innumeracy among people and will hopefully contribute new insights into this field of research. Finally, the conclusion will offer
2 Research by van Schuur and Voerman (2010) has shown that a mere 2.6 percent of adult Dutch citizens were
member of a political party in 2010, after the second world war this percentage was 15 percent. This shows a gradual but steady decline of party memberships and could be seen as worrisome to the functioning of the Dutch democracy and could point to a decline in political trust.
an overview of the findings of this thesis and will reflect on possible follow-up research in the near future.
The theory and literature review
The case of innumeracy
Innumeracy is mathematical illiteracy, or “an inability to deal comfortably with the fundamental notions of number and chance” (Sides and Citrin 2007: 2-3; Paulos 1988: 3). It derives in part from limitations in cognitive processing. Innumeracy is “the [in]ability to translate a perception into numerical terms” (Herda 2010; Alba et al. 2005; Kunovich 2017: 481: Paulos 1988: 3). Especially in cases where respondents give estimates well beyond any demographic reality it raises questions why this happens? (Nadeau et al. 1993). This ‘innumeracy’ is not bound to any particular country (see figure 1).
A question is whether people are able to estimate something as difficult to define as the number of immigrants or foreign-born people in their country. Or as John Allen Paulus stated back in 1988: “Innumeracy, an ability to deal comfortably with the fundamental notions of number and chance, plagues far too many otherwise knowledgeable citizens”. It appears that a majority of citizens who participate in surveys have a hard time getting the numbers right, or express unfamiliarity with politically relevant numbers (Lawrence and Sides 2014: 1). Next to the issues with the survey-based research itself, there are other factors involved of which special interest will go out to political trust and its possible influence on innumeracy. In the following sections, which will be divided in cognitive factors, ideological factors and finally the factors linked to political trust, all aspects attributing to innumeracy will be explained.
Cognitive factors
The question if people are able to correctly guess the number of immigrants or foreign-born people in their country is,according to the literature, closely connected with people’s cognitive abilities. People “with a greater cognitive ability will produce more accurate estimates” (Sides and Citrin 2007: 4). There are a number of reasons for this, one of which is that people who are cognitively more sophisticated are able to better process numbers and probability, those people are more numerate (Ibid.). Whether people are cognitively sophisticated also relates to their
knowledge related to political reality, and in most cases possess the correct information, which helps to make an informed guess on the number of immigrants or foreign-born people in your country.
This also links to the interest a person has in politics, because of the expectation that a person who has more interest in politics will be better at making an educated guess on the number of immigrants or foreign-born people in their country. The expectation is that the more people are interested in politics, the more people will keep track of the daily news. The fact that immigration is so prevalent in political debates these days, will probably mean that the news will cover this quite extensively. The odds are that the more people read and hear about this on a daily basis, their ability to estimate the percentage of foreign-born people, will improve. There also is a chance that with more news coverage on immigration related topics, this will add to a certain stigma often times negatively adding to concerns people might have, resulting in innumeracy. The media landscape has changed almost beyond recognition ever since the internet was invented, with social media platforms at the forefront of today’s changes in the way people consume their media. On the topic of the influence of social media platforms and their role of providing news for people an article by Strömback et al. (2016) can provide us with some more insight.
One of the findings was that different groups of individuals tend to use different media, but also that education and political interest are linked to news media use (Strömbäck et al. 2016: 91). Another finding was that “the linkage between news media use and political trust varies across media” (Ibid.). Finally, the conclusion of their longitudinal research was, that “the results show that there is a positive relationship between news media use and political trust, although the effect is quite weak” (Idem: 105). Because the data from the European Social Survey was limited on the topic of media use, where they focussed only on tv-watching, an article by Furnham and Gunter (1983) is helpful for our understanding.
Previous research on adolescents in the United States concludes that it is uncertain that people with more political knowledge and interest, also watch TV-news more often (Furnham and Gunter 1983: 384). However, what they did say was that male adolescents with an interest in politics, who watched TV-news regularly, were more likely to know who political leaders and ministers were and also had a better knowledge about party politics and parliamentary procedures (Idem: 382). TV-watching in and of itself is of course not problematic, it depends very much on which TV-shows and channels someone decides to watch. Whether a show or channel is strictly conservative might be an indication of certain ideas or policy opinions
leaning more towards right-wing politics that are mostly in favour of strict immigration policies. This could influence the viewer’s opinion on immigration and point towards innumeracy.
The level of education of someone seems to correlate with political trust and engagement as well as research by the Statistics Netherlands (CBS) in 2017 showed.3 The
higher the level of education of people, the higher their political engagement will be on average. “A higher level of formal education is associated with lower estimates of the size of minority populations” (Nadeau et al. 1993; Wong 2007).
Next to the economic competition people might experience, past research also showed a possible link between the level of education of someone and their institutional trust. As Hakhverdian and Mayne (2012) noted, there might be a link with education and institutional trust. “Citizens with higher levels of education have a greater tendency to undertake a range of political activities that provide opportunities for learning about the quality of political institutions. This includes, for instance, attending public meetings, making contact with public officials, and following electoral campaigns” (Hakhverdian and Mayne 2012: 741). Institutional trust could have a connection with the fact whether people believe actual percentages provided by the government, as in this case with regards to immigration numbers provided by the CBS, the official Dutch institution that registers these numbers. If people simply don’t trust the numbers provided by the official institutions, chances are they won’t be able to correctly estimate the percentage of foreign-born people as was stated in the ESS survey. They might as well create their own reality, which is a cause for ‘innumeracy’. This results in the following hypotheses:
H1: Innumeracy is higher for lower educated people, than for higher educated people. H2: Innumeracy is lower for people who watch more TV.
