What Do We Reliably Know about European Perceptions of Muslim Asylum Seekers?

Abstract

Immigration restrictions imposed by national governments are arguably the factor most responsible for the European Refugee Crisis (ERC). As immigration policies do not fall under the remit of European Union sovereignty, the union’s democratic nations are free to operate their own regimes. Although the primary drivers of national immigration policies have been identified as both economic and cultural in nature, empirical evidence suggests that the latter is of greater significance. Given that the perceived fear of value incompatibilities forms the basis of all cultural arguments against immigration, it was necessary to investigate the accuracy of perceptions of Muslim Asylum Seeker Values (MASV) by administering surveys in two countries at the opposite end of the immigration policy spectrum: Hungary and the Netherlands. Hungarians significantly overestimated MASV extremity while Dutch people underestimated them. Moreover, the results indicated that perceptions of MASV extremity correlate with immigration policy preferences.