Americans preferred Syrian refugees who are female, English-speaking, and Christian on the eve of Donald Trump’s election

What types of refugees do Americans prefer for admission into the United States? Scholars have explored the immigrant characteristics that appeal to Americans and the characteristics that Europeans prioritize in asylum-seekers, but we currently do not know which refugee characteristics Americans prefer. We conduct a conjoint experiment on a representative sample of 1800 US adults, manipulating refugee attributes in pairs of Syrian refugee profiles, and ask respondents to rate each refugee’s appeal. Our focus on Syrian refugees in a 2016 survey experiment allows us to speak to the concurrent refugee crisis on the eve of a polarizing election, while also identifying religious discrimination, holding constant the refugee’s national origin. We find that Americans prefer Syrian refugees who are female, high-skilled, English-speaking, and Christian, suggesting they prioritize refugee integration into the U.S. labor and cultural markets. We find that the preference for female refugees is not driven by the desire to exclude Muslim male refugees, casting doubt that American preferences at the time were motivated by security concerns. Finally, we find that anti-Muslim bias in refugee preferences varies in magnitude across key subgroups, though it prevails across all sample demographics.

美国民众更倾向于接纳何种类型的难民进入美国？学者们已针对吸引美国民众的移民特征，以及欧洲国家在甄选寻求庇护者时优先考量的特征展开了相关研究，但目前学界仍不清楚美国民众更偏好何种难民特质。本研究针对1800名美国成年代表性样本开展联合实验（conjoint experiment）：通过成对呈现叙利亚难民的个人档案以操控难民属性，并请受访者对每位难民的受接纳吸引力进行评分。本研究在2016年的调查实验中聚焦叙利亚难民，既能够结合彼时美国大选前夕的难民危机背景展开针对性讨论，同时也可在固定难民国籍的前提下，识别出宗教层面的歧视倾向。研究结果显示，美国民众更偏好女性、高技能、具备英语能力且信奉基督教的叙利亚难民，这表明他们优先考量难民融入美国劳动力市场与文化环境的可行性。此外，针对女性难民的偏好并非源于排斥穆斯林男性难民的意愿，这使得彼时美国民众的难民偏好是否出于安全考量的观点受到质疑。最后，尽管反穆斯林偏见在所有样本人口群体中均普遍存在，但难民偏好中所体现的反穆斯林偏见程度，在各关键子群体间存在显著差异。