Norwegian citizens’ responses to influxes of asylum seekers: comparing across two refugee crises

ABSTRACT

We compared Norwegians’ attitudes to immigration, perspective taking, and intergroup behaviors directed at asylum seekers in 2016 (Syrians and Afghans) and 2022 (Ukrainians). We find evidence for a stronger exclusionary response to the asylum seekers in 2016 than in 2022. Attitudes to immigration were more negative in 2016 than in 2022, and skepticism and avoiding asylum seekers was more common. However, the dominant behavior in both years was prosocial (greeting and donating) and Norwegians’ willingness to take asylum seekers perspective was similar in 2016 and 2022. These results may reflect an absence of a symbolic threat in 2022 and may be connected to differences in the political rhetoric about asylum seekers in 2015/2016 and 2022.

KEYWORDS:

• Asylum seekers
• refugees
• immigration attitudes
• intergroup behavior
• Ukraine
• Syria

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Data availability statement

The data used in this study is available in online repositories, however, they are openly shared in single waves. In this paper, data across three waves (6, 7, and 24) were combined using respondent identification codes. These data will be made available for research and replication purposes, however, to protect participants’ anonymity, they are only available via a restricted access secure server. Please contact [email protected] for questions regarding data access.

open-scholarship open-materials

This article has earned the Center for Open Science badge for Open Materials. The materials are openly accessible at Norwegian Citizen Panel (NCP) Wave 6: https://doi.org/10.18712/NSD-NSD2344-V7, NCP Wave 7: https://doi.org/10.18712/NSD-NSD2401-V6, and NCP Wave 24: https://doi.org/10.18712/NSD-NSD3056-V1

Notes

1. The parties that supported the agreement were The Labor Party, The Conservative Party, The Center Party, The Progress Party, The Christian Democratic Party, and The Liberal Party.

Additional information

Funding

This work was partially funded by the ERC project INCLUDE – 101001133.