What asylum and refugee policies do Europeans want? Evidence from a cross-national conjoint experiment
| Author | Martin Ruhs,Anne-Marie Jeannet,Tobias Heidland |
| DOI | 10.1177/14651165211006838 |
| Published date | 01 September 2021 |
| Date | 01 September 2021 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
Article
What asylum and refugee
policies do Europeans
want? Evidence from a
cross-national conjoint
experiment
Anne-Marie Jeannet
Department of Social and Political Science, University of
Milan, Milan, Italy
Tobias Heidland
Kiel Institute for the World Economy, Kiel, Germany;
Kiel University, Kiel, Germany;
Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA), Bonn, Germany
Martin Ruhs
Migration Policy Centre, European University Institute (EUI),
Florence, Italy
Abstract
The protection of asylum seekers and refugees has become one of the most politically
divisive issues in the European Union, yet there has been a lack of research on public
preferences for asylum and refugee policies. This article analyzes which policies
Europeans prefer and why. We advance a theoretical framework that explains how
asylum and refugee policies that use limits and conditions enable individuals to resolve
conflicting humanitarian and perceived national interest logics. Using an original con-
joint experiment in eight countries, we demonstrate that Europeans prefer policies that
provide refugee protection but also impose control through limits or conditions. In
contrast to the divisive political debates between European Union member states, we
find consistent public preferences across European countries.
Corresponding author:
Anne-Marie Jeannet, Department of Social and Political Science, University of Milan, Via Conservatorio 7,
Milan 20122, Italy.
Email: annemarie.jeannet@unibocconi.it
European Union Politics
!The Author(s) 2021
Article reuse guidelines:
sagepub.com/journals-permissions
DOI: 10.1177/14651165211006838
journals.sagepub.com/home/eup
2021, Vol. 22(3) 353–376
Keywords
Asylum and refugee policy, Europe, migration, policy preferences
Introduction
Asylum and refugee issues have gained importance in the politics of the European
Union (EU), becoming increasingly divisive since the refugee ‘crisis’ in 2015–2016
when 1.3 million asylum seekers arrived in Europe leading to the de-facto collapse
of the common European asylum system. While many core aspects of asylum
policy have always remained within the realm of the nation state, the difficulty
of certain EU member states to cope with the refugee emergency called for
new common European solutions (see Nieman and Zaun (2017) for an overview).
Yet, asylum reform proposals proved to be contentious between member states.
The struggle to cooperate on asylum and refugee policy issues generated a great
deal of political conflict, reinforcing long-standing fault lines between the northern
‘core’ member states, the more recent eastern members, and the southern ‘frontier’
EU countries (Thielemann, 2005; Trauner, 2016). The national politics of member
states, particularly the preferences of their respective electorates, are likely to be
important factors that shape the different negotiating positions EU countries take
regarding asylum and refugee policy.
Yet, despite this increased public scrutiny and intense political debates, we
know very little about Europeans’ preferences for asylum and refugee policy and
whether they differ across EU member states. While the scholarship on attitudes to
asylum seekers and refugees has been growing in recent years, it remains much
smaller than the large body of work on attitudes to immigration and immigrants in
general (see Hainmuller and Hopkins, 2014). A few landmark studies focus on the
characteristics of asylum-seekers and refugees preferred by the public (Bansak
et al., 2016; Hager and Veit, 2019). Studies that investigate public preferences
for asylum and refugee policies, however, are still rare. There are a few
notable exceptions that examine specific aspects such as the redistribution of
asylum seekers (Bansak et al., 2017; Heizmann and Ziller, 2020), the number of
asylum claims that should be granted (Andersson et al., 2018; Hercowitz-Amir and
Raijman, 2020) or how changes in inflows of asylum seekers affect existing resi-
dents’ attitudes (Hangartner et al., 2019). Consequently, the current scholarly
understanding of public preferences vis-a
`-vis asylum and refugee policies remains
very limited.
Evidence from self-reported surveys of people’s views on asylum and refugee
issues shows European voters have contradictory positive and negative evalua-
tions, which suggests a tendency towards ambivalence in public policy preferences.
On the one hand, Europeans appear to be strongly committed to providing
humanitarian protection to people who flee violence and persecution (Connor,
2018). Yet on the other hand, Europeans are simultaneously concerned about
354 European Union Politics 22(3)
To continue reading
Request your trial