Attitudes Toward Asylum Policy in a Divided Europe: Diverging Contexts, Diverging Attitudes?

Abstract

The large inflow of asylum-seekers in recent years has heralded a diversification in adopted asylum policies across European societies. Although a growing body of research has addressed these versatile approaches and their implications for the European integration project, insight into the social basis of these restrictive or open asylum policies remains underdeveloped. Hence, the current study provides detailed insight into public preferences for asylum policies and offers a new understanding of how these attitudes are affected by diverging socioeconomic realities across Europe. In addition, this paper considers the role of individual factors that coincide with publicly adopted frames in contemporary asylum debates. In particular, to explain how contextual differences reflect on opinion climates, the impacts of the policy, economic, and migratory context are studied. On the individual-level, we focus on threat perception and human values, which represent humanitarian, economic, and cultural frames. To explore these relations, data on 20 countries from the European Social Survey Round 8 (2016) are analyzed through a multilevel structural equation modeling approach. Results indicate that, on the contextual-level, only unemployment rates have a significant impact and, rather surprisingly, lower unemployment rates provoke a more negative opinion climate. Yet, this relationship seems to be largely driven by some specific countries that are characterized by large unemployment rates and relatively positive opinion climates simultaneously. The migratory and policy context, on the other hand, do not influence attitudes toward asylum policy. This indicates that it is not necessarily the countries facing the largest inflow of asylum-seekers or issuing the most positive decisions on asylum applications that have the most restrictive opinion climates. As shown by the important roles of human values and threat perceptions, which represent widely adopted frames, public discourses seem much more important in explaining attitudes toward asylum policy across Europe.

Practicing Social Cohesion in the Dark: Diverse Processes and Missing Indicators in Forced Migration Contexts

“…The findings presented here are particularly relevant to new refugee receiving countries faced with massive displacement situations, but they, also hold pertinence to traditional refugee receiving countries. Recent evidence from 20 European countries shows that the policy, economic, and migratory context is not adequate to explain the cross-national divergences in attitudes toward asylum policy (van Hootegem et al, 2020). This study suggests that social cohesion indicators can serve as an alternative explanation to predict divisions in asylum policy across European countries.…”

Fear of Terrorism and Attitudes Toward Refugees: An Empirical Test of Group Threat Theory

“…Although there is some evidence from studies applying the vulnerability perspective that individuals with low SES report greater fears than those with a high SES (Sloan et al, 2020), others found a weak to no relation. However, group threat theory has a strong foundation in explaining outgroup attitudes through individual economic or status indicators, with those with high SES (often operationalized as either the (perceived) financial situation or educational attainment) experience lower realistic and symbolic threat from outgroups, resulting in more positive attitudes (Jacobs et al, 2019;Marfouk, 2019;Van Hootegem et al, 2020). With this in mind, we expect the following: H6: Lower educated individuals report greater fear of terrorism than higher educated individuals.…”

“…Many studies of outgroup attitudes and prejudice have shown that both individual (age, gender, socioeconomic status (SES), etc.) and contextual factors, like economic conditions and outgroup size, provide complementary insights into attitudes toward outgroups (Heizmann & Ziller, 2020; Hjerm, 2009; Lubbers et al, 2006; Sarrasin et al, 2012; Schlueter & Davidov, 2013; Van Hootegem et al, 2020).…”

“…For instance, von Hermanni and Neumann (2019) found that crime, economic and fiscal concerns have a negative impact on the acceptance of refugees seeking asylum, while others have found that different value orientations between the majority and minority group is a major source of perceived threat, and thus also of prejudice (Ata et al, 2009; De Coninck et al, 2020). In general, this prejudice is more pronounced among individuals in more precarious socio-economic positions, such as people with fewer work skills or less education (De Coninck et al, 2020), or in regions with adverse economic conditions or with a large outgroup size (Heizmann & Ziller, 2020; Hjerm, 2009; Lubbers et al, 2006; Sarrasin et al, 2012; Schlueter & Davidov, 2013; Van Hootegem et al, 2020). Thus, to explain variations in fear of terrorism, it seems particularly adequate to consider characteristics of the contexts in which intergroup relations take place.…”

Using Multilevel Structural Equation Modeling (MSEM) to Identify the Predictors and Influencing Mechanism of Technology Use Among Chinese Physicians: An Example from Des-Gamma-Carboxy Prothrombin (DCP)

“…21 To solve this issue while determining the relationship between the proposed factors, multilevel structural equation modeling (MSEM) is the best choice. 22 Currently, MSEM has been used in the fields of public health policy [23][24][25] and adolescent health, 26,27 but rarely in health technology use.…”