[Key theme Seminar] - Change in Migrants’ Political Attitudes: Acculturation and Cosmopolitanization

How malleable are adult migrants' political attitudes? This paper investigates political (re-)socialization in the migratory context. It theorizes a new attitudinal typology distinguishing polity-specific attitudes, influenced primarily by the national context, and transnational attitudes, forged by the migratory experience. It transposes the typology onto four main dimensions of political competition in contemporary Europe: economic redistribution, homosexuality, European integration, and immigration. To test the new theory, the paper combines cross-sectional and panel data spanning almost 380,000 observations from 106 sending and 28 destination countries. It introduces a novel strategy to model cross-classified hierarchical data, devises several methodological innovations to address issues inherent to group comparison, and pioneers two empirical inquiries into migrants' self-selection. The results question adults' attitudinal stability. Migration prompts acculturation of polity-specific attitudes and cosmopolitanization of transnational attitudes. These findings carry major implications for our understanding of attitudinal stability and change, and the dimensionality of the ideological space.

Speaker

Filip Kostelka holds the Chair in Political and Social Change while on leave from the Department of Government at the University of Essex. Filip earned a Ph.D. in Political Science from Sciences Po, Paris and held predoctoral and postdoctoral appointments at the College of Europe, Bruges; University of Montreal; and University of Barcelona.

His research interests cover the fields of political behaviour, party politics, and regime change. Among other topics, he studies why and when citizens (don't) vote or protest, and how different political and contextual factors (e.g. political regime change, institutional reform, etc.) affect citizens' behaviour and attitudes (e.g. democratic satisfaction).

Geographically, Filip focuses on countries in Central and Eastern Europe, comparing them with polities in Western Europe and other regions. He mostly uses quantitative research methods, including time-series cross-section data analysis, survey data analysis, and experimental methods. His research has been published in journals such as the American Political Science Review, British Journal of Political Science, Comparative Political Studies, and World Politics; and publicised in media outlets such as Le Monde, Washington Post, Radio Canada, France Inter, and Euroactiv.

Chair

Jan Rovny, Sciences Po, CEE & LIEPP

*Seminar of the key theme Strains on democratic representation