From ethnic group boundary demarcation to deprovincialization: The interplay of immigrant presence and ideological climate

Intergroup contact (i.e. personal encounters with and presence of immigrants) has frequently been related to improved immigration attitudes among the national majority. The impact of ideological climates, in turn, has received scant attention. Drawing on the notion of deprovincialization, we argue that, in proximal geographical contexts, contact with immigrants as well as progressive (vs conservative) ideological climates engender a reappraisal of national ingroup boundaries by attenuating ethnic views of nationhood. As expected, multilevel regression analyses with the Swiss ISSP 2013 data (N = 1019 Swiss respondents living in 136 districts) revealed that personal encounters with immigrants related to reduced ethnic boundary making. Importantly, on the district level, immigrant presence buffered the impact of conservative ideological climates.