Intergroup Relations During the Refugee Crisis: Individual and Cultural Stereotypes and Prejudices and Their Relationship With Behavior Toward Asylum Seekers.

Hege H Bye

doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2020.612267

Abstract

In this paper, I investigate intergroup relations between natives and asylum seekers during the European refugee crisis, and contribute to the reemerging methodological debate on the measurement of stereotypes and prejudices as individual and collective constructs. Drawing on data from the Norwegian Citizen Panel (NCP; N = 1,062), I examined how Norwegians stereotyped asylum seekers at the height of the refugee crisis and the emotional prejudices asylum seekers as a group elicited. By experimentally manipulating the survey question format, I examined whether and how stereotypes and emotional prejudices toward asylum-seekers differed depending on their measurement as individual or collective constructs. A subset of respondents (n = 228) had reception centers for asylum-seekers established in their local community during the crisis. These participants reported their behaviors toward the asylum seekers in their neighborhood. In this subsample, I investigated how individual facilitating and harming intergroup behavior was related to individual and collective conceptualizations of stereotypes and prejudices. The results showed that both low warmth and low competence stereotypes, as well as negative emotions toward asylum seekers, were rated as stronger when measured as collective as compared to individual-level constructs. In the individual condition, respondents reported feeling more admiration and sympathy than respondents in the collective condition attributed to others. Individual stereotypes and prejudices correlated systematically with individual facilitating and harming intergroup behaviors. The perception that others hold more negative stereotypes of asylum seekers, and the perceived anger and fear of others, did correlated with individual harming behaviors. Perceptions of others’ anxiety correlated negatively with facilitating behaviors. Implications and future directions for the conceptualization and measurement of stereotypes and emotional prejudices are discussed.

Highlights

During the 2015/2016 refugee crisis, more than 1 million people sought refuge in Europe, the majority fleeing from the war in Syria (UNHCR, 2016)
The experiment was embedded in a larger survey module including questions about the establishment of reception facilities for asylum seekers in the participants’ neighborhood, and how respondents had behaved toward asylum seekers hosted in ASCs established in their local community in response to the crisis
Among the subgroup of the respondents who had had an ASC established in their neighborhood in the last year, the results showed that individual stereotypes and emotional prejudices were consistently correlated with individual harm and facilitation toward asylum seekers in line with Stereotype Content Model (SCM) and Behavior from Intergroup Affect and Stereotypes (BIAS) Map predictions

Summary

Introduction

During the 2015/2016 refugee crisis, more than 1 million people sought refuge in Europe, the majority fleeing from the war in Syria (UNHCR, 2016). A range of factors – from the number of asylum seekers entering the country to political discourse and government policies – varied across receiving nations. During the course of 1 year, Norwegian authorities responded to the refugee influx by establishing 259 reception centers for asylum seekers (asylum seeker centers; ASCs) in local communities across the country (Bygnes, 2020). Many of whom were later granted refugee status, being lodged in an ASC provided the first local context for cultural contact and acculturation. Local and national environments may be adaptive or restrictive for asylum seekers’ acculturation processes (Donà and Young, 2016; Bruneau et al, 2018), depending on factors such as settlement policies, economic support, and access to healthcare. From a social psychological perspective, central features of reception contexts are the stereotypes, prejudices and intergroup behaviors of members of the receiving communities (Esses et al, 2017)

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Conclusion