Innumeracy in Turkey: misperceptions of an emerging immigrant population.

• Author: Herda, Daniel
• Position: Report

Introduction

The World Bank estimates that after 2007, the nation of Turkey transitioned from experiencing levels of net emigration to net immigration. (1) Turkey thus follows Italy, Spain, Portugal, and Finland, which underwent similar transitions during the 1980s and 1990s. (2) In a recent issue of Insight Turkey, Franck Duvell describes these changes as ushering in a paradigm shift of "enormous social, economic and political relevance," (3) which will require an increased research focus. Indeed, the transition from receiving more immigrants than it sends makes Turkey an interesting research context, not only locally, but for the study of immigration in general. I heed Duvell's call for a greater focus on Turkey as a recipient of immigrants by analyzing how accurately Turkish respondents perceive their immigrant population and whether misperceptions are connected to anti-immigrant attitudes.

While discussing Turkey's immigration shift, Duvell notes that "Academics were the first to highlight these developments... However, the Turkish public is probably less aware of this shift.." (emphasis added). (4) The italicized statement is reasonable, but it contradicts a recent line of scholarship within the intergroup attitudes literature. There is a well-documented tendency, known as immigrant population innumeracy, wherein most ordinary citizens wildly over-estimate immigrant population sizes. (5) However, this phenomenon has only been considered in detail in the U.S. and Europe, which have been contexts of net immigration for several decades.

With this in mind, Turkey is a useful context for analysis. Such a project would mark the first assessment of innumeracy in the Middle East and the first in a majority Muslim country. It would also be the first detailed analysis in a nation that sits on the cusp of an immigration transition. This unique characteristic may help us to understand various phenomena related to immigration in general. For one, when and how do citizens develop their perceptions and beliefs about immigrants? Focusing on the Turkish context at the beginning of its paradigm shift will elucidate this question. My goal is to examine innumeracy among Turkish citizens, and in doing so, inform the wider literature on misperceptions about immigrants.

Do Turkish respondents display innumeracy like those in the U.S. and Europe? If Duvell's assumption is correct, Turks may actually underestimate their immigrant presence. Further, if misperceptions exist, do they result in any consequences in terms of attitudes about immigrants? Using data from the 2013 Transatlantic Trends Survey, the current study considers Turkish innumeracy levels in detail, focusing on (1) how much exists, (2) where it is most common, (3) among whom it is most likely to be expressed, and (4) whether it is associated with anti-immigrant attitudes.

Immigrant Population Innumeracy

When researchers ask how many immigrants they think are living in their country, respondents usually offer an inflated estimate. In the most recent data from Ipsos MORI, (6) respondents in all of the 14 countries considered overestimated the immigrant population size on average. For example, in the U.S., where immigrants represent roughly 13 percent of the country, the average guess was 32 percent. (7) In other words, the typical American thinks the immigrant population is about three times its actual size. With an average level of incorrectness of 19 percentage points, the U.S. ranks behind only Italy, where respondents were wrong by 23 percentage points. (8) In Australia and Sweden, which displayed the greatest accuracy, respondents still believed that the immigrant population was seven percentage points larger than the reality. Thus, regardless of the context, immigrant populations are larger in the minds of citizens than in reality. (9)

Nearly all of our knowledge about immigrant population innumeracy comes from European and American samples. Thus, to advance this research, it is important to examine whether the same patterns exist in other parts of the world. A unique exception is found in the same Ipsos MORI survey, which indicated that respondents in Japan and South Korea also inflate immigrant population size by about 8 percentage points on average. (10) Thus, while there is evidence that innumeracy exists outside of the West, more research is needed to understand in what other parts of the world these misperceptions flourish, why such inaccurate knowledge exists, and whether there are consequences to widespread ignorance.

Why Innumeracy?

