Immigrant populations in many European countries have grown rapidly transforming the demographics of host countries, alternating political discourse and challenging cultural routines (Dancygier & Laitin 2014). As immigrants share rises an extensive literature on natives' attitudes toward immigration grows exploring attitudes of the native population to multiculturalism, immigration and cultural diversity (Hainmueller & Hopkins2014). However, much less is known about the other side of the coin. We know relatively little about migrants’ own attitudes, believes values and their adoption of cultural and social norms in their host societies (de Palo 2006) although we realized that process of assimilation might not be straightforward (Gans 1979 1992).

There is some evidence that education might part an important role in this set of puzzles.  Education is often considered as an important element to foster openness to diversity and to ensure that individuals are willing and able to develop positive attitudes towards immigrants in their countries. There is some evidence that individuals who attended school for longer and obtained more advanced qualifications are, on average, more open to diversity and more welcoming of people with a different nationality, language, and religion (Mayda 2006). Educated persons are also more likely to believe that immigration generates benefits for the host economy as a whole (Hainmueller, J., & Hiscox, M. J. (2007). Educational attainment, have been also found to be strongly positively correlated with the individual trust (Borgonovi, 2012; Putnam, 2000; Paxton, 2007; Merolla et al, 2013) which is related to the openness towards others.

However, much less is known about the mechanisms that facilitate education’s role in promoting migrants’ own attitudes and their adoption of attitudes that characterize cultural and social norms in their host societies. It was shown that education plays an important role in economic assimilation and upward mobility (Borjas 2008) but assimilation towards attitudes and norms get much less attention (de Palo 2006).  

In this presentation, we will analyze the perceptions and attitudes of different groups of migrants and examine the extent to which education can facilitate a convergence between migrants’ attitudes and dispositions and the attitudes and dispositions that are prevalent in host communities (considering attitudes and dispositions in the country of origin of migrants as the starting point to evaluate convergence).

More specifically we will ask several questions about attitudes of migrants in Europe. First, do the attitudes of migrants that are surveyed in the same destination country depend on their country of origin? Second, do the attitudes of migrants coming from the same country of origin differ depending on their country of destination? Third, do the attitudes of various groups of migrants differ from the attitudes that are prevalent in their respective host communities? Fourth, we will explore to what extent the level of education migrants obtained explains differences in the relative convergence of different groups between the attitudes that are prevalent in migrants’ countries of origin and the attitudes that are prevalent in countries of destination. Finally, we will explore patterns of cross-country variation in the relation between migrant's education and attitudes with respect to both countries of origin and destination.        

The work will be based on analyses of combined data of the European Social Survey (ESS) as well as data from the World Values Survey (WVS). The European Social Survey (ESS) is an academically driven cross-national survey that has been mapping attitudes and behavioral changes in Europe’s social, political and moral climate since its establishment in 2001. The sample size requested to participating countries is at least 1 500 respondents, although for countries with smaller populations the number of respondents can be smaller. The first round was conducted in 2002 in 22 countries. Since then around 350 000 face-to-face interviews have been carried out and over 35 countries have participated in at least one ESS round. Key to our work, the European Social Survey contains information on the country of birth of respondents who report having been born outside of the country of residency. The questionnaire consists of the main core section of questions that have been administered in every ESS round. We use a set of questions on attitudes that are part of the core module, which allows us to work with the pooled ESS dataset, to have a large sample of migrants representing a large combination country of origin and destination. The World Values Survey was first implemented in 1981 and is designed to map individuals’ attitudes and dispositions in over 100 countries worldwide. A set of core questions in the World Values survey on attitudes matches the questions that were asked in the European Social Survey. Therefore it is possible, by matching and merging data from the two surveys, to identify attitudes in both the country of origin and in the country of destinations of migrants in Europe, as well as individual migrants’ own attitudes. The point of departure for the attitudes for each migrant group will be computed using propensity score reweighting, a method that allows us to predict the distribution of attitudes in the country of origin of migrants that match with the characteristics of migrants living in different European countries. Similarly, the attitudes’ convergence point will be computed matching respondents witch similar characteristics to the migrant's characteristics. Cross-country variations will be examined using multilevel cross-classified multilevel cross-classified models where the country level variables will be defined both by migrants’ country of origin and country of destination.

First results suggest that education is an important element of convergence between migrants’ attitudes and dispositions and the attitudes and dispositions of host communities although we observed high cross-country differences both in migrants living in various countries and between migrants from different countries.

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