Multiculturalism versus Assimilation: Attitudes towards Immigrants in Western Countries

A long standing area of debate in Western countries is that of the appropriate philosophyfor facilitating large scale immigration; should immigrants preserve their traditionsand culture while living in the host country (integration/multiculturalism) or should theyassimilate themselves into the ways and manners of their hosts? The ways that nationsgo about resolving this issue goes to the heart of internal policy formulation on immigrationbut is also influential to the image that the country projects overseas. Countriesare often labeled according to the official views of their Governments. For example,France might be classed as essentially assimilationist and Britain as multi-cultural,whereas the Netherlands and Germany might be seen as somewhere between the two,but how did these policy differences come about and do they accurately reflect the viewsof the majority of residents of the various countries? This paper addresses part of thisissue by seeking to identify and analyse the characteristics of those people in Westerncountries who think that immigrants should assimilate culturally and how they differfrom those who think that immigrants should preserve a separate cultural existence? Bydoing so, it seeks to explain why these inter-country differences in views exist andwhether they are caused primarily by attribute effects (the composition of the population)or by coefficient effects (the strength of the views they hold). This study exploits aunique set of data provided by The Human Beliefs and Values Survey to identify and toestimate the strength of those factors which lead people to favour cultural integrationover multiculturalism for immigrants. In doing so, it provides Governments with a snapshotof contemporary views on this increasingly important issue and how these viewsmay shift as demographic characteristics alter.