Taking Whose Jobs? How Employment Security Shaped Europeans’ Responses to the 2015 Migrant Crisis

The 2015 European migrant crisis accelerated the rise of immigration as a central dimensionof political competition, yet Europeans’ responses to this shock were far from uniform. Currentwork largely explains this variation in terms of exposure to labor market competition and economicrisk whilst paying less attention to how protection from such risks shapes their reactions. Thisarticle examines how variation in employment security conditions Europeans’ responses to the 2015migrant crisis, arguing that individuals with greater protection from risk will exhibit less exclusionaryresponses. Using a difference-in-differences framework and data from waves 5 through 9 of theEuropean Social Survey, I show that individuals with higher employment security exhibit smallershifts toward exclusionary attitudes, but do not systematically differ in their movement towardanti-immigrant parties. These findings highlight the importance of distinguishing between exposureto risk and protection from its consequences in explaining heterogeneous responses to migration.