Do Urban Europeans Trust Their Fellow City Dwellers? Immigration, Group Threat, and Intergroup Contact in 63 European Cities

Abstract

Abstract As societies become more diverse, especially with inflows of immigrants, some research finds lowered social trust as an inclusive integration eludes countries, cities, and neighborhoods. But previous research finds this diversity–trust link to be highly variable across studies and in particular across geographic scales. One under-studied scale is that of cities, even though trust is essential to facilitating intergroup contact and because cities are characterized by spatial segregation along ethnic lines. We analyze a survey of approximately 27,000 urban Europeans from 63 cities in 25 countries to assess how ethnic diversity (conceptualized as non-EU immigrants) in cities and countries affects trust of neighbors and city residents. Our multilevel model findings show that a greater percentage of non-EU immigrants in a city (but not a country) is related to less trust on both measures and that the effect size is larger for trust of city dwellers than trust of neighbors. We find that the city population, however, is a critical moderator. In more populous cities, a greater percentage of non-EU immigrants is linked to more trust, but in less populous cities more immigrants are linked to less trust. We conclude by focusing on how cities are important sites of social trust.