Can Terrorism Abroad Influence Migration Attitudes at Home?

Abstract

This article demonstrates that public opinion on migration “at home” is systematically driven by terrorism in other countries. Although there is little substantive evidence linking refugees or migrants to most recent terror attacks in Europe, news about terrorist attacks can trigger more negative views of immigrants. However, the spatial dynamics of this process are neglected in existing research. We argue that feelings of imminent danger and a more salient perception of migration threats do not stop at national borders. The empirical results based on spatial econometrics and data on all terrorist attacks in Europe for the post‐9/11 period support these claims. The effect of terrorism on migration concern is strongly present within a country but also diffuses across states in Europe. This finding improves our understanding of public opinion on migration, as well as the spillover effects of terrorism, and it highlights crucial lessons for scholars interested in the security implications of population movements.

Personal Proximity and Reactions to Terrorism

“…The strongest effects are in the country of the attack, but countries close to the attack are also affected. With growing distance, effects are attenuated (Böhmelt et al, 2019). That said, even populations in countries far away from an attack can be affected, yet that evidence is weaker (Finseraas & Listhaug, 2013).…”

Attitudinal and Emotional Consequences of Islamist Terrorism. Evidence from the Berlin Attack

“…Such attitudinal and emotional consequences are important given that, carried by an “affective wave” (Hall & Ross, 2015) like the one triggered by 9/11, citizens change their voting decisions (Montalvo, 2010; Vasilopoulos, Marcus, Valentino, & Foucault, 2019), and governments may choose to embrace substantive policy changes with regard to immigration (Bove, Böhmelt, & Nussio, 2020), civil liberties (Davis & Silver, 2004) and war making (Hetherington & Suhay, 2011). Terrorist attacks can also affect public opinion abroad (Böhmelt, Bove, & Nussio, 2019; Finseraas & Listhaug, 2013; Legewie, 2013), especially in the field of migration (Bove & Böhmelt, 2016; Rudolph, 2003). Understanding the consequences of terrorism on political attitudes and emotions is thus key for both domestic and international politics.…”

“…Second, this article looks at one case, and generalizations to other cases are thus limited. Future research could take a different approach and try to uncover the average effect of terrorist attacks across time and space (Böhmelt et al, 2019). Future analysis could also focus on other waves of terrorism, like the “years of lead” in the 1970s Italy, to see whether similar processes of desensitization took place in the past.…”

Terrorist attacks and minority perceived discrimination

“…As such we can complement existing research focusing solely on majority attitudes. Our main contribution is to show that while jihadist terrorism changes the in-group attitudes toward the out-group in a rather undifferentiated manner (e.g., Böhmelt et al, 2020;Finseraas et al, 2011;Legewie, 2013), it entails strongly asymmetric effects among out-groups. Further research is needed to understand whether the changes induced by terrorist attacks in the short-run levels of perceived ethnoracial discrimination we uncover will lead to long-run changes in ethnic and racial stratification.…”