Attitudes toward immigration and refugee policy

A global study

Abstract

In recent years, several high-profile refugee crises highlighted the varied approaches and attitudes toward refugees both within and across countries. The ongoing Syrian refugee crisis due to the Syrian civil war, the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan in 2021, and the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022 each led millions of those countries’ residents to seek asylum worldwide. Individuals’ attitudes toward “outsiders” vary across countries, people groups, and often by individual characteristics. Individuals hold a range of knowledge and views about immigrants and refugees and the different reasons they migrate. In this study, we combine Gallup World Poll Data with United Nations refugee data to explore the relationship between attitudes toward immigrants and the number of refugees in a country relative to the population. We focus on a subset of countries available in the Gallup data which host or are geographically close to the majority of the world’s refugees. We posit that the number of refugees in a country, relative to the population, correlates with attitudes toward immigrants in the individual’s area. Using ordinary least squares regression and the Gallup-provided survey weights, we find that there is a negative correlation between the relative number of refugees in a country and individuals’ reports that their area is a good place for immigrants. The negative correlation remains even with an extensive set of control variables. This suggests that a higher number of refugees within a country correlate with diminished views that the respondent’s area is a good place for immigrants. While the sign of the coefficient is consistently negative, the size of the coefficient is tiny. Thus, while policymakers and leaders ought to be aware of this negative correlation, it does not appear to be a primary correlate with attitudes toward immigrants.