H3: Innumeracy is lower for people with a higher political interest.
Ideological factors
Whether people over or under-estimate the number of foreign-born people is also affected by what is called ideological factors, which is mostly connected to people’s political beliefs and preferences and has the ability to affect people’s normative attitudes. For instance, whether a person believes that immigration is bad for their country will possibly affect their view on
3CBS 2017, Higher educated most politically active:
immigration as a whole and will therefore most likely affect their innumeracy, meaning their chance of over-estimating the number of foreign-born people when asked this question. Especially in times with all sorts of austerity measures being implemented, people tend to point to immigrants for the existing problems first. A clear link between times of economic hardship and the rise of anti-immigrant sentiments can be seen, as research by Finseraas et al. (2016) concluded. The articles by Kriesi et al. (2006) and by van der Brug and van Spanje (2009) also stated that low-skilled workers might experience the whole process of globalization entirely different, then their highly educated fellow citizens.
On top of the economic crisis, another crisis emerged, namely the refugee crisis in 2015 that reinforced the negativity surrounding the debate on immigration (Hatton 2016). People with a lower education who might have lost their jobs during the crisis, might point to immigrants for the worsening economy and their own worsened position, before looking at macro-economic reasons or government cutbacks on social security, which might be the real reason their position worsened (Finseraas et al. 2016: 61). All of this adds to the already negative label that is put on immigration and immigrants by some people, adding to the innumeracy.
Research by Cavaille and Marshall (2019) showed a causal relationship between the level of education and their anti-immigration attitudes. They “demonstrate that an additional year of secondary education substantially decreases anti-immigration attitudes” (Cavaille and Marshall 2019: 262). Other research also pointed towards this link: “Individuals with low educational credentials tend to hold more negative attitudes towards immigrants and to be more sceptical towards liberal immigration policies than individuals with better education” (Finseraas et al. 2016: 61). The level of education of people is connected to economic competition that people might experience, which as some people believe is mainly caused by the increase of immigration, while in fact automation might be the real cause.4 This could be a
cause for anti-immigrant sentiments among the people who experience this competition as Finseraas et al. (2016) illustrated. Low-skilled workers experience this economic competition more than people with a higher education, and the difficulty here is that immigrants are usually the first who are blamed for the loss of jobs as a result of economic competition. “In a competitive situation, of course, the size and strength of one’s antagonists clearly increases the
4Report by McKinsey on the role of automation in coming years:
threat to one’s chance of prevailing” (Sides and Citrin 2005: 1). This could be an indicator whether people think there are too many immigrants, resulting in innumeracy.
Despite the fact that concerns about immigration often center on its economic impact -and thus these concerns derive in part from individuals’ labor market location -and financial uncertainty (Scheve and Slaughter 2001; Citrin et al. 1997)- concerns about immigration’s cultural impact are also evident (Sniderman et al. 2004; Sides and Citrin 2007: 7). Kriesi et al. (2006) already showed a shift in politics towards a cultural dimension. Immigrants coming to the Netherlands could be seen by some as threatening to the culture and unity of the country. As long as immigration is within certain boundaries, people might not see it as a threat. However, when people start to believe that immigration is no longer under control, they perceive this as threatening to the national identity of their country. Whether there is such a thing as a national identity is debatable, but nevertheless people sometimes have a feeling that too many immigrants put pressure on the national identity of their country.
An article by Ha and Jang (2014) on immigration in South Korea and national identity, concluded that the reaction on immigration in South Korea was cultural first and foremost. “Those who believe immigrants undermine the longstanding cultural unity of South Korea are likely to embrace more exclusive definitions of national in-group” (Ha and Jang 2014: 60). Reactions in the Netherlands are usually of the type that as long as immigrants adapt and fit in, there is no reason to worry too much (Duyvendak et al. 2005). However, as we have seen since the refugee crisis began in 2015, people started to worry more. It also meant a lot more attention for immigration, often times in a negative way, adding to the feelings people might already have about immigration and resulting in innumeracy in the end.
As a final factor adding to innumeracy linked to ideology, we have to look at the link between immigration policies by the government and political distrust among citizens. Previous research by Lauren McLaren (2017) illustrated that there is a link between immigration policies implemented by the government and people’s trust or lack of trust in politics. “Extensive adoption of multicultural policies has been shown to magnify the degree to which hostility to immigration translates into reduced political system support” (McLaren 2017: 381). Furthermore, McLaren states that governments that pursue a more inclusionary and participatory approach to national identity and the welcoming of newcomers, risk alienating citizens that do not approve of this approach, creating distrust in politics (Ibid.). It seems to work both ways, whichever way governments try to treat immigrants, certain groups of citizens will be displeased and as a result lose trust or be pleased and gain trust in politics. This results in the following hypotheses:
H1: People who view immigration as something bad for the country’s economy, will show a higher innumeracy.
