Residential Diversity in Young Adulthood and Later Life Attitudes toward Immigration

CRIS SCIENTIFIC SEMINAR 2025-2026

TALK WITH HALEY McAVAY, Associate Professor of Sociology, LSE 

Inequalities in residential environments have received a lot of attention in understanding the appeal of anti-immigration parties across advanced democracies in recent years. 
This paper explores the long-term association between neighborhood context in adolescence and attitudes towards immigration later in life drawing on a cohort study  from the UK (Next Steps) matched with census data. 

Drawing on the  premises of the impressionable years hypothesis and contact theory, we  posit that as a space of socialisation, the local area that one  experienced in adolescence is influential to the development of immigration attitudes. 

Our findings suggest that ethnic diversity during one’s adolescence has a persistent association with attitudes  even when adulthood individual characteristics and residential  environment are taken into account. Specifically, we find that living  in ethnically diverse areas in adolescence is associated with increased tolerance toward immigration up to three decades later.

Visit the researcher's website (LSE)  - Sign Up for for the seminar