Threat perception as a shaper of pro- and anti-refugee sentiment in Central and Eastern Europe

We are pleased to welcome Lenka Dražanová to our MIDEM Digital Talk! In the upcoming lecture she will discuss the differences in Western Europeans‘ attitudes towards people displaced from Syria and Ukraine, revealing insights from her latest research.

Threat perception is typically viewed as a driver of public opposition to immigration. By analysing attitudes in Central European countries to the mass displacement that occurred from Ukraine following the full-scale Russian invasion in February 2022 her study shows that threat perception can also drive more positive attitudes toward migration flows. She highlights the importance of geo-political and historical dynamics for forming attitudes toward refugees in contemporary Europe. To develop this argument, she gathered original survey data in two waves in the years 2022 and 2023 in five CEE countries (Czechia, Hungary, Poland, Romania, and Slovakia) and three comparator Western European countries (Austria, Germany and Italy). She also embedded an experiment within the survey to analyse differences in attitudes to people displaced from Syria and those from Ukraine. She found respondents in all surveyed countries to be overwhelmingly positive towards accepting Ukrainian refugees with respondents in CEE countries being significantly more supportive of Ukrainian rather than Syrian refugees.