Between 2015 and 2017, the European Union (EU) was confronted with a major crisis in its history, the so-called “European refugee crisis.” Since the multifaceted crisis has provoked many different responses, it is also likely to have influenced individuals’ assessments of immigrants and European integration. Using data from three waves of the European Social Survey (ESS) — the wave before the crisis in 2012, the wave at the beginning of the crisis in 2014, and the wave right after the (perceived) height of the crisis in 2016 — we test the degree to which the European refugee crisis increased Europeans’ anti-immigrant sentiment and Euroscepticism, as well as the influence of Europeans’ anti-immigrant attitudes on their level of Euroscepticism. As suggested by prior research, our results indicate that there is indeed a consistent and solid relationship between more critical attitudes toward immigrants and increased Euroscepticism. Surprisingly, however, we find that the crisis increased neither anti-immigrant sentiments nor critical attitudes toward the EU and did not reinforce the link between rejection of immigrants and rejection of the EU. These findings imply that even under a strong external shock, fundamental political attitudes remain constant.

Initial literature on the ‘European refugee crisis’ discerned intergovernmental tendencies in its management. This paper examines whether neofunctionalism may be able to explain a major case of ‘European refugee crisis’ policy‐making, the negotiations on the European Border and Coast Guard regulation. We argue, somewhat counterintuitively, that the theory considerably furthers our respective understanding. The crisis acted as a catalyst exposing the weaknesses of a system that pitted a supranational Schengen against a largely intergovernmental external border regime, notwithstanding a developing Frontex. These dysfunctionalities have been widely fostered by both national and supranational decision‐makers shrinking from the significant economic, political and sunk costs of Schengen disintegration, thus ruling out the possibility for spillback. Additionally, further integration was substantially nurtured by supranational agency, ‘socialized’ national civil servants, transnational NGOs and European business associations.

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Historically, crises have been lauded for fostering European Union (EU) integration. Conversely, it has recently been predicted that the current ‘polycrisis’ will precipitate the EU's demise. However, this dichotomous perspective on crises is oversimplified. In this research note, we argue that a critical‐constructivist approach to norm contestation is uniquely placed to illuminate the shades of grey populating the continuum between these two extremes. As contestation effects may occur on both normative and institutional levels, a norm contestation approach has the potential to open the black box of crises by investigating the prerequisites, actors and processes of crisis and reminding us that these stages are linked in a circular way. Therefore, we argue that a conversation between EU studies and critical‐constructivist norm contestation research is crucial to advancing our understanding of the myriad effects crises have on the EU beyond the dichotomous distinction between integration and demise.