Local exposure to refugees promotes more positive attitude to asylum seekers

Sigrid Suetens’ research and her team is about the question of how local residents feel about asylum seekers when they are exposed to migrants, and whether this affects their voting behavior. The results show that people who live near a refugee center tend to develop a more positive attitude to immigrants and ethnic diversity than people who do not live near asylum seekers. They are also less likely to support anti-immigration parties. The study suggests that this is an effect of the contact between local residents and refugees. Other factors such as improved employment opportuni

Refugee crisis

The study was aimed at the period between 2011 and 2016. The researchers concentrated on locations where there were no refugee centers before 2014. Next, they looked at neighborhoods where a reception center was established between 2014 and 2016, compared to neighborhoods where this did not happen. ‘The great advantage of these data is that the same people answer the same questions at the same time of the year’, Sigrid Suetens states ‘Moreover, an ‘immigration shock’ (the European refugee crisis of 2015-2016, ed.) coincided with the study period. A number of Dutch neighborhoods with few or no resident migrants suddenly had to absorb many asylum seekers. As a result of this convergence, it can be assumed that the effect we saw is a causal effect. The time period chosen is too short to move house following the arrival of the asylum seekers. The effect thus cannot be attributed to selection bias.’

Conditions

The researchers linked respondents’ answers to specific questions to locations of the respondents as well as the refugee accommodation facilities. Questions like ‘It is desirable for a society to consist of people from different cultures’ or ‘It should be made easier to obtain asylum in the Netherlands’ were answered more positively by people living close to a reception center than by people who lived further away.

The effect is strongly local and depended on factors like the length of the period that the refugees lived in the neighborhood and the number of refugees. The researchers observe that positive effect was strongest when asylum seekers resided in the neighborhood for longer than six months. The location is also important: the positive effect only occurred as a result of asylum seekers coming to live in the direct vicinity (with the same four-digit postal code). Just taking up residence in the same municipality is not enough. The study also shows that the positive effect is strongest when the number of asylum is not too large. 

Voting behavior

The study also provides insight into political preferences. People meeting the above-mentioned criteria are less likely to vote for anti-immigration parties. In fact, the arrival of refugees reduces the likelihood of voting for an anti-immigration party by 4.6 percentage points relative to people who live in neighborhoods without refugees. The study also shows that their arrival does not significantly impact residents’ willingness to vote. This suggests that factors other than the presence of refugees play a role in deciding whether to vote during elections.

The researchers conclude that local contact with asylum seekers does not necessarily mean that local residents will be more negatively disposed towards asylum seekers or to immigrants in general. The effect does depend on the context. Suetens: ‘If suddenly more asylum seekers take up residence in a place than there are local residents, as happened on the Greek islands, earlier research has shown that this may evoke strong negative reactions among local residents.’

The importance of contact 

What is in these results for policy makers? Suetens: ‘Our study emphasizes the importance of positive contact between different communities and suggests that such contact between local residents and refugees can lead to a less negative attitude towards diversity. During the refugee crisis in 2015-2016, asylum seekers in the Netherlands were mostly accommodated in relatively small reception centers and much attention was paid to informing and involving the local residents. For policy makers and politicians, it is important to bear this in mind when making plans on where to accommodate asylum seekers.’

The publication ‘Local exposure to refugees changed attitudes to ethnic minorities in the Netherlands’ by Pascal Achard, Sabina Albrecht, Riccardo Ghidoni, Elena Cettolin en Sigrid Suetens has been accepted conditionally for the scientific journal The Economic Journal. A summery can also be found on Open Access Government.