Description

Between 2014 and 2016, the EU has been confronted with one of the greatest crises in its history, the European refugee crisis. Not only did the crisis challenge pillars of the European project such as the doctrine of free movement, it might have also influenced individuals’ assessments of immigration and European Integration, as well as the relationship between anti-immigrant sentiment and Euroscepticism. Using data from three waves of the European Social Survey (ESS) – the wave before the crisis in 2012, the wave at the beginning of the crisis in 2014 and the wave at the (perceived) height of the crisis in 2016 – I test the degree to which these conjectures hold. For one, my results indicate that there is a consistent and solid relationship between more critical attitudes toward immigration and increased Euroscepticism. Even more importantly and more relevant for my research question, however, I find that the crisis neither increased anti-immigration sentiments nor critical attitudes toward the EU nor did it reinforce the link between rejection of immigrants and rejection of the EU.

Daniel Stockemer is Associate Professor of Comparative Politics at the University of Ottawa. His research interests include electoral politics, social movements, political representation, and European Politics. Daniel has published two books, one edited volume, and more than eighty articles in peer-reviewed journals, in among others Electoral Studies, Party Politics and European Union Politics. He is editor of the ECPR Journal European Political Science (EPS).