A key challenge in Spain, as in many parts of the world, entails preventing discrimination and the social exclusion of minority and disadvantaged groups in society. Recent political and societal trends in Spain reflect a surge in discriminatory behaviour towards minority groups, especially immigrants. For example, reported levels of ethnic prejudice in the housing market doubled from 2013 to 2020. During the same time span, discrimination in such a fundamental sector as education increased by 50%. A quantitative general population survey (N = 2,297) was conducted to understand the drivers of discriminatory attitudes towards immigrants that are prominent in the current extremist discourse in Spain, and to identify strategies to prevent, minimise or overcome them. 

A key source of negative and discriminatory attitudes towards immigrants stems from individuals’ perceptions or beliefs that immigration and immigrants cause a threat, despite the fact that more objective indicators on the impact of immigrants on society show the opposite. 

The study distinguishes between two types of perceived threat: (a) symbolic threat (the belief that Spanish culture, values, and identity are at risk because of immigration), and (b) realistic threat (the belief that immigration poses a danger to Spain’s valuable, tangible and scarce resources, such as jobs or social security). To measure these perceived threats, the study asked people to rate the extent to which they agreed or disagreed with a statement about Moroccan immigrants threatening the Spanish identity and culture (symbolic threat) and a statement about immigrants threatening the Spanish economy (realistic threat). Results show that 23.5% of participants believed that immigration from Morocco threatens Spanish culture to a certain degree, and 26.7% believed that immigration from Morocco endangers the Spanish economy to a certain degree.

People from all over the world immigrate to Spain. In the present study we focus on two of the largest groups of immigrants in Spain: Moroccans (13% of the immigrant population) and Latin Americans (34% of the immigrant population). Spain is especially attractive for immigrants from Morocco because of its proximity, and for immigrants from Latin America because of the shared Spanish language. 

This project aims to understand to what extent Spanish citizens come into contact with immigrants on a day-to-day basis by asking Spanish citizens about their intergroup contact experiences. It differentiates between the frequency of positive contact (such as friendly encounters with immigrants) and negative contact (such as unpleasant encounters) that Spanish citizens experienced with immigrants. It is important to take both the frequency of positive and negative contact into account since they are not merely the opposite of each other. Indeed, individuals can experience a high (or low) frequency of both positive and negative intergroup contact at the same time. Results from the survey show that participants generally reported having less positive contact, and more negative contact, with immigrants from Morocco than with immigrants from Latin America.
 

How do Spanish citizens evaluate immigrants? Psychological research has shown that people form interpersonal impressions and stereotypes along two dimensions. The first dimension is labelled warmth, referring to the degree a person or group of people is perceived as friendly, trustworthy, sincere, and helpful. The second dimension is labelled competence and reflects characteristics such as intelligence, skill, efficacy, and creativity. Participants evaluated immigrants from Morocco as less warm and competent than immigrants from Latin America. Yet, immigrants from Latin America were still perceived by participants as less warm and intelligent than when compared to the average Spanish citizen.

According to the contact hypothesis, positive contact and social interactions between members of different groups (e.g., a Spanish individual and someone from an immigrant background) leads to reduced discriminatory attitudes and more positive intergroup relations. The results show that participants who reported having relatively frequent positive contact with immigrants from Latin America had more positive impressions of Latin American immigrants compared to participants who reported relatively little positive contact.

Additionally, we found that intergroup contact yielded so-called secondary transfer effects whereby positive contact experiences with one group (immigrants from Latin America) had positive generalisation effects on attitudes towards another group (immigrants from Morocco). These secondary transfer effects can occur indirectly via two processes: (a) attitude generalisation (i.e., positive attitudes towards one group are extended to other groups), and (b) deprovincialisation (i.e., the ingroup is re-appraised such that its perceived relative importance or superiority is reduced).

In the previous figure, scores on the X-axis were derived by asking participants to think about their social relationships and to indicate on a 7-point scale their level of positive contact with Moroccans and Latin Americans (1 = never; 7 = very frequent). Scores on the Y-axis were obtained by asking participants to think about Moroccans and Latin Americans living in Spain and to indicate to what extent they believe Moroccans and Latin Americans are warm, e.g., kind and friendly (1 = not warm; 10 = very warm).

Extrapolating from this representative sample, a substantial proportion of Spanish citizens perceives immigration as a threat for Spain’s culture and economy. Furthermore, a substantial proportion of Spanish citizens also perceive immigrants as less warm and competent than people who were born in Spain. On the bright side, a substantial part of the population also reports having frequent positive contact with immigrants, and these individuals have more positive evaluations of immigrants. Hence, a promising strategy for eradicating exclusionary attitudes towards immigrants is promoting positive intergroup contact. Furthermore, positive contact with one group of immigrants (in this case, Latin Americans) also correlated with more positive evaluations of other groups of immigrants (in this case, Moroccans). Therefore, the transfer effect of social contact might be especially useful to prevent discrimination and socially exclusionary attitudes towards groups of immigrants with whom Spaniards are initially reluctant to interact or cannot easily interact because of the lack of a shared language. A major challenge for policy makers is to take advantage of the growing opportunities for intergroup contact in today’s increasingly diverse Spain to bring people from different backgrounds together.

INSTITUTO NACIONAL DE ESTADÍSTICA: Población (españoles/extranjeros) por país de nacimiento, sexo y año (18 de julio de 2022).
        
FISKE, S. T., A. J. Cuddy, and P. Glick (2007): «Universal dimensions of social cognition: warmth and competence», Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 11, 77-83.

LAUDETTE, C.: «Discrimination worsens in Spain, far-right and fake news largely to blame» (25 de enero del 2022). REUTERS.

PETTIGREW, T. F. (1998): «Intergroup contact theory», Annual Review of Psychology, 49, 65-85.