Šedovič, Michaela; (2024) 'I have no problems because I am white': Understanding immigrants' wellbeing and its relationship with the destination population's attitudes towards immigrants. (Social Policy Working Paper 03-24). Department of Social Policy, London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE): London, UK.

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Abstract

How do interactions with non-migrants affect immigrants’ wellbeing? Drawing on novel qualitative data for a new immigrant destination (Slovakia), I examine this under-researched question from the immigrants’ perspective. I investigate how their wellbeing is related to contacts with non-migrants and immigrants’ interpretations of non-migrants’ behaviour and attitudes. Using thematic analysis, I explore immigrants’ accounts of the impact of these contacts. First, I demonstrate that different forms of intergroup interaction collectively contribute to immigrants’ wellbeing and need to be studied concurrently. Next, I show that immigrants understand non-migrants’ attitudes and the importance of immigrants’ ethnicity/race and social class for their experience in Slovakia, and how these characteristics hierarchise immigrants in the perception of the Slovak population. Immigrants are forced into roles depending on their position in the hierarchy (e.g., an expat, a spouse of a Slovak, a migrant worker). Third, immigrants consistently feel treated as a part of a group and in their assigned role. Lastly, they feel unable to leave the migrant identity, which forces them to perform the role of a “good migrant”, especially in contact with institutions. My findings speak to existing quantitative research and identify that the mechanism linking migrants’ subjective wellbeing with the destination population’s attitudes/behaviour is the combined extent and character of all immigrants’ social interactions.

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