How do Europeans differ in their attitudes to immigration?: Findings from the European Social Survey 2002/03 – 2016/17

Nordic countries such as Sweden, Norway and Finland have been consistently the most favourable to immigration while eastern European countries such as the Czech Republic and Hungary have been the least favourable. Despite their relatively high average levels of support for immigration, however, many countries of western and northern Europe are quite strongly polarized internally along educational and age lines. This can perhaps explain why political divisions over immigration can be so salient in these countries. Comparing results from 2002/03 and 2016/07, one finds that European attitudes were on average quite stable. However, a number of countries became more generous while several others became more negative. On the issue of government policy towards refugees, there was a marked shift in a negative direction after the 2015/16 refugee crisis. Countries such as Austria, Germany, and Sweden which had experienced large inflows of refugees showed particularly large declines in public support for generous government policy towards asylum requests.