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Purpose – To describe and critique the extent and nature of data collection in European Union (EU) Member States on immigrants as victims of crime, and to contextualise this situation with regard to wider debates concerning the EU's ‘migration–crime–security’ nexus that focuses on immigrants as a crime problem. To explain differences in data collection practices between Member States, and to introduce innovative research by the European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights (FRA) that sets out to collect comparative EU-wide data on immigrants’ experiences as victims of crime.

Methodology – A range of material from academic and policy sources, together with the author's own work for an EU Agency, is drawn on to inform about the evidence and debates forwarded in this paper.

Findings – There is a serious lack of comprehensive and timely data on immigrants as victims of crime throughout much of the EU. Hence, there is a need for enhanced data collection at Member State and EU levels that can be used to inform policymakers and other stakeholders about the ‘true’ extent of crime against immigrants and how to address it.

Value – This paper addresses the under-researched theme of immigrants as victims of crime in the EU. It also introduces the reader to ‘EU-MIDIS’ – the first comparative EU-wide survey on selected immigrant groups’ experiences as victims of crime, which is undertaken by the EU's FRA.

Purpose – This paper summarises what is known about the victimisation of immigrants in Australia.

Methodology – A review of the literature.

Findings – Immigrants in Australia appear to be less victimised than natives. However, this may be an unwillingness of report victimisations and/or not defining certain events as victimisations. Immigrants are more likely than natives to perceive their victimisations as racially motivated and they experience higher levels of fear of crime.

Value – This paper provides a succinct look at the experiences of immigrants based upon the findings of victimisation surveys in Australia.

For more than a decade, public opinion polls have shown that nearly 80% of Americans support hate crime legislation as a response to violence committed because of the victim's race, color, religion, and sexual orientation. Americans' widespread support for legislation aimed at bias-motivated crimes is not matched by the federal and state efforts devoted to responding to such crimes. This chapter describes the myriad factors contributing to America's limited police and prosecutorial response to hate crimes. After a discussion of the patchwork of state and federal legislation aimed at hate crimes, the chapter analyzes the substantial legislative and administrative structures that hamper the enforcement of hate crime law in the United States.

Purpose – The overall purpose of this chapter is to discuss what is known about serious forms of bias violence, obstacles to studying bias violence, and how alternative theoretical and methodological approaches can advance our understanding of bias violence in the twenty-first century.

Design/methodology/approach – Following a review of the literature, the applicability of identity fusion theory for explaining bias violence is considered and applied to the anti-racial mass shooting at an historically Black church in Charleston, South Carolina. Data come from an innovative open-source project known as the United States Extremist Crime Database.

Findings – Drawing from identity fusion theory, information from open-source data on the Charleston church shooting suggests that the perpetrator was a highly fused individual who perceived African Americans as a threat toward his social identity group and committed an act of extreme behavior (i.e., bias homicide) as a means for stabilizing his self-views.

Originality/value – This chapter builds upon prior studies of bias violence by demonstrating how (1) publicly available open sources (e.g., court documents and media reports) may be systematically compiled and used as reliable data for studying serious forms of bias violence, and (2) the use of social psychological theories, specifically identity fusion theory, can help to explain the role of personal and group identities in discriminatory violence.

This chapter examines jury nullification, through which American juries refuse to convict criminal defendants in the face of overwhelming evidence of guilt to express disapproval of specific criminal laws or of their application to particular defendants, through the political theory of Carl Schmitt. It distinguishes liberal components of American jurisprudence, especially the rule of law, from democratic sovereignty, and shows how the two are in deep tension with one another. In light of this tension it argues that jury nullification amounts to democratic sovereignty applied counter to the liberal state in a way that paradoxically upholds individual liberty.

Purpose – To assess the role of hate crime legislation in protecting immigrants and winning their hearts; and to determine whether hate crime is increasing with immigration and, if not, why.

Methodology – Based on a survey of the literature, a search of news reports in a special interest news clipping service related to immigrants, and the analysis of US National and California hate crime data.

Findings – Immigration does not appear to be associated with increasing hate crime against immigrants in general or Hispanic immigrants in particular in the United States. This may be because immigrants, particularly Hispanic immigrants, tend to live in residentially segregated conditions. However, for people who are probably Middle Eastern–appearing immigrants, the data show a spike in attacks in the years after the September 11 atrocity. The police and prosecutors often decline to arrest and/or to prosecute as hate crimes matters that appear to be hate crimes. This alienates immigrants and makes them believe the opposite of what the proponents of hate legislation would hope. Hate crime legislation does not seem to be to the advantage of immigrants.

Value – This is an empirically based assessment of the value of hate crime legislation for the protection, winning, and integration of immigrants.

Purpose – This study examined the impacts of racial discrimination on the self-reported health among Asian Americans.

Methodology/Approach – This study investigated a subsample of 1,090 Asian Americans from the 2008 National Asian American Survey. Three-category measure of self-reported health was constructed ain. Racial discrimination experiences encompassed (1) interpersonal discrimination, (2) institutional racism, and (3) hate crime. Ordered logistic regression models were employed to test the association between self-reported health and experiences of racial discrimination among Asian Americans.

Findings – With respect to ethnic origin, South Asians showed lower levels of self-reported health than East Asians/Asian Indians. Although the baseline effect of each discrimination indicator was insignificant, there was an interactional effect between ethnic origin and racial discrimination, indicating the more interpersonal discriminatory experiences, the worse health status for South Asians.

Research limitations – There remained some limitations including data and the measures of racial discrimination.

Originality/Value of Paper – Despite the limitations, this study revealed that as a risk factor, how experiences of racial discrimination shape health disparities among ethnic groups in the United States, focusing on the heterogeneity within Asian Americans.

Purpose: This study examines the affective dimension of racial threat. Most modern studies of threat are framed through Blumer's group position theory and measure threat as increases in levels of traditional racism or perceptions of competition. These measurements neglect to operationalize Blumer's affective conceptualizations of threat.

Methodology/Approach: Building on Blumer's theoretical framework, we outline threat's affective dimension through a presentation of new survey items designed to capture what threat feels like.

Findings: Using factor and regression analyses, we demonstrate how affect is distinct from perceived competition, and how it is positively associated with Blumer's theoretically predicted outcome of racial prejudice, in the form of increased levels of racial resentment.

Practical Implications: Future research by sociologists and other social and behavioral scientists should explicitly consider threat's affective dimension in order to provide a more robust picture of racial prejudice in the United States.