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What drives the public opinion on asylum policy in the Netherlands?
Author(s) -
Bolt Gideon,
Wetsteijn Eva
Publication year - 2018
Publication title -
tijdschrift voor economische en sociale geografie
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.766
H-Index - 55
eISSN - 1467-9663
pISSN - 0040-747X
DOI - 10.1111/tesg.12320
Subject(s) - judgement , ethnic group , immigration , neighbourhood (mathematics) , refugee , public opinion , competition (biology) , demographic economics , social psychology , political science , scale (ratio) , psychology , sociology , economics , law , geography , politics , mathematical analysis , ecology , mathematics , cartography , biology
Among the citizens of Western Europe, Dutch residents appear to be the least supportive of a generous judgement of asylum applications. In line with the perceived ethnic threat theory, people with a higher level of education advocate a more generous judgement of asylum applications than people with a low level of education. Surprisingly, income has the opposite effect. The effect of the (perceived) presence of out‐groups members on the attitudes towards asylum seekers appears to vary between different scale levels. Those with a higher level of education estimate the size of the immigrant groups at the national level, the less support they express for a generous judgement of asylum applications. At the neighbourhood level, more interethnic exposure leads to more support for a generous judgement of asylum applications. This may indicate that the ethnic competition theory works at a macro level, while at the neighbourhood level the contact hypothesis applies.