Impact of Crime Rate and Other Macro-Level Indicators on Threat Perceptions Towards Immigrants and Refugees

• In Event: Refugees, Immigration, Punishment and Policing

Abstract

Limited research exists in the Australian context on whether macro-level factors play a role in shaping support for restrictive policies towards immigrants and refugees. Previous findings highlighted that viewing immigrants, refugees, and asylum seekers as criminal, cultural, and economic threats influenced support for restrictive migrant/ refugee and asylum seeker rights. This study incorporates the state-level crime rate, unemployment rate, and the gross state product with waves of the Australian Election Study between 1996-2019, to address the following research questions: (1) To what extent do macro-level factors, when combined with perceptions that migrants are a criminal, cultural and economic threat, extend support towards restrictive immigration/ refugee and asylum seeker policies? And (2) How do such views vary across different demographics of the population at different time points? This analysis examines the heterogeneity of these attitudes through a series of linear regression models. Examining these trends allows us to observe the extent to which these factors play a part in influencing individual threat perceptions and policy outcomes toward outgroups.

Author

• Thamali Ranasinghe, The University of Queensland