Call for Papers: The impact of Black Lives Matter and Covid-19 on Public Attitudes to Immigrants
ECPR General Conference, 31 August- 3 September 2021, University of Innsbruck
When it comes to attitudes to immigrants and their rights, 2020 has seen two major events: the Black Lives Matter protests in the US triggered by the killing of George Floyd, and the global Covid-19 pandemic. In this panel, we seek innovative empirical contributions that study how these events affected social norms and in turn affected attitudes to immigrants or related discrimination. On the one hand, the pandemic a priori heightens distinctions between in-groups and out-groups, which leads to more negative attitudes. The crisis may further create a fertile ground for xenophobia and nationalist tendencies due to increased feelings of fear, threat, uncertainty, and anxiety, which may result in discriminating behaviour. What is more, scapegoating of immigrants and health-related negative stereotypes may surface during the health crisis. On the other hand, the media coverage of Black Lives Matter increased awareness of structural racism and spread the perspective of racial and ethnic minorities. As a result of this, European respondents may have developed more nuanced attitudes to minority groups, and the salience of the news coverage may have led to extended contact and perspective taking that reduce negative stereotypes and will lead to more positive attitudes. We expect temporal and geographic variation to yield insightful comparisons, while experimental studies can reveal likely mechanisms how these major events affected attitudes and discrimination. We also welcome experimental and observational papers explicitly accounting for the intersectionality of categories of difference, e.g. ethnicity, race, religiosity or gender, in triggering prejudice and discrimination.
Panel chairs: Didier Ruedin (University of Neuchâtel, didier.ruedin@unine.ch), Anita Manatschal (University of Neuchâtel, anita.manatschal@unine.ch)
Conference: https://ecpr.eu/GeneralConference
Submit your abstract (max 250 words) online at: http://neuchatel.eu.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_50YdsmYRd5bwZWB no later than 1 February 2021.
