Intangible Goods: A Four-Country Case Study of Changing National Identities and Immigrant Sentiment During the Rising Tide of Immigration in Europe

Abstract

One aspect of Europe that has changed as a result of unprecedented immigration during the last half-century is how Europeans conceptualize their own national identity. Yet this is a topic that has gone greatly understudied and has been severely misunderstood as a result. The goal of this thesis was to build upon the understanding of national identity as both an abstract concept and an intangible good of great importance to understanding real-world, sociopolitical phenomena.

Using three rounds of the International Social Survey Programme’s National Identity data, and taking Britain, Germany, Hungary, and Sweden as case-studies, I observed how the conceptions of national identity have changed in Europe over the past two decades and how attitudes towards immigrants have changed as a result. I also conducted regression analysis to confirm rising immigration rates’ significance in directing those changes.

Though this study did successfully show that immigration rates have been significant in changing conceptions of national identity in Europe, the effects were far more complex than I had predicted. The same is true for the effect of immigration rates on changes of attitudes towards immigrants. Rapidly rising immigration rates appear to be a causing a great “shaking up” of national identity, with different outcomes in each nation. The only form of national identity that appears to be stable at present is liberal nationalism. Beyond that, my findings suggest that we cannot generalize regionally, nor can we look only at country-level data for an accurate understanding of how the national identity of a society is changing.

This thesis concludes with policy implications for this period in which Europe appears to re-inventing its conception of national identity, drawing on key lessons that can be learnt from each of the four nations included in this study.