Accepting Refugees and Immigrants into the Country while Rejecting Them from the Neighbourhood? A Study on the Determinants of NIMBY Opposition

Recent research has demonstrated that Europeans are, generally, more willing to accept refugees into their country compared to immigrants. Building on social distance literature, we aim at getting a better insight in whether rejection of refugees versus immigrants works differently on a level closer to people’s daily lives, since people may perceive more directly that they are personally affected by the presence of a specific group. We focus on the discrepancy that may exist between accepting refugees and immigrants into the country while rejecting them from the neighbourhood – characterized as NIMBY opposition – since such opposition can have considerable societal consequences for the settlement of these groups. Accordingly, this study’s purpose is twofold: (i) we study to what extent acceptance of refugees and immigrants into the country deviates from rejection from the neighbourhood, and (ii) we investigate to what extent socio-structural, -cultural and psychological factors can explain such (NIMBY) opposition. To test our hypotheses, we collected cross-sectional data via the LISS-panel in 2020. For a sample of the Dutch population (N=2888), we measure whether respondents think that the Dutch government should allow refugees and immigrants to come and live in the country and whether respondents would not like to have refugees and immigrants as neighbours. Preliminary results show that respondents are more willing to let refugees live in their country compared to immigrants. Conversely, respondents are less positive to having refugees as neighbours compared to immigrants. Our study will provide evidence which socio-structural, -cultural and psychological factors explain the differences.