Amid the rise in anti-immigrant sentiment across much of the western world in recent years, a common trend was visible across nations.  In cities, where immigration tends to be higher, acceptance of immigrants and immigration was much higher than in communities where there was not much immigration.  The notion seemed to be that actual experiences with migrants dampened any negative sentiment towards immigrants.

It’s a topic explored in new research from New York University, which explored the situation in Germany, where Angela Merkel famously opened the country to around a million refugees after the Syrian civil war caused so many to flee the country.

The research examined over 200 communities across East Germany, where anti-immigrant sentiment was widespread to see if those opinions changed after refugees settled.  The data suggests that the kind of familiarity which has previously been thought to be important was not influential in this instance.

“Widespread reservations about migration appear to have less to do with the local situation than with the impact of migration on society as a whole,” the researchers explain.

Views on immigration

The researchers looked at 236 communities in all, from Saxony-Anhalt, Mecklenburg-West Pomerania, Thrunigia, Saxony, and Brandenburg.  Each of the regions had relatively few foreigners before the refugee crisis in 2015, and xenophobic attitudes were widespread in each of the communities.

Around half of the communities took in refugees, so the researchers were able to examine whether this exposure changed the attitudes within the communities both with and without greater immigration.  They also assessed local election results from 2013 to 2017, as well as conducting interviews with over 1,300 people from the communities.

“Our aim was to discover whether the attitudes and behaviour of locals towards immigrants changed when they were living side by side. It was conceivable that exposure to refugees could boost xenophobia. At the same time, contact with refugees might also lead to more positive attitudes towards foreigners,” the researchers explain.

Alas, it transpired that neither was the case, with the researchers suggesting that personal experiences with refugees was not that important in guiding either the attitudes of people or their voting behavior.

This doesn’t mean that the arrival of refugees had no impact at all on either of these things, of course, but rather that the local exposure didn’t seem to have much of an impact.

“On the one hand, it is plausible that the reception of numerous refugees since 2015 led to growing ill feelings and to the rise of the AfD in recent years,” the researchers say. “But our study shows that it did not depend on whether people were exposed to refugees in their immediate context.”

Interestingly, while attitudes collectively across communities that received refugees didn’t change much, on an individual level, attitudes appeared to converge, resulting in anti-migration attitudes softening, and migration-friendly attitudes becoming somewhat more critical.