Not the mode of allocation but refugees’ right to work drives European citizens’ preferences on refugee policy

Abstract

Europe remains a destination of an ongoing influx of asylum seekers. The attempts to build an EU-wide political consensus around refugee policy have so far failed. This article provides a perspective on EU citizens’ preferred policy towards refugees and asylum seekers at both the EU and domestic levels. A hidden policy consensus is identified in which European citizens across all social and ideological backgrounds prefer refugees to have the right to work but their freedom of movement to be restricted while their application for asylum is being processed. At the same time, the mode of refugee allocation between countries, which has been prominent in political debates across Europe, is relatively unimportant to respondents, as they focus on the domestic level rather than EU-level policy. The widespread consensus on support for refugees’ participation in the labour market may unite EU citizens around cautious hospitality by deemphasising allocation principles, and stressing country-level solutions.

Keywords:

• Refugees
• policy
• European Union
• survey experiment

Acknowledgements

We are grateful to two anonymous reviewers for their comments. An earlier version of this paper was presented at Political Science Seminar, Nuffield College, University of Oxford, and University of Groningen Political Economy Colloquium.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Narodowe Centrum Nauki grant number 2019/33/B/HS6/00841.

Notes on contributors

Natalia Letki

Natalia Letki is Associate Professor at the Faculty of Political Science and International Studies and Centre for Excellence in Social Sciences at the University of Warsaw. Her research interests include attitudes and behaviour towards public goods, social cohesion, social trust, and corruption. [[email protected]]

Dawid Walentek

Dawid Walentek is a post-doctoral researcher in the ‘Valuing Refugee Policy’ project. His work focuses on conflict and cooperation in international relations. Dawid received the START Award 2022 from the Polish Foundation for Science. [[email protected]]

Peter Thisted Dinesen

Peter Thisted Dinesen is Professor of Political Science at University College London and the University of Copenhagen. His research focuses on, inter alia, social trust, immigration attitudes, well-being, and political participation. His work has appeared in journals such as the American Political Science Review, the American Sociological Review, and Nature Human Behaviour. [[email protected]]

Ulf Liebe

Ulf Liebe is Professor of Sociology and Quantitative Methods at the Department of Sociology, University of Warwick. His research interests include discrimination, multifactorial survey experiments, and prosociality. [[email protected]]