The nexus between attitudes towards migration and the COVID-19 pandemic: evidence from 11 European countries

Figures & data

Figure 1. Scatterplots of anti-immigrant attitudes, COVID-19 death rates and foreign-population share.

Table 1. Multilevel results.

	Perceived immigrant threat^a				Blaming the pandemic on immigrants
	M1a		M2a		M1b		M2b
	Coef.	SE	Coef.	SE	dy/dx^b	SE	dy/dx^b	SE
Individual-level variables
COVID-19 measures (Ref.: Appropriate)
Somewhat appropriate	−0.097	0.076	−0.097	0.076	0.035*	0.014	0.035*	0.014
Somewhat not appropriate	0.188	0.096	0.188	0.096	0.049**	0.018	0.049**	0.018
Not at all appropriate	0.399***	0.117	0.400**	0.117	0.009	0.022	0.009	0.022
Political trust in the government	−0.214***	0.018	−0.215***	0.018	0.005	0.003	0.005	0.003
General trust	−0.325***	0.045	−0.326***	0.045	−0.004	0.009	−0.005	0.009
Political interest (Ref. Very interested)
Quite interested	0.436***	0.081	0.436***	0.081	0.016	0.015	0.016	0.015
Not very interested	0.744***	0.096	0.742***	0.096	0.090***	0.018	0.089***	0.018
Not at all interested	1.206***	0.160	1.204***	0.160	0.135***	0.031	0.134***	0.031
Feeling lonely (Ref.: never or almost never)
Sometimes	−0.020	0.071	−0.020	0.071	0.033*	0.014	0.033*	0.013
Mostly	−0.234*	0.109	−0.233*	0.109	0.107***	0.021	0.106***	0.021
Always or almost always	−0.038	0.143	−0.037	0.143	0.030	0.027	0.029	0.027
Feeling lonely compared to pre-pandemic (Ref.: less often)
Equally often	−0.037	0.069	−0.038	0.069	−0.002	0.013	−0.003	0.013
More often	−0.149	0.104	−0.151	0.104	0.033	0.020	0.031	0.020
Concern for family’s health (Ref.: No)	0.023	0.077	0.024	0.077	−0.005	0.015	−0.005	0.015
COVID-19 threat for personal financial situation	−0.020	0.011	−0.020	0.011	0.016***	0.002	0.016***	0.002
COVID-19 threat for future of country	0.168***	0.033	0.167***	0.033	0.017**	0.006	0.016*	0.006
Country – level variables
COVID-19 death rate (0/1)	−1.123	0.773			−0.345***	0.057
Share of foreign population (0/1)			1.376	0.872			0.212	0.120
Intercept	5.531***	0.541	4.277***	0.545
Random Effects
Intercept Variance (country-level)	0.606	0.291	0.586	0.281
Residual Variance	5.804	0.102	5.804	0.102

Models are based on 11 countries and 6,561 individuals. Additional control variables: Age, gender, education, political orientation, standard of living.

^a DF method: Satterthwaite, fit model via restricted maximum likelihood.

^b Average marginal effects.

*p < 0.05.

**p < 0.01.

***p < 0.001.

Data availability statement

The raw survey data ‘Everyday Life in Germany and Europe 2020 (Solikris)’ that support the findings of this study are available at the GESIS Data Archive at doi:10.4232/1.13787, study number ZA7776, Data file Version 1.0.0.

The macro data of the COVID-19 death rate that support the findings of this study are available within the article’s supplementary materials. These data were derived from the following resources available in the public domain: https://ourworldindata.org/coronavirus-data-explorer and https://covid19.who.int/.

The macro data of the foreign-population share that support the findings of this study are available within the article’s supplementary materials. These data were derived from the following resources available in the public domain: https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/databrowser/view/tps00157/default/table?lang=en.

The STATA script JEMS_covid_imm_attitudes.do and the R script JEMS_covid_imm_attitudes_R_script.R for the data preparation and analyses that support the findings of this study are available within the article’s supplementary materials. The package is available at https://osf.io/xufmg/.