Openness toward migration, before and after COVID-19

m obilit Y - r el A ted i m P li C A tions o F C ovid - 19 F or r e C eiving Co U ntries 105

Drivers of attitudes toward migrants

The literature on attitudes toward migrants identifies two main economic determinants: labor market competition and fiscal redistribution. Low-skilled workers are more likely to favor lower immigration because an influx of migrants may reduce their wages through increased competition (Scheve and Slaughter 2001). Conversely, in countries where natives are relatively more skilled than immigrants, high-skilled natives are more likely to be pro-immigration (Mayda 2006). In North and West Africa, people who see their country’s labor market to be doing well are 15 percent more likely to have a positive view of immigrants than those who see the labor market as doing poorly (Borgnäs and Acostamadiedo 2020).

However, a large body of evidence suggests that natives consider not only labor market outcomes but also the fiscal costs of immigration when taking a stance on immigration policy (Dustmann and Preston 2006, 2007; Facchini and Mayda 2009, 2012; Hanson, Scheve, and Slaughter 2007).

Noneconomic factors such as concerns about cultural identity have also been shown to affect natives’ attitudes toward migration. Hainmueller and Hiscox (2007) find that anti-immigration views are more strongly correlated with cultural values related to national identity than with personal economic circumstances. Reviewing findings from the political economy and political psychology literature, Hainmueller and Hopkins (2014) conclude that these patterns hold for Canada, the United States, and Western Europe.

In the economics literature, Dustmann and Preston (2007); Mayda (2006); Card, Dustmann, and Preston (2012); and O’Rourke and Sinnott (2006) find similar results in support of the important role of cultural concerns in determining attitudes toward migrants. In a more recent investigation, Tabellini (2020) focuses on migration to the United States during the early half of the twentieth century. The study shows that opposition to migration was particularly severe against migrants with more-different cultural backgrounds in terms of religion and linguistic distance from English.

Perceived health threats are an additional noneconomic factor affecting attitudes toward migration. A body of literature shows that such perceptions may foster negative attitudes. In a psychological experiment, Faulkner et al. (2004) conclude that when presented with the threat of disease, people react more negatively toward subjectively foreign outsiders but not subjectively familiar outsiders. Schaller and Neuberg (2012) explain that propaganda is partially to blame for fostering negative attitudes that link subjectively foreign people with disease. Looking at the Ebola epidemic, Kim, Sherman, and Updegraff (2016) find that American survey participants who felt less able to protect themselves from Ebola were more likely to respond negatively to the survey questions about foreigners.

106 b U ilding resilient migr A tion s Y stems in t H e mediterr A ne A n region

Attitudes since the onset of COVID-19

The experiences of past health crises suggest that COVID-19 may lead to scapegoating of minorities. In an experimental study in the United States, O’Shea et al. (2020) find that priming participants with disease-related images increased pro-white sentiments, especially among the most germ-averse, which can partially explain increased racism during public health crises. Reviewing social responses to 11 past health crises, Jedwab et al. (2020) conclude that epidemics and pandemics may be more likely to lead to social conflict where intergroup tensions are already high and where governments and other public officials promote or permit scapegoating and policies that lower public trust. The characteristics of the COVID-19 pandemic suggest a mild scapegoating scenario, which could turn into a violent scapegoating scenario in cases where tensions are already high.

An emerging number of studies point to the link between COVID-19 and antiforeigner sentiment: • A Eurobarometer survey shows that at the beginning of the pandemic between

March and June 2020, public opinion toward immigrants turned more negative (Ratha et al. 2021). • In Ireland and the United Kingdom, people exhibited more nationalism and antiimmigrant sentiments when the perceived threat of the pandemic spreading was high (Hartman et al. 2021). • As the spread of COVID-19 increased, so did exclusionary attitudes toward foreigners. However, when people had more contact with foreigners, these effects were mitigated (Yamagata, Teraguchi, and Miura 2021). • In the United States, COVID-19 sparked racial animus against Asians, as measured by the share of Google searches and tweets that included an anti-Asian racial slur (Lu and Sheng 2020). The authors use spatial-temporal variation in the timing of the first local COVID-19 diagnosis and find that racist online language increased in the week after COVID-19 arrived in an area. However, the severity of the pandemic in an area did not lead to more racist language.

Some experimental evidence also shows that COVID-19 fuels harmful behaviors against foreigners (Barto˘s et al. 2020). In a large-scale experiment in the Czech Republic in March to April 2020 (when the entire population was under lockdown), more than 2,000 participants were asked to increase or decrease rewards to different sets of people at no monetary costs to themselves. During this period, there were decreases in the amounts of money participants chose to give to people living abroad as well as to migrants (although the latter decrease was not statistically significant). Making this decision shortly after answering a set of questions about COVID-19 magnified the average extent of this nation-based discrimination, the authors find.

Return migrants have also faced discrimination from people in their countries of origin. In Ethiopia, for instance, because of the quarantine measures put in place for return migrants (among other reasons), many Ethiopians believed returnees