Date of Award

Fall 10-2018

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Bachelor Degree

Department

Political Science

First Advisor

Ridvan Peshkopia

Language

English

Abstract

Whereas the extant literature has found much similarities in determinants and correlates of individual attitudes toward immigration to Europe there is less attention on Europe’s regional-based attitudes. We try to unpack this puzzle by accounting for attitude variations that the 2015 Europe’s refugee crisis brought about in three geopolitical regions of the continent, namely EU member countries from former communist Eastern Europe, EU member countries from Western Europe and non-EU Western countries. We argue that whereas some socioeconomic factors and other attitudinal variables predict the same reaction toward more/less immigration from poor countries outside Europe, trust in institutions and their perception as the locus of policymaking predict different attitudes toward such migration. We found that, indeed, the 2015 refugee crisis sparked different reaction between the European East and the European West related to their willingness to admit more/less immigrants. Those findings suggest that much of attitudinal differences related to immigration in Europe can be understood as a product of people’s perception over the locus of policy responsibility, and that the 2015 refugee crisis and the ensuing increased salience of the immigration has helped to crystallize differences in locating such responsibility. We test our hypotheses with a dataset that combines data from the 7th and 8th rounds of the European Social Survey, which happened in 2014 and 2016, respectively.

DOI

10.33107/ubt-etd.2018.254

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