Voluntary Associations: Schools of Immigration Advocacy? : An investigation of the opinion-formin functions of civic society on issues of immigration

Abstract: The issue of immigration is arguably one of the most loaded political issues. Not only for several member states of the European union but since the Dublin-agreement fell apart, maybe also for the union as a whole. The growing number of anti-immigrant parties on the rise have intensified the interest by scholars in the issue of anti-immigrant sentiments and its explanations, and recently, trust has been found to constitute one of the strongest explanatory variables for the attitudes toward immigration.    But although the theoretical arguments and empirical evidence are there from separate fields of research, the link between voluntary associations, trust and support for immigration has not yet been connected. The idea of associations as a generator for “civic virtues” has been influential in the field of political science. But could the virtues fostered in associations have an impact in the attitudes toward immigration as well?    By using data from the SOM-institutes national survey of 2016, this study conducts a quantitative investigation on an individual-level to the relationship between associations, trust and anti-immigrant sentiments. The study’s findings suggest that there is a significant positive relationship between membership in associations that partially is mediated by trust, and somewhat surprisingly, the study finds there may be something else to associational membership that has an significant impact on trust. Lastly, some theoretical arguments are provided to attribute this “something else”-effect to Putnam’s second civic virtue “generalized reciprocity”.