Effects of Host Country Social Inequality on Immigrant Civic Participation Across Europe

The aim of this study is to examine to what extent the social inequality level in host countries affect immigrant civic participation. It has been shown, repeatedly, that individual economic, social and cultural resources are strongly related to civic participation among both native and immigrant groups. Furthermore, the economic and cultural context in which one lives matters as well (for a review see Musick & Wilson, 2012). However, there is still little evidence regarding the effects of social inequality on participation among the immigrant group. We know that in countries with high levels of inequality, those who have already fewer resources will be less likely to engage civically. But there is no concrete evidence for the immigrant group. We believe that this is one of the main explanations of why immigrants participate to a lesser extent than natives. Therefore, the present study seeks to explain differences in civic participation among immigrants across Europe, by looking at the effect of host countries' social inequality. To this end, we employ multilevel modeling techniques to individual-survey data from European Social Survey (2002-2003) and Eurobarometer (2004), enriched with several contextual-level characteristics.