Educational Mobility and Attitudes Towards Migration from an International Comparative Perspective.

This work considers the role of intergenerational educational mobility in shaping attitudes towards immigration. Two substantive questions drive this work. First, does the experience of stagnant or downward educational mobility result in negative attitudes towards immigration? Second, are perceptions of immigration shaped by the relative importance of parental (i.e. origin) and one's own (i.e. destination) level of education? We deploy six waves of the European Social Survey (ESS) to assess how upward, downward and stagnant intergenerational educational mobility shape attitudes towards immigration across 31 countries. Results show that upward educational mobility can moderate antipathy towards immigration, but this is more applicable in country-contexts where parental education is less relevant. In other words, education matters for our understanding of how immigration is viewed, but its role must be framed in a way that takes into account multiple generations.

Physical Spacing and Social Interaction Before the Global Pandemic.

Subsequent to the arrival of SARS-CoV-2 and emergence of COVID-19, policy to limit the further spread has focused on increasing distance between individuals when interacting, often termed social distancing although physical distancing is more accurate (Das Gupta and Wong in Canadian J Public Health 111:488-489, 2020; Gale in Is 'social distancing' the wrong term? Expert prefers 'physical distancing,' and the WHO agrees. The Washington Post, 2020; Sørensen et al. in Glob Health Promot, 28:5-14, 2021), and limiting the frequency of interaction by limiting/prohibiting non-essential and large-scale social gatherings. This research note focuses on social spacing, defined by distance and interaction, to offer a cross-cultural insight into social distancing and social interactions in the pre-pandemic period. Combining unique data on frequency of contact, religious service attendance and preferred interpersonal spacing in 20 countries, this research note considers variation in the extent to which physical distance was already practiced without official recommendations and underscores notable cross-cultural variation in the extent to which social interaction occurred. Results suggest that policy intervention should emphasize certain behavioral changes based on pre-existing context-specific patterns of interaction and interpersonal spacing rather than a one-size-fits-all approach. This research note is a descriptive first step that allows unique insight into social spacing and contact prior to the spread of SARS-CoV-2. It provides a baseline typology and a reference for future work on the cross-cultural implications of COVID-19 for pre-pandemic socio-cultural practice and vice versa.