The multifaceted relationship between individual religiosity and attitudes toward immigration in contemporary Italy

When analyzing the relationship between individual religiosity and attitudes toward immigration, empirical research often leads to contrasting findings. By focusing on contemporary Italy, our contribution aims to provide evidence of two opposite effects that religiosity can exert on attitudes toward immigration. On the one hand, belonging to a religious community is expected to reinforce a social identity, leading to negative attitudes toward outgroups. On the other hand, religious commitment implies adhering to religious teachings which promote altruistic values, such as the acceptance of others. Since the two hypotheses pertain to different dimensions of religiosity, we propose to use a typology combining affiliation and church attendance, so that the two hypotheses can be tested as complementary. The first evidence we provide to support the hypotheses analyzes parallel survey data coming from the European Social Survey (ESS), the European Values Study (EVS), and the International Social Survey Programme (ISSP). In particular, we point out that non-religious and highly religious people show more positive attitudes toward immigration than affiliated individuals with low religious commitment. Moreover, data from the 2018 ISSP module “Religion IV”, which includes more specific measures of religious identity and commitment, lend further support to our expectations.