Seminar: Political Debates and the Integration of Ukrainian Refugees

Speaker: Hanno Hilbig

Affiliation: UCDavis – Political Science
 

Summary: 

Following Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the EU and its member states allocated over €33 billion in military aid to Ukraine, sparking widespread debates about the appropriate level of support. Do these debates affect how Ukrainian refugees in Europe perceive their host countries? To investigate this question, we conducted a survey experiment among Ukrainian refugees in Germany. We exposed participants to authentic statements from German politicians either supporting or opposing increased military aid to Ukraine. Although exposure to opposition statements shifted refugees’ perceptions of Germany’s military support as intended, it did not significantly affect their overall views of Germany’s support for Ukrainian refugees, their sense of belonging, or their intentions to return to Ukraine. Further analysis using observational data from the German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP) suggests that similar political debates in 2022 were associated with shifts in refugee perceptions, but these effects faded by 2023. These findings suggest that even contentious political debates about supporting refugees’ country of origin may have little impact on refugees’ perceptions of integration into host countries over time. Our study contributes to a broader understanding of refugee integration processes and their relation to political discourse.