Does the welfare entitlement of refugees reduce openness to refugee migration? A survey experiment on the welfare entitlement of Ukrainian refugees in the United Kingdom

Abstract

ABSTRACT This article uses an original survey experiment to assess whether the social and employment rights available to refugees affects the openness of citizens in receiving countries to greater refugee flows. Some authors have argued that more extensive rights for immigrants make citizens more reluctant towards immigration flows. We test this argument in the context of the reception of Ukrainian refugees in the United Kingdom. Our results show that exposing individuals to information on the welfare entitlements of refugees does have a small negative effect (about −0.53 on average on a 0–10 scale) on their openness to greater refugee flows. Meanwhile, exposing individuals to information on the ability of refugees to work and possibly contribute to the economy has no discernible positive effect on openness to refugee flows. The impact of the treatments is strongly conditioned by pre-existing views on immigration: the negative effect of information on welfare entitlement is more than three times larger among respondents who held already negative views of immigration.