Which Macro Determinants Drive the Acceptance of Refugees? Examining Europe, 2014–2017

In the past few years, Europe has witnessed a sharp increase in the number of people that want to immigrate due to war or persecution. Most of these people originate from countries in Africa or the Middle East. The question how to deal with this inflow is currently dominating the political sphere and public debates throughout Europe. I investigate Europeans' attitudes toward the national refugee policy using data from the last two waves of the ESS. I model individual attitudes as a function of constant and time-varying macro-level conditions under control of potential individual-level confounders employing three-level hybrid hierarchical linear models. Based on the macro-level panel data, I find that attitudes are not affected by asylum rates in any way. However, the demography of a country does play a role: not only tend natives in countries with a larger share of foreigners to be less open toward refugees but especially does an increase in the foreign population during the period of analysis lead to more exclusionism. This effect seems to be especially driven by countries that played a key role in the course of the so-called immigration crisis, such as Germany, Austria and Hungary. This indicates that the politication of the issue is a crucial factor regarding the formation of public opinion. Such a reasoning is bolstered by the fact that it is primarily conservative individuals whose attitude are affected by rising inflow of newcomers.