Poster by Mattis Hein¹, Guido Hertel¹
¹ Universität Münster, Germany
TIME: Thursday, 16 July, 12:00 – 13:15
Location: Break Room
Session: Poster Session
Abstract
Integration of refugees depends on how the resident population of their destination country accepts their claim to shelter and is willing to integrate the newcomers into society. Support for refugee intake largely relies on how refugees themselves, the migration reasons, and the chances of successful integration are perceived and evaluated by residents. Based on schema theory, we predicted that this perception is not only based on objective facts but also on preexisting values. We assessed neoliberal values as a source of interindividual differences, since they represent a philosophy based on both individual responsibility and the idea of success through personal merit, which can be in conflict with the core concept of external force driving migration decisions. In two experimental online studies conducted on German samples (total N = 1917), we examined the effect neoliberal beliefs have on the perception of refugees’ migration history and how these perceptions shape emotions and opinions. Both studies relied on different vignettes describing the migration stories of refugees coming to Germany. In the first experiment, we examined how neoliberal beliefs influence the perception of migration forcedness. In the second experiment, we expanded on the findings by taking individual behavior during migration into account, testing how it influences the perception of refugees as potential workers in Germany. Results showed a complex influence of neoliberal beliefs on refugee perception: While stronger neoliberal beliefs decrease the perception of external threat as a reason for migration and substantially lower sympathy towards refugees, they also increase the perception that refugees can successfully integrate in the labor market. Beyond that, the results consistently show that neoliberal beliefs do not influence the way factual information is interpreted, but rather appear as a generalized perception bias. These results provide evidence that general worldview and specifically neoliberalism are complex and underestimated factors in explaining the perception of refugees in large parts of the population.