Public Opinion toward Asylum Seekers in Post-Communist Europe: A Comparative Perspective

Abstract

ABSTRACT The study examines public attitudes toward asylum seekers in seven post-communist countries—Czechia, Estonia, Hungary, Lithuania, Poland, Russia, and Slovenia—from a cross-national comparative perspective. Based on the 2016 European Social Survey, the findings reveal that the level of exclusionary attitudes toward asylum seekers in post-communist Europe is higher than that in Western Europe, although it varies meaningfully across post-communist countries. The study considers cross-country variance in the exclusionary attitudes in light of countries’ structural characteristics, including ethno-cultural composition of local populations. Individual-level analysis examines divides in the exclusionary attitudes along socio-economic, ethnic, and religious lines within the native-born populations.