Public attitudes on migration and confidence in the European Union. Searching for explanations among threat perception, political views, social capital, trust and life satisfaction
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2024-06-19
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en
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This thesis examines the relationship between public attitudes on migration and the level of support for the European Union across 21 Member States in 2017/2018. Immigration has been a salient topic within the public and political debate the past couple of years, and according to previous studies, individuals’ attitudes on immigrants influence the level of support for the European Union. This study has demonstrated how this potential relationship can be explained by factors like cultural/economic threats, political ideology, level of life satisfaction and level of trust and social capital. This research was conducted by executing a confirmatory factor analysis which was incorporated in a structural equation model. The results of the quantitative methods demonstrate that the level of life satisfaction of an individual and the perceived economic threat caused by immigrants serve as meaningful explanatory factors. They explain the established relationship between public attitudes on migration and the level of confidence in the EU. Higher life satisfaction leads to a small increasement of trust in the EU whereas a higher perceived level of economic threat has a clear decreasing effect on the level of trust in the European Union.
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Faculteit der Managementwetenschappen