Opposition to civil rights for legal migrants in Central and Eastern Europe: cross-national comparisons and explanations

We set out to answer three questions: (a) to what extent do (former) EU candidate countries differ from Western European countries regarding opposition to civil rights for legal migrants? (b) to what extent do the (former) EU candidate countries differ among themselves in terms of this particular anti-immigrant sentiment, that is, opposition to civil rights for legal migrants? and (c) to what extent can we explain such cross-national differences, considering cross-national demographic or economic conditions, taking into account individual differences? We found that former EU candidate countries were really on comparable levels as EU member states in terms of opposition to civil rights for legal migrants. We found rather strong differences with countries like Estonia, Latvia and Hungary standing out, whereas countries like Poland, Romania, Bulgaria, Lithuania and Turkey showed low levels. We found that these differences were (rather strongly) explained by the migrant stock in the country. Although none of the other national characteristics turned out to reach significance, their parameters were in the direction we proposed.