H2: People who believe that a country’s cultural life is undermined by immigrants, will show a higher innumeracy.
Political trust
Political trust until now seems missing in explaining innumeracy among the general public. There are however a number of reasons why political trust is helpful in explaining innumeracy. If a person does not trust its government, chances are this person will not trust the statistics provided by the government. In the case of the registration of immigration or foreign-born people, this is almost always done by the government, not least due to the sheer volume of registrations in a country. This could be problematic if you have a problem trusting the government, the government is the prime source of information when it comes to projects of this size. The same can be said for media usage by people, the public broadcasters which can be seen as the conventional media outlets, are labelled by some people as the state-owned media or the mainstream media otherwise known as the MSM in recent times. It all has to do with the ways in which actual processing of information happens, whether people trust the source of information and whether people trust the messenger is of vital importance to understand what causes innumeracy. When it comes to immigration, it is quite hard to ignore the government if you want to be informed as a citizen, which at the same time might reinforce this feeling of distrust with certain people attributing to their innumeracy. The simple fact that governments keep track of -and provide- information about immigration (like CBS does in the Netherlands), might raise concern with some people whether their government is trustworthy.
At the same time, political trust seems linked to the rise of the internet and especially all sorts of social media platforms where people can come together and share their own views on society and create their own reality (Mounk 2018). This could mean that alternative worlds or echo chambers if you will, can exist with no control whatsoever with regards to any factuality with for instance the numbers on immigration. It does not require much imagination to see the possible threats this could pose to society and democracy if these filter bubbles become the prime source of information of certain citizens (Ibid.). The internet makes it easier for people to step into these alternate realities and get confronted on a daily basis with all sorts of false stories about immigrants supposedly flooding your country. People can lose touch with reality easily, which might add to the innumeracy.
Previous research by Putnam et al. (1994) on modern Italy, illustrated that a society needs political institutions, formal and informal organizations where citizens can come together and discuss all sorts of subjects, which at the same time creates more involvement of those same citizens with the community. One trend that is emerging in recent years, is that government is pulling back, the public sector is scaled down mostly by austerity measures (especially during the aftermath of the 2008 crisis), and as a result politics itself seems to be slowly taking on a smaller role in society. This is happening simultaneously with a steady drop of political party membership in the Netherlands since the second world war.5 Political parties have seen a steady
drop in memberships over the years and this means less presentation in politics, which is weakening civil society and therefore could contribute to a drop in political trust (van Schuur and Voerman 2010). According to van Schuur and Voerman this drop in political party membership also links to a decline in voter turnout, a growing distrust of government and political leaders and a general sense among citizens of alienation form the entire political process. All of these factors might well contribute to a steady decline of trust in politics in previous years, and the expectation is that a drop in political trust is a prime source of innumeracy with people.
One last thing that cannot be left unsaid is the possibility that there are people who are opposed to immigration and therefore might think there are too many immigrants in the Netherlands already, resulting in distrust of politics. In that case, the interaction between political trust and innumeracy might work in reverse. The fact that people already think there are too many immigrants, might mean they do not trust the government publishing immigration figures, because these figures do not reflect their perception. This could also cause the innumeracy. This results in the following hypothesis on political trust:
H1: Innumeracy will be higher for people who have low political trust.
5 Research by van Schuur and Voerman (2010) has shown that a mere 2.6 percent of adult Dutch citizens were
member of a political party in 2010, after the second world war this percentage was 15 percent. This shows a gradual but steady decline of party memberships and could be seen as worrisome to the functioning of the Dutch democracy and could point to a decline in political trust.
Data section
Innumeracy is the main topic of research for this thesis and to gain insight into the link between political trust and innumeracy a multiple regression analysis (ordinarily squared) was used as can be seen in table 1. However, this research would not be complete without first taking a critical look at the effects of survey-based research. Scholars have looked into this topic vividly already, so in the following section I will stipulate some of the most prominent critiques. One thing to bear in mind is that to be able to conduct this research I have used survey-based research from the European Social Survey as well, and I am aware of the fact that this choice could possibly distort some of the results. However, I do believe that surveys are indispensable for social science research and think that without surveys, social science would be far worse off, therefore I have used them with full conviction.
The issues with survey-based research
Defining immigrantsIt begins with the difficulty of pinpointing exactly what immigration is and who are considered to be immigrants. It is quite common in surveys on immigration that often times questions refer to immigrants in general, while a more specific definition of immigrants is missing. Survey questions tend to skip defining what is meant with the term ‘immigrants’ and this is where things could wrong quickly (Blinder 2015: 82; Crawley 2005). It means that in most cases, without a clear definition of ‘immigrants’, people are left in the dark and will answer the question on the basis of their own “unstated conception of who immigrants are” (Blinder 2015: 82).6 However, if survey makers do choose to define the term immigrants, this could pose a
problem, because it could contradict official definitions that are used by policy makers and official institutions like the Statistics The Netherlands (CBS). The CBS created their own definition of immigrants and immigration and is the institution in the Netherlands that keeps track of the total immigration figures.7
6 Note that the ESS survey makes use of the term ‘foreign-born people’ with their question ‘Of every 100 people
in country, how many born outside?’ instead of ‘immigrants’, which is somewhat less ambiguous than ‘immigrants’.