Interest in innumeracy among social scientists developed from its connection to other variables. After all, if innumeracy were unassociated with demographic, social or attitudinal factors, then it could be attributed to simple random ignorance and would be of little consequence. (11) However, fully random innumeracy has never been the case in the literature. Rather, overestimation is frequently linked to various demographic variables. In both the U.S. and throughout Europe, women generally inflate population sizes more than men, younger people tend to overestimate more than older generations, and the more highly educated tend to offer more realistic size estimates. (12) Because of such associations, researchers generally accept that innumeracy represents more than simple random ignorance.

Beyond demographic characteristics, scholars have also theorized psychological sources of innumeracy related to the widespread use of heuristic decision-making. (13) These mental shortcuts allow individuals to quickly make judgments and come to decisions with minimal effort. In particular, the cognitive availability heuristic, introduced by Tversky and Khanneman, (14) describes cases in which individuals use familiar examples in their minds as evidence to answer questions of fact. For example, if one has many acquaintances that have been through a divorce, he or she is more likely to overestimate the rate of divorce. Transferring this logic to questions of immigrant population size, those with more interpersonal contact with immigrants (friends, neighbors, coworkers, etc.) will have a larger perception of the immigrant population. Previous research in Europe confirms this pattern. (15)

Of paramount interest to researchers has been innumeracy's connection to negative attitudes about the groups being estimated. There is concern that warped perceptions about the reality of immigration will be used to justify or generate anti-immigrant actions and policy preferences. Individuals may conclude that immigrants are too numerous or pose a threat to citizens based on incorrect information. Consistently across studies, larger size estimates are associated with more negative attitudes toward immigrants and support for hypothetical policies designed to curtail immigration or limit immigrants' rights. (16)

Given the lack of research on innumeracy in the Turkish context, it is unknown whether these same patterns will hold. If innumeracy exists among ordinary Turks, is it simple random ignorance or is it associated with other factors? Further, is innumeracy connected to negative attitudes? I consider these questions below after discussing the Turkish immigration context.

Immigration and Innumeracy in Turkey

For several decades, Turkey has been characterized as a country of emigration. Turkish citizens have settled as labor migrants throughout the world, particularly in Germany, other parts of the European Union, and the Persian Gulf states. (17) Subsequent individuals have also emigrated through family reunification policies. (18) Many continue to emigrate today, although in smaller numbers than in the past. Consequently, emigration still characterizes Turkey for many, despite the fact that the country now receives more immigrants than it sends. (19)

Turkey's shift toward immigration can be attributed to a number of factors. Economic growth and higher levels of political stability have led to increased opportunities for labor migrants. (20) Its position on the crossroads of two continents has made it a frequent site for transit migrants destined for Europe. (21) Further, its proximity to areas of conflict in the Middle East has made Turkey a stable and accessible place for those seeking refuge from violence and oppression. (22)

Turkey's recent emergence as a net immigration country does not mean that immigrants are a new phenomenon. Rather, individuals have been settling in Turkey from abroad in significant numbers since the last century of the Ottoman Empire. (23) These "old wave" immigrants were often individuals of Turkish origin returning to their ancestral homeland. (24) Also included were some non-Turkish Muslim populations who were given non-foreigner status. (25) These groups were privileged in the 1934 Law on Settlement as part of a nationalistic push to homogenize the country in terms of ethnicity, language and culture. (26) Other populations, including non-Turkish Muslims, Christians, and Jews were subject to forced resettlement and were unable to obtain immigration paperwork. (27)

However, the reality of global migration began to change toward the end of the Cold War with the emergence of new migration sources. As a result and because of a desire for closer ties to the European Union, Turkey's immigration rules became less restrictive. (28) The current "new wave" of immigration has ushered in the net immigration transition. Most current arrivals are non-Turkish, often non-Muslim, and would have been classified as ineligible "foreigners" under the old Law on Settlement. The initial changes began in the late 1970s when Turkey accepted asylum seekers fleeing the Iranian revolution. (29) Flows of refugees continued over the following decades with Iraqis in the 1990s and those fleeing the ongoing Syrian civil war...