Lasting Effects of Transient Exposure to the Greek Refugee Crisis

• In Event: New Directions in Immigration Research

Abstract

We investigate whether transient exposure to refugees can durably affect native attitudes and behavior. Our case is Greece’s refugee crisis, which saw a sudden influx of more than 1 million refugees in 2015 following the escalation of conflicts in the Middle East. We capitalize on the fact that the Aegean Islands—the epicenter of the refugee crisis—are home to the campus for the University of the Aegean (UA), which draws students from across Greece. We conduct a targeted survey (N=3,900) of student cohorts that attended university prior to or during the refugee crisis. Employing an instrumented difference-in-difference design and a matching strategy informed by distinctive features of the Greek university admissions system, we compare the current-day attitudes, preferences, and behavioral dispositions of students who attended the University of the Aegean and thereby had significant exposure to refugees during the crisis, to otherwise similar students who attended university elsewhere and thus had limited exposure. Our findings paint a more complex picture than existing work; students who attended UA during the crisis have more favorable attitudinal and behavioral dispositions towards refugees today, but also simultaneously support more restrictive immigration policy.

Authors

• Nicholas Sambanis, Yale University

• Donghyun Danny Choi, Brown University