7 CBS-website, list of terms:
Another problem lies in the fact that government and its institutions tend to have very different definitions of immigrants compared to the general public who are called to participate in surveys like the ESS. If people are not aware of the fact that an institution like the Dutch CBS has very clear definitions on all topics including immigration, they could make up their own mind and this is where things could go wrong. This could result in clouded judgment when asked a question like ‘Out of every 100 people in [country] how many born outside [country]’ and could be the reason for these over-estimations. The problem however is that governments tend to take these outcomes of surveys like the one from the ESS that I have used to make the case for stronger policies on immigration, like we have seen in the Netherlands and all over Europe, further undermining the already troubled position of immigrants in the near future.
‘Imagined immigration’
Another problem that arises is the one that in previous literature is dubbed as ‘imagined immigration’ with the obvious reference to ‘imagined communities’ by Benedict Anderson (2016) (Blinder 2015: 81). Imagined immigration has to do with pictures in our heads that prevent us from critically putting a number on something like the percentage of immigrants in our country. It is directed towards pictures of immigrants and immigration we have in our heads, more so than immigration per se (Ibid.). A clear dichotomy can be seen between the way governments tend to look at immigration in a statistical way, and people tend to construct political opinions and consult different sources of information and combine that into one rather blurry image of immigration (Ibid.). This difference between a governmental view and the view of citizens is the difference between the governments’ ‘statistical immigration’ and the citizens’ ‘imagined immigration’. And this difference is sometimes overlooked, which could create tensions, like I will discuss next with the vicious circle. A possible solution could be to create more numeracy awareness among citizens (Lawrence and Sides 2014: 1).
‘The vicious circle’
Governments tend to look at outcomes of surveys to determine their policies and people look at governments and the actions they take, which creates this quite unwanted and unnecessary vicious circle that could potentially be harmful to the position of immigrants. A position that has been heavily scrutinized in past years.
The reality is that through surveys, governments try to get a grasp on the opinion of the general public on big topics like immigration and adapt their policies accordingly. Like I stated earlier, the beliefs of people are influenced by what people read and hear in the media, through
talking to friends, family and colleagues but also of course by looking at the government and seeing what kind of policies they implement. “If beliefs are the building blocks of attitudes, then changing beliefs could change attitudes” (Lawrence and Sides 2014: 2). However, changing beliefs is not as easy as it might seem due to – what in psychology is called – ‘confirmation bias’ (Lodge and Taber 2013). It means that people tend to look for information that neatly fits in with their own set of beliefs.
Another possible side effect, the divergence between the governments’ definition and people’s perception could have, is a declining level of trust in government and related institutions. The danger could be that people stop believing the official numbers publicized by the government. So, we could end up with the following situation: the government claiming to be transparent on the issue of immigration, which in fact could be backfiring and could be a cause for the vicious circle. This divergence between the definition of the government and people’s perception, could convince some people the government is not doing enough to stop immigration. This might well be picked up as a clear sign by politicians who use this to build up their call for more restrictive immigration policies and so on, just like a vicious circle. This could create the possible unwanted side-effect that people will demand stricter policies on immigration based on distorted information.
‘Ethnic bias’
Daniel Herda (2015) illustrated with his paper on immigration in Finland, that people often times judge wrongly as to who is an immigrant and who is not. It has to do with something I label as ‘ethnic bias’. As Herda stated: “But, whom do folks have in mind when they develop their sceptical orientations? Are they picturing immigrants from neighbouring countries who are ethnically and culturally similar to the host population? Or, do they see immigrants from more distant places with racially and culturally distinct populations?” (Herda 2015: 1628). If citizens are asked to participate in a survey and think about immigrants, most often they picture asylum seekers or labour migrants, while in many cases foreign students are actually ranked as most common (Idem:1629). Next to this, immigrants are also viewed as permanent rather than temporary, while official statistics actually prove the contrary.
To elaborate further on the notion of ethnic bias, Herda wrote: “Distinct physical and cultural characteristics may cause groups to stand out more than others, regardless of their true size” (Herda 2015: 1630). The minorities, also referred to as out-groups, that are physically and/or ethnically similar to the host-population, are prone to stand out less, even though they
might be more numerous in reality, which could also influence people’s perception on immigration (Ibid.).
Linked to this problem is the fact that if people are left to supply their own mental picture of who immigrants are, things tend to get clogged up quickly and mostly the dominant image of asylum-seekers and refugees overshadows the perception of immigrants. Exchange students, expats who generally make up for quite some part of the total number of immigrants in a country rarely appear to be on the top of people’s minds when thinking about immigrants. This creates a problem, because as stated earlier, people’s opinions -through the use of surveys- do end up in some form of policy by the government and this might have a large impact on policies of a country and the status of immigrants in society.
As a final point, I have to add that people who belong to the in-group tend to overestimate the size of the out-group populations, even when they themselves belong to the in-group, because of the fact they have a fear that a growing number of immigrants could reduce jobs, increase taxes and so on (Kunovich 2017: 482).
