How Do State Conceptions of Nationalism Influence Public Attitudes Towards Refugees?

Do state conceptions about the nation and community affect how individuals view refugees and refugee resettlement? Although there has been a considerable amount of literature that has investigated individual level characteristics and attitudes about refugees, the classic literature on nationalism suggests that individual attitudes are also shaped by national contexts. We test whether attitudes about refugees are also shaped by national conceptions regarding citizenship and community. I examine whether public support for refugee resettlement is likely to be higher in countries where citizenship is based on a more civic conception of nation as opposed to an ethnic conception of nation. Further, we test whether there is more support for refugees among individuals in countries where community is defined as an agglomeration of different cultural communities (through composite nationalism) versus where the community is monocultural and immigrants are expected to assimilate (through dominant nationalism). Using data from the World Values Survey (wave 7), as well as data on types of nationalism (Cetra & Swenden 2021), we test these theoretical expectations.