Against the background of the constant discussion about the need for (qualified) foreign labour, migration as a politically relevant topic gained more and more importance over the last few years in Germany. Considering the new field of tension between economic needs and democratic legitimacy as well as the increasingly volatile citizens’ electoral behaviour, the project should make an innovative and substantial contribution to the research of attitudes of natives to immigrants including background information and possible consequences. In Europe research and respective surveys to this topic were progressively established in the last decades. However, respondents were asked to their perception and attitudes rather direct and in plain language. Recent studies from the US use additionally innovative measures in order to take still relevant issues into account, like skin colour, religion and migration. The different aspects of the complex of themes concerning stereotypes, prejudices and political correctness can be dealt with the help of visual techniques (morphing), list experiments and implicit attitude tests (IAT). This means that in contrast to the existing research in Germany, the project is capable of going beyond the instruments of classic surveys and ting in with the current international state of the art. At the same time, the study’s design will allow to compare directly the strengths and weaknesses of the different innovative techniques. However this methodologically accentuated contribution is not limited to migration, but applicable to all socially sensitive topics.
