Public Attitudes towards Refugees in Germany: What Drives Attitudes towards Refugees in Comparison with Immigrant Workers from European Union Countries?

Abstract

The current global refugee crisis puts both refugees and Western societies to the test. The challenges refugees face within their host countries depend on not only situational circumstances, but also the attitudinal climate they confront. A negative public can have severe consequences for refugees’ integration. This article asks two basic questions that have received little attention in previous studies: How do attitudes towards refugees with different flight reasons differ when compared with attitudes towards immigrants from European Union countries? What factors influence those attitudes? These questions are answered for the exemplary case of Germany based on new data from the German General Social Survey, which was conducted during the height of the refugee crisis in mid-2016. Our results reveal that refugees are perceived less positively than European Union immigrants and the origin of this negative perception mainly lies in increased feelings of threat.

Labor market situation of refugees in Europe: The role of individual and contextual factors

“…The same holds true for applicants of Muslim origin in regions with a particular anti-Muslim bias (Bansak et al, 2016;Gundacker et al, 2021). Notably, several studies report that refugees are perceived more positively than other immigrants in a number of European countries (Esses et al, 2013;Meidert and Rapp, 2019;De Coninck, 2020). De Coninck (2020) attributes this difference to the media framing of the two groups, whereas Meidert and Rapp (2019) discuss the role of deservingness in favorable attitudes to refugees.…”

“…Notably, several studies report that refugees are perceived more positively than other immigrants in a number of European countries (Esses et al, 2013;Meidert and Rapp, 2019;De Coninck, 2020). De Coninck (2020) attributes this difference to the media framing of the two groups, whereas Meidert and Rapp (2019) discuss the role of deservingness in favorable attitudes to refugees. Abdelaaty and Steele's study (2022) has shown that individual support for economic immigrants is more consistently related to the respondents' economic situation, whereas attitudes toward refugees are moderated more by the host countries' political climate.…”

Ukrainian refugees in Polish press

“…Vollmer and Karakayali, 2018), which is a strong predictor of negative public attitudes (e.g. Meidert and Rapp, 2019). In turn, as Meidert and Rapp (2019) have shown based on data from a survey conducted in Germany, there is significantly less support for restricting immigration of political and war refugees.…”

The Effects of Religiosity and Socioeconomic Status on Social Distance towards Refugees and the Serial Mediating Role of Satisfaction with Life and Perceived Threat

“…Thus, attaining spiritual satisfaction increases the sharing of existing economic and social belongings and naturally decreases their tendency to exclude others because they get what they hope from life. Even though refugees are seen as a threat in terms of political, economic, and cultural burdens and living space (Wyszynski et al 2020), the increase in the life satisfaction of the host society reduces the perception of threat towards refugees (Meidert and Rapp 2019). The host society's perception of threat towards refugees can sometimes vary depending on their socioeconomic status, culture, and values, and the refugees' economic situation, education level, ethnicity, and religion, as well as satisfaction with life (Bansak et al 2016;Vala and Pereira 2020).…”