The Impact of the ‘European Refugee Crisis’ on Public Support for Development Cooperation

Since 2015 more than one million refugees have made their way from the Middle East and North Africa to Europe in the hope of finding secure living conditions. These migration movements, which were labeled as the “European refugee crisis”, posed a humanitarian and administrative challenge for governments in many European countries. What is more, they provoked protest among citizens which manifested itself in the rising support for right-wing populist parties. Hence, governments are searching for remedies to reduce refugee immigration. One such remedy is seen in development cooperation, which is said to foster economic development and stable societies in refugees’ countries of origin. Against this background, this paper seeks to analyze the relationship between the “refugee crisis” and public support for development cooperation. First, the paper argues that the crisis draws public attention to the situation in refugees’ countries of origin and development cooperation as a potential remedy. This could lead to higher support for development cooperation. Second, the paper argues that the crisis might alter empirically well-established differences in support between the political left and right, but also the effect of perceptions of immigration on support. The empirical approach is twofold. First, Eurobarometer data from 2015 covering 28 EU member states is used to look at the relationship between number of refugees and support for development cooperation as well as its moderating effect on the effect of political orientation in comparative perspective. Second, panel data from the Aid Attitude Tracker project for Germany (2013–2017) is utilized to track the effect of individual changes in political orientation (i.e., self-placement on the left-right scale) and perception of immigration on the support for development cooperation.