The conditional effects of the refugee crisis on immigration attitudes and nationalism
| Author | Wouter van der Brug,Eelco Harteveld |
| DOI | 10.1177/1465116520988905 |
| Published date | 01 June 2021 |
| Date | 01 June 2021 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
Article
The conditional effects
of the refugee crisis on
immigration attitudes
and nationalism
Wouter van der Brug
Department of Political Science, University of Amsterdam,
Amsterdam, the Netherlands
Eelco Harteveld
Department of Political Science, University of Amsterdam,
Amsterdam, the Netherlands
Abstract
What was the impact of the 2014–2016 refugee crisis on immigration attitudes and
national identification in Europe? Several studies show that radical right parties benefit-
ted electorally from the refugee crisis, but research also shows that anti-immigration
attitudes did not increase. We hypothesize that the refugee crisis affected right-wing
citizens differently than left-wing citizens. We test this hypothesis by combining indi-
vidual level survey data (from five Eurobarometer waves in the 2014–2016 period) with
country level statistics on the asylum applications in 28 EU member states. In Western
Europe, we find that increases in the number of asylum applications lead to a polari-
zation of attitudes towards immigrants between left- and right-leaning citizens. In the
Southern European ‘arrival countries’ and in Central-Eastern Europe we find no signif-
icant effects. Nationalistic attitudes are also not affected significantly.
Keywords
Left-right, migration attitudes, nationalism, polarization, refugee crisis
Corresponding author:
Eelco Harteveld, Department of Political Science, University of Amsterdam, Postbus 15578, 1001 NB
Amsterdam, the Netherlands.
Email: E.Harteveld@uva.nl
European Union Politics
2021, Vol. 22(2) 227–247
!The Author(s) 2021
Article reuse guidelines:
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DOI: 10.1177/1465116520988905
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Introduction
Mainly as a consequence of the civil war in Syria, massive groups of refugees tried
to reach Europe to seek asylum in the years 2014–2016. The number of refugees
increased steadily from 2014 onward, then peaked in the summer of 2015, after
which the numbers declined. The events of 2015 have been labelled as ‘refugee
crisis’, mainly because the governments of the different European Union (EU)
member states appeared to be unable to exercise control over the way the events
unfolded. Refugee receiving countries, Greece and Italy in particular, appeared
unable to control external EU borders and the European Commission appeared
unable to organize any meaningful solidarity with the main refugee receiving
countries. When German Chancellor Angela Merkel was pressured by
Hungarian Prime Minister Victor Orba
´n to ‘temporarily’ open the borders for
refugees to solve a humanitarian crisis, this led to hundreds of thousands of immi-
grants of all kinds (not just refugees) arriving at the Austrian-German border. The
German migration authorities simply lacked the capacity to even conduct the most
basic routine check of whether these people were refugees or not, and they simply
let anyone in.
These chaotic situations played into the hands of populist radical right parties
like the National Front (now National Rally) in France, Fidesz in Hungary, Golden
Dawn in Greece, the Lega in Italy and the Alternative for Germany. The PopuList
records 2015 as the year with the single-largest increase in support for the populist
radical right in decades (Rooduijn et al., 2019). Around the same time, the pro-
Brexit campaign introduced the slogan ‘take back control’. This simple slogan
appealed to many citizens, as it summarized very effectively their concerns about
events that threaten their way of life. In the narrative of the far right, these
concerns are linked to European unification. As the Dutch far-right politician
Wilders writes on his party’s website:
Democracy equals sovereignty. But through our governments’ transfer of powers to
Brussels, the EU institutions and other countries decide on matters that are essential
for our nation: our immigration policy, our monetary policy, our trade policy and
many other policies.
1
In short, the refugee crisis of 2015 marks a crucial moment in the history of the
EU, and one that has fuelled political debates about borders, immigration, and
national belonging. Several country studies in Germany, Greece and Sweden indi-
cate that far-right parties benefitted from the refugee crisis (e.g. Art, 2018; Dinas
et al., 2019; Emilsson, 2020; Mader and Schoen, 2019; Vasilakis, 2018). The surge
in support for the populist radical right suggests that the refugee crisis toughened
citizens’ views of immigration and strengthened an exclusively national identifica-
tion. However, there is little evidence for this. Stockemer et al. (2020) show that
negative sentiments toward both immigrants and the EU did not increase in the
period between 2012 and 2016. In fact, Europeans’ immigration attitudes became
228 European Union Politics 22(2)
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