Data and case selection
DataFor this thesis, I used the data with regards to the Netherlands in the year 2014, which is one of the nations that is included in the European Social Survey (ESS). The ESS is a nationally representative survey of 22 nations. The Netherlands offered the ideal demographics which could be used as a case study for this thesis. It is a small country with 17 million inhabitants, that at the same time does offer the ideal mix of multiculturalism necessary to investigate innumeracy.
The first step was to look at the answers that respondents (N=1578) gave when they were asked the question ‘Of every 100 people in country how many born outside’, and compare this to the actual number provided by Statistics the Netherlands (CBS) as is illustrated by figure 2. By combining as much of the relevant data as possible and performing a regression analysis, I have tried to correct for as much independent variables like Herda (2010) also did with his grouping into: cognitive factors, ideological factors, political trust and other control variables (Herda 2010: 680).
Dependent variable
In order to find out why this ‘innumeracy’ occurs with respondents, the dependent variable I used was ‘Out of every 100 people living in country, how many born outside country?’. The dependent variable ‘innumeracy’ was calculated as follows: the percentage that respondents estimated minus the actual percentage of immigrants in 2014 (estimated percentage - 10.8% = dependent variable), which is shown in table 2 in the appendix. Respondents could reply by estimating a number between 0 and 100 in terms of percentages of foreign-born people. As I have stated before, the ESS survey specifically asks for people born outside the country in order to make the question as clear as possible, instead of using the term immigrants in their question, which is more open to debate. In this case the term foreign-born was picked, but as I will show later on the term immigrants is also used frequently with other variables. I compared the numbers that people gave in the ESS survey of 2014 for the Netherlands with the actual number (10.8% foreign-born in 2014) provided by Statistics the Netherlands (CBS), the governmental institution that registers all sorts of data for the Netherlands.8
As a final check for robustness in the analysis, I have used the absolute values as can be seen in table 2 in the appendix as a second dependent variable. This second dependent variable contains the absolute difference between estimated and actual percentages of immigrants as given by respondents in the year 2014. These numbers also consider the respondents who gave a lower estimate than the actual 10.8%, which is of course also incorrect. The group that under-estimated the percentage of immigrants was far less prevalent (as can be seen in table 2), but had to be added to make the analysis as strong and complete as possible.
Independent and control variables
The independent variables (15 in total including the control variables), that I have used can be found in the Appendix section. In order to create a variable that could be labelled as ‘political trust’ a group of variables from the ESS-survey list (2014) was combined by using Cronbach’s Alpha.910 For the sake of clarity and overview, the levels of education were grouped into three,
8Number of immigrants according to the CBS:
https://opendata.cbs.nl/statline/#/CBS/nl/dataset/37296ned/table?ts=1559209561055
9 Group of variables that together formed the new variable ‘political trust’: trust in the legal system, trust in
politicians, trust in political parties, trust in European parliament, how satisfied with national government, how satisfied with the way democracy works in country.
10 Cronbach’s Alpha is a tool in SPSS that can be used to determine if the reliability of a group of variables
combined is high enough to create one new index in this case ‘political trust’. In this case the outcome was 0.910 which is high enough to assume reliability.
namely: lower, middle and highly educated.11 In the regression analysis the lower educated
were used as a reference to the middle and highly educated groups, as is shown in table 1. With gender I did the same, the male respondents were used as the reference group.
The analysis of the data and results
As can be seen in table 1, I have divided the variables into four groups (cognitive factors, ideological factors, political trust and control variables) and to create a clear structure for the analysis, this section is also divided along the same lines.
The average percentage that people estimated that year was 23.8 percent, which is 13 percent higher on average than the actual percentage that year. What can be seen quite clearly is that most people overestimate the number by quite some margin as is illustrated in figure 1 and 2. Figure 2 shows the exact spread of estimations for the Netherlands, where figure 1 offers an overview of the illustrated countries used in the graph itself. The spread of estimates is also noteworthy as is the fact that most people estimated round percentages as the graph shows with peaks at the round numbers (10-15-20 percent and so on). This might be an indication that people process information (in this case on immigration) in a certain way and tend to pick round numbers.
11 See Appendix for overview: Lower educated: 1 up to and including 5. Middle educated: 6 up to and
Figure 2. The spread of answers (estimated percentages) respondents gave. Note: The red line illustrates the actual
percentage in 2014 which was 10.8 %
The way in which the question in the ESS survey was posed and the way the interviewer was instructed to react if people answered ‘I don’t know’, namely with ‘Please give your best estimate … out of 100’ makes it very easy for respondents to answer with estimates of 10-20-30 percent, simply because that is how most people react to a question like this. When asked a certain question people are unlikely to respond with: “Oh I think that 23.5 percent is foreign-born”. Most people would guess 20 or 25 percent when in doubt. As Alba et al. (2015) stated: “A consistent problem throughout the estimates is a lack of precision; respondents are after all, not usually demographers”. Another problem that arises is the fact that respondents are wary of underestimating groups’ sizes (Alba et al. 2015: 904). Looking at figure 1 & 2 does give the impression that most people, when in doubt, tend to overestimate by quite some margin.
Control variables
Before we get to the most important variables, the control variables show us that women on average estimate the percentage of immigrants higher than male respondents. The effect is quite
high (5.212), which could mean that the effect of the interviewer was quite big and that the perceived dominance of male respondents may enable men to estimate lower on average.
