title: How economic, humanitarian, and religious concerns shape European attitudes toward asylum seekers.
abstract: What types of asylum seekers are Europeans willing to accept? We conducted a conjoint experiment asking 18,000 eligible voters in 15 European countries to evaluate 180,000 profiles of asylum seekers that randomly varied on nine attributes. Asylum seekers who have higher employability, have more consistent asylum testimonies and severe vulnerabilities, and are Christian rather than Muslim received the greatest public support. These results suggest that public preferences over asylum seekers are shaped by sociotropic evaluations of their potential economic contributions, humanitarian concerns about the deservingness of their claims, and anti-Muslim bias. These preferences are similar across respondents of different ages, education levels, incomes, and political ideologies, as well as across the surveyed countries. This public consensus on what types of asylum seekers to accept has important implications for theory and policy.
authors.affiliation: Department of Political Science, Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305-6044, USA. Immigration Policy Lab, Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305-6044, USA and University of Zurich, 8050 Zurich, Switzerland.
authors.forename: Kirk
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Bansak
authors.affiliation: Department of Political Science, Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305-6044, USA. Immigration Policy Lab, Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305-6044, USA and University of Zurich, 8050 Zurich, Switzerland. Graduate School of Business, Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305-6044, USA. jhain@stanford.edu.
authors.forename: Jens
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Hainmueller
authors.affiliation: Immigration Policy Lab, Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305-6044, USA and University of Zurich, 8050 Zurich, Switzerland. Department of Government, London School of Economics and Political Science, London WC2A 2AE, UK.
authors.forename: Dominik
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Hangartner
mesh_terms: D000533:Altruism; D001290:Attitude; D002835:Christianity; D004641:Emigration and Immigration; D004651:Employment; D005060:Europe; D006801:Humans; D007514:Islam; D011639:Public Opinion; D012036:Refugees; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires