Attitudes toward refugees in contemporary Europe: A longitudinal perspective on cross-national differences

In 2015, the number of people seeking asylum in Europe skyrocketed. However, asylum applications were mainly concentrated in a few destination countries such as Germany, Austria, or Sweden. After the so-called EU-Turkey deal, asylum rates quickly dropped in subsequent years. I examine how these developments affected public opinion from both a static and a dynamic comparative perspective. The rapid and largely unpredicted rise in refugee numbers and their prominence in public debates make demographic changes potent drivers of out-group hostility. The analysis of data from over 50,000 individuals in 22 countries contained in the seventh and eighth waves of the European Social Survey shows that attitudes toward refugees do not simply follow trends in asylum applications. Significantly lowering refugee numbers, hence, did not counter anti-refugee sentiments in the European public. Based on intra-country variation over time, the model rather predicts an increase in negative attitudes during times of considerable demographic shifts. Deeper analyses reveal that this effect is stronger for conservative Europeans as well as for those who distrust EU-politics. Moreover, while a general willingness to help is associated with more openness toward refugees, actually experiencing foreigner inflow diminishes this link, suggesting limitations of humanitarian concerns. Results are stable across various modelling and sample choices and not driven by individual countries. In sum, these findings demonstrate the importance of temporal dynamics for the formation of attitudes toward refugees in contemporary Europe and point to potentially polarizing effects of immigration along ideological lines.

2015年，寻求欧洲庇护的人数急剧攀升。然而，庇护申请主要集中在德国、奥地利或瑞典等少数目的地国家。在所谓的欧盟-土耳其协议之后，随后的年份中庇护率迅速下降。本研究从静态和动态比较的角度，探讨了这些发展如何影响公众舆论。难民数量的快速且在很大程度上不可预测的上升，以及他们在公共辩论中的突出地位，使得人口变动成为群体敌意的重要驱动力。对包含在第七次和第八次欧洲社会调查中的22个国家超过50,000个个体数据的分析表明，对难民的态度并不简单地遵循庇护申请的趋势。因此，显著降低难民数量并未在欧洲公众中抵制反难民情绪。基于时间内的国内差异，该模型预测在人口变动较大的时期，负面态度反而会增加。更深入的分析显示，这种影响在保守的欧洲人和不信任欧盟政治的人中更为明显。此外，尽管普遍愿意提供帮助与对难民更加开放的态度相关联，但实际体验外国流入则削弱了这种联系，表明人道主义关注的局限性。结果在不同建模和样本选择中保持稳定，并非由个别国家驱动。总之，这些发现证明了时间动态在当代欧洲形成对难民态度中的重要性，并指出可能沿意识形态路线产生极化效应的移民影响。