The European Social Survey states on the website that the survey is administered face to face by trained interviewers and that in most cases this is done in the respondent’s home.12
Whether the interviewers in this case were predominantly male or female cannot be said, but that there is some sort of an effect in the case of face to face questionnaires and that gender does play a role, is certain (Kane and Macaulay 1993).
Finally, the effect of age is quite small (0.064), but the older the respondents are, the lower they estimate the number of immigrants. The variable religion resulted in the outcome that the more religious people claimed to be, the higher they estimated the percentage of immigrants. The outcomes for people’s placement on the left right scale, are in line with expectations. If people claimed to be more right-wing they estimated the percentage of foreign-born people higher. The further to the left people placed themselves, the lower the estimates became.
The column in table 1 showing the outcomes of the standardized betas show that there is mutual explanatory force among the different variables that are chosen for the analysis. The scores confirm in some cases the presumptions and hypotheses that were stated earlier on in the theoretical section, and the hypotheses will be addressed in more detail in the following section with help of the standardized beta scores as shown in table 1.
12 European Social Survey: Frequently Asked Questions: How is the ESS questionnaire administered?
Table 1. Estimated coefficients for relevant variables, grouped according to commonality
Independent variable Estimate (Std. Error) Standardized
Beta coefficient
Constant 32.182 3.302
Cognitive factors
TV watching, news/politics/current affairs on average weekday
0.476 (0.312) .040
Level of education (Reference: low)
Middle – 2.879** (1.027) -.082
High – 4.121*** (1.065) -.120
Political disinterest 1.872** (0.577) .087
Ideological factors
Immigration bad or good for country's economy
– 0.279 (0.242) -.033
Country's cultural life undermined or enriched by immigrants Political trust – 0.408 – 1.484*** (0.236) (0.260) -.050 -.154 Control variables: Women (gender) 5.212*** (0.801) .158
Age of respondent, calculated – 0.064* (0.026) -.067
How religious are you 0.502*** (0.129) .094
Placement on left right scale – 0.313 (0.211) -.036
N 1578
R2 0.129
Note: *** p < .001, ** p < .01, * p < .05.
Cognitive factors
Tv-watching (news/politics/current affairs)
Table 1 shows that the effect of Tv-watching is not significant, which means that the result shows we cannot say with utmost certainty, that if people watch more Tv they estimate the percentage of immigrants lower. It also means that with regards to the hypothesis that was made earlier on ‘innumeracy is lower for people who watch more Tv’, this hypothesis is rejected.
The difficulty with the data as it was provided by the ESS survey is that they did not ask respondents what channels they regularly watched on TV, which would have been very valuable information to add to the analysis. The mere fact that people watch TV does not say
that much in and of itself, whether people watch commercial or public broadcast channels would have been informative as that might tell us something about those people’s preferences (conservative vs. progressive values for instance).
One thing that is missing in the ESS survey of 2014 is the role of the internet and how that medium in recent years has completely changed the media landscape and the way people consume their news nowadays. The issue with online filter bubbles, as is mentioned before, is one factor that is possibly contributing to people’s views on society and immigration and could be a factor adding to the innumeracy of people.
Level of education
The next variable is ‘level of education’, categorized into low, middle and high according to the standard set by the Dutch Statistics The Netherlands (CBS).13 The outcome shows that the
effect of this variable is significant. It means that the higher someone is educated, the lower the estimates of the percentages of foreign-born people on average will be. One possible answer could be that people who have completed higher education, have less difficulty with so-called ‘statistical immigration’, which means the ability to put numbers on specific topics like immigration (Lawrence and Sides 2014: 1).
What could also have played a role is the link between higher education and institutional trust as Hakhverdian and Mayne (2012) noted. All of this could imply that those higher educated people come across the actual numbers of immigration more often than people with lower education. Lower educated people tend to pay less attention to politics and its institutional policies. This also points to the possible link between education and the next variable I picked, which is about people’s interest in politics and their ability to estimate the percentage of foreign-born people.
The hypothesis as stated in the theoretical section ‘innumeracy is higher for lower educated people, than for higher educated people’ is backed by the outcome of the analysis as seen in table 1. Furthermore, the score of the standardized beta coefficient for this variable also shows that whether people are low, middle or higher educated does make a difference in terms of the effects this has on the innumeracy of people. The standardized beta coefficient for higher educated people for instance is -.120 which points to a quite strong effect linked to less innumeracy.
13 CBS Standaard Onderwijsindeling 2016 (SOI 2016), Standardized Educational Format 2016:
Political disinterest
The variable ‘how interested in politics’ has been labelled as ‘political disinterest’ in table 1, because it was scored in reverse. It means that the more interest people have in politics, the lower the percentage of foreign-born people will be that people estimate. People who are less interested in politics will show a higher innumeracy. The expectation was that people with a higher education will be more interested in politics on average and will therefore be better able to make a correct estimate and show less innumeracy. The effect of this variable is significant and therefore the hypothesis is confirmed.
