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Event

CEPDISC SEMINAR with Donghyun Danny Choi

Title: "Native Bias: Overcoming Discrimination against Immigrants"

Info about event

Time

Monday 29 April 2024,  at 14:00 - 15:30

Location

1330-126

Organizer

CEPDISC

Speaker: Donghyun Danny Choi, Assistant Professor, Department of Political Science, Brown University

If you are not a CEPDISC fellow and wish to join pleace contact maj.carlsen@ps.au.dk

Abstract: In the aftermath of the refugee crisis caused by conflicts in the Middle East and an increase in migration to Europe, European nations have witnessed a surge in discrimination targeted at immigrant minorities. To quell these conflicts, some governments have resorted to the adoption of coercive assimilation polices aimed at erasing differences between natives and immigrants. Are these policies the best method for reducing hostilities? Native Bias challenges the premise of such regulations by making the case for a civic integration model, based on shared social ideas defining the concept and practice of citizenship.Drawing from original surveys, survey experiments, and novel field experiments, Donghyun Danny Choi, Mathias Poertner, and Nicholas Sambanis show that although prejudice against immigrants is often driven by differences in traits such as appearance and religious practice, the suppression of such differences does not constitute the only path to integration. Instead, the authors demonstrate that similarities in ideas and value systems can serve as the foundation for a common identity, based on a shared concept of citizenship, overcoming the perceived social distance between native and immigrants. Addressing one of the most pressing challenges of our time, Native Bias offers an original framework for understanding anti-immigrant discrimination and the processes through which it can be overcome.