title: Threat, prejudice and the impact of the riots in England.
abstract: This paper examines how a major outbreak of rioting in England in 2011 impacted on prejudice toward three minority groups in Britain: Muslims, Black British and East Europeans. We test whether the riots mobilized individuals by increasing feelings of realistic and symbolic threat and ultimately prejudice, or whether the riots galvanized those already concerned about minorities, thus strengthening the relationship between threat and prejudice. We conducted three national surveys - before, after and one year on from the riots - and show that after the riots individuals were more likely to perceive threats to society's security and culture, and by extension express increased prejudice toward Black British and East European minorities. We find little evidence of a galvanizing impact. One year later, threat and prejudice had returned to pre-riots levels; however, results from a survey experiment show that priming memories of the riots can raise levels of prejudice.
authors.affiliation: Department of Political Science, Simon Fraser University, 8888 University Drive, Burnaby, BC V5A 1S6, Canada. Electronic address: eline_de_rooij@sfu.ca.
authors.forename: Eline A
authors.initials: EA
authors.lastname: de Rooij
authors.affiliation: School of Politics and International Relations, University of Nottingham, University Park, Nottingham NG7 2RD, United Kingdom. Electronic address: matthew.goodwin@nottingham.ac.uk.
authors.forename: Matthew J
authors.initials: MJ
authors.lastname: Goodwin
authors.affiliation: Department of Political Science, Simon Fraser University, 8888 University Drive, Burnaby, BC V5A 1S6, Canada. Electronic address: mark_pickup@sfu.ca.
authors.forename: Mark
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Pickup
mesh_terms: D044383:Black People; D005006:Ethnicity; D005061:Europe, Eastern; D005239:Fear; D049673:History, 20th Century; D006801:Humans; D007514:Islam; D008568:Memory; D008913:Minority Groups; D011287:Prejudice; D012305:Riots / Q000266:history / Q000523:psychology*; D006113:United Kingdom
keywords: Intergroup relations; Minorities; Prejudice; Riots; Survey experiment; Threat