Anti-immigrant prejudice in a post-socialist context: the role of identity-based explanations

The model of ethnification posits that in post-socialist contexts ethnic identities are used as a source for political mobilization against ethnic outgroups. In Croatia, this is further amplified by collective war experiences. This paper investigates the association between identity-based variables, related to ethnification and war experiences, and anti-immigrant prejudice in Croatia. The study employed structural equation modelling of the data from a large youth sample (N = 1,034). Higher ethnic threat, lower cultural capital, more exclusive conception of nationhood and right-wing political orientation predicted stronger anti-immigrant prejudice. Ethnic threat moderated the effect of political orientation on prejudice: under high ethnic threat there was no difference between left-wing and right-wing individuals. As the results correspond to findings from Western countries, we argue that comparable explanations of anti-immigrant prejudice may be applied to non-Western and Western contexts.