Ideological factors
Immigration bad or good for country’s economy & Country’s cultural life undermined or enriched by immigrants
The last two independent variables ‘immigration bad or good for country’s economy’ and country’s cultural life undermined or enriched by immigrants’ both gave results that were not significant. This means that both hypotheses will have to be rejected. The expectation was that respondents who believe that immigration is good for the economy, also estimate the percentage of foreign-born people lower. The same goes for people who think that immigrants enrich the country’s cultural life, they would in all likelihood estimate the percentage lower as well. Both expectations however could not be confirmed by the results from the analysis.
Political trust
The higher the trust and satisfaction of people in politicians, politics itself, institutions and so on, the lower the estimated percentage of immigrants. This is in line with expectations, because people who in general have more trust in politics, will be more trustworthy of the decisions politicians take, which can also apply to the policies with regards to immigration for instance. What the analysis shows in table 1 is that the independent variable ‘political trust’, which is the main variable for this research, gave a relatively large result of –1.484. The effect therefore is significant and the result of -.154 of the standardized beta coefficients illustrates that the effect of the variable ‘political trust’ on innumeracy is strong. The new variable ‘political trust’ that was created specifically as the main focus of this thesis, shows an effect that is significant and stronger than most of the other variables. This outcome, which is the most important new insight of this thesis adding to the existing literature, reflects the main hypothesis stated earlier that a lower trust in politics also means more innumeracy.
However, political trust as indicated in the theory part, does carry other implications as well. Primarily it is about the source of information, the messenger of the information and the processing of information that determine in many cases whether people trust the information they receive. If a person does not trust the government and therefore the related institutions like in this case the CBS and public broadcasters that report on this topic, that person will distrust the official number on immigration as well. This will affect their innumeracy, because people will look for information that confirms their view (confirmation bias) on politics and society. In this day and age this confirmation bias might be further enhanced by the growing influence of the internet, making it easier to create and step into what are called filter bubbles (Mounk 2018).
People who have less trust in politics, tend to view government policies that welcome multiculturalism, which is often viewed as immigrant friendly, as negative. “Extensive adoption of multicultural policies has been shown to magnify the degree to which hostility to immigration translates into reduced political system support” (McLaren 2017: 381).
Finally, there is the chance that there are people with whom this political trust seems to work in reverse. This could be called reverse causality, where the fact that people believe there already are too many immigrants or foreign-born people as stated in the ESS, means they will not believe the official government figures as published by the Statistics the Netherlands (CBS). They view these official numbers as false, which grows their belief that the government is not to be trusted and can be almost viewed as a vicious circle. Their beliefs might convince those people that the government is not to be trusted which reinforces their distrust even further.
Conclusion
Immigration is among the most pressing questions in contemporary politics and will in all likelihood remain so in coming years. One of the questions that needs answering is whether the perception people have of immigration is in line with reality. As previous research illustrated, the phenomenon of innumeracy where people over or under-estimate the percentage of immigrants in their country, is quite prevalent (see figure 1 & 2). Earlier research focussed on a number of possible reasons for this innumeracy to occur, like the issues there are with surveys itself that often lack the necessary in-depth explanation, causing people to come up with definitions of who immigrants are, which could distort the outcome. Other reasons range from misperceiving actual sizes of the immigrant population or the demography-threat-prejudice
linkage, whereby minority groups are often times depicted as far bigger than they actually are, by the majority group (Alba et al. 2005: 902; Nadeau et al. 1993).
Although previous research already touched upon many reasons for innumeracy to occur, the link between political trust and innumeracy seemed to be overlooked until now. This thesis sought to look for the possible link between political trust and innumeracy and found a number of possible explanations. To create a clear overview of possible explanations the answers were grouped into: cognitive factors, ideological factors and finally political trust. To start with the main focus: research for this thesis found a strong connection between innumeracy and people who have little trust in politics. The analysis showed that the effect of the variable ‘political trust’ was significant and strong, compared to all the other added variables.
One possible explanation for this result is the assumption that with subjects as big as immigration, the government will be the prime source of information. If we take the case of the Netherlands, it is the official Statistics the Netherlands (CBS) who keeps track of immigration in the country and who publishes the official numbers, which the government uses to create their policies in this field. People who for whatever reason distrust the government, will distrust the official numbers coming from the government and the CBS further increasing their innumeracy, almost like a downward spiral. The media consumption of people is also closely connected to the trust people have in politics. The data that was used for this research came from the European Social Survey (ESS), and on the topic of media use it was quite limited because it only focussed on Tv-watching. Tv-watching in itself does not say that much, it is far more important to look at what kind of Tv-channels someone watches. Do they look at public broadcasters who are typically seen as more balanced and neutral or do people choose to watch commercial Tv instead which could affect their view on a topic like immigration, further increasing their innumeracy. The focus of the ESS survey of 2014 was also limited, because it did not contain any questions on the topic of social media use, which in this day and age is impossible to ignore. The rise of the internet and especially the use of social media by some people as their prime source of news, also contributes to the creation of so-called filter bubbles, possibly adding further to the innumeracy of people. A final thing that can be said on the link between political trust, media consumption and innumeracy is that in the end it is all about the processing of information. Whether people trust the source and/or the messenger of the information is crucial. If it is the government, like with immigration numbers, does make a difference with regards to the innumeracy of people.
