Official government anti-immigrants banner in Miskolc, Hungary, during elections on 31 March 2018. NurPhoto/Press Association. All rights reserved.
The Economist recently published an article titled “European xenophobia reflects racial diversity, not asylum applications.” Despite the misleading title, the article actually purports to show that the ethnic and racial make-up of a country is strongly correlated with increases in pro-immigrant sentiment in Europe. It illustrates this using a scatterplot, where points represent the share of a country’s population with non-western ancestry in 2014 by the increase in average level of positive attitudes towards non-EU migrants before and after the so-called migration crisis. The line through this scatterplot is steep, suggesting a powerful association with serious real-world implications. Indeed, it implies that increasingly diverse societies will ultimately mean more tolerance for new diversity. Depending on your political persuasion, this is either a reason to celebrate or cause for alarm.