In order to complement the research into the link between political trust and innumeracy this thesis contained two other categories: cognitive factors and ideological factors. The
cognitive factors were mostly added to the analysis to illustrate a possible link between the level of education of someone and their innumeracy. Innumeracy seems to be higher for people who have a lower education.
The ideological factors mostly accounted for the existing beliefs and preferences of people and the way this contributed to innumeracy. The expectation was that people who think that immigration and immigrants are bad for the country’s economy, will affect the way that person thinks about immigration. The same goes for the heartfelt belief of someone that immigration or immigrants will undermine a country’s cultural life, chances are that person will be more opposed to immigration which possibly adds to their innumeracy, because that person will likely believe there are too many immigrants in the country already. However, the analysis showed that both variables gave effects that were not significant.
Like figure one and two illustrate, the innumeracy is quite prevalent among most people who get asked the question how many immigrants they think live in their country. The questions that remains is: how can we solve this problem of innumeracy? After conducting this research, it is my firm belief that there is a big problem with the fact that too little factual questions are asked about immigration in society. The news coverage on immigration is extensive and often times quite negative and I believe that there is room for factual information on immigration. This might help people to make a better judgment on this topic, instead of just asking people straight away what they think and then taking these answers and using them for further restrictive policies on immigration like we have seen in past months and years. Education and information are the two key factors that are necessary to tackle the problem of innumeracy in the near future. It will not be easy, because the resistance and distrust among groups of citizens is big, but continuing further along the same path is possibly even more damaging in the end.
Recommendation
My recommendation for follow up research is to further explore the link between political trust and people’s innumeracy, as this research showed a strong initial link between the two. As I have tried to show, whether people trust their government, politicians and related institutions, does have an impact on people’s perception on society of which immigration is part. This link could be further investigated and could possibly offer some solutions, as to what role governments, politicians and politics could play to solve these low levels of trust with certain groups of individuals. Furthermore, the availability of factual information and education on the topic of immigration and the effects that might have, could be another subject of further research.
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Appendix
Information about survey dataset
The European Social Survey (ESS) is a joint venture of the European Commission, the European Science Foundation, and academic organizations in the participating countries. The first round of this survey was fielded in 2002-2003 (Jowell et al. 2003). The sampling design of the ESS varies across countries. In some countries it approximates a simple random sample in that names are drawn from a list of residents. In countries that do not have such lists, a multi-stage or “cluster” sampling procedure is employed. The target response rate is 70 percent. Across these 20 countries, the average response rate was 60 percent, ranging from 33.5 percent in Switzerland to 80 percent in Greece. Both the mean of and variation in the response rate are comparable to other cross-national survey projects. All interviews were conducted face-to-face. For more information, see: http://www.europeansocialsurvey.org.
Independent variables - literal questions as asked in European Social Survey 2014:
1. gndr (gender): CODE SEX, respondent
- 1 = Male - 2 = Female
2. yrbrn (year of birth): And in what year were you born?
3. rlgdgr (how religious are you): Regardless of whether you belong to a particular religion, how religious would you say you are? 10-point scale:
- 0 = not religious at all - 10 = very religious
4. tvpol (TV watching): And again, on an average weekday, how much of your time watching television is spent watching news or programmes about politics and current affairs?
- 0 = no time at all - 1 = less than 0,5 hour - 2 = 0,5 to 1 hour
- 3 = more than 1 hour, up to 1,5 hours - 4 = more than 1,5 hours, up to 2 hours - 5 = more than 2 hours, up to 2,5 hours - 6 = more than 2,5 hours, up to 3 hours - 7 = more than 3 hours
5. polintr (how interested in politics): How interested would you say you are in politics - are you... 4-point scale:
- 1 = very interested - 2 = quite interested - 3 = hardly interested - 4 = not at all interested
6. trstlgl (trust in the legal system): Using this card, please tell me on a score of 0-10 how much you personally trust each of the institutions I read out. 0 means you do not trust an institution at all, and 10 means you have complete trust. Firstly... ...the legal system? 10-point scale:
- 0 = no trust at all - 10 = complete trust
7. trstplt (trust in politicians): Using this card, please tell me on a score of 0-10 how much you personally trust each of the institutions I read out. 0 means you do not trust an institution at all, and 10 means you have complete trust. Firstly...
...politicians? 10-point scale:
- 0 = no trust at all - 10 = complete trust
8. trstprt (trust in political parties): Using this card, please tell me on a score of 0-10 how much you personally trust each of the institutions I read out. 0 means you do not trust an institution at all, and 10 means you have complete trust. Firstly... ...political parties? 10-point scale:
- 0 = no trust at all - 10 = complete trust
9. trstep (trust in European parliament): Using this card, please tell me on a score of 0-10 how much you personally trust each of the institutions I read out. 0 means you do not trust an institution at all, and 10 means you have complete trust. Firstly... ...the European Parliament? 10-point scale:
- 0 = no trust at all - 10 = complete trust
10. stfgov (how satisfied with national government): Now thinking about the [country] government, how satisfied are you with the way it is doing its job? 10-point scale:
- 0 = extremely dissatisfied - 10 = extremely satisfied
11. stfdem (how satisfied with the way democracy works in country): And on the whole, how satisfied are you with the way democracy works in [country]? 10-point scale:
