Valuing Refugee Policy. A cross-country study on the preferences for refugee policy in Europe.
The main objectives of this project were to advance the theory, methods and empirical foundations for studying policy preferences and behavior towards refugees and asylum seekers in the context of the Refugee Crisis in Europe. The project addressed the issues of exposure to media messaging as well as the impact of a large exogenous factor – war in Ukraine on citizen refugee policy preferences and behavior.
A CAWI stated choice experiment in 10 European countries (Poland, Hungary, Serbia, Slovenia, Bulgaria, Denmark, Germany, Austria, Spain, and Portugal) was executed in January and February 2022, and followed by a 2nd wave in Germany, Hungary and Poland immediately after the outbreak of war in Ukraine in February-March 2023. The 3rd wave in Germany, Hungary and Poland will take place in February-March 2024.
The project started on December 1, 2020. Wave 1 was funded by the NCN (Narodowe Centrum Nauki) grant no 2019/33/B/HS6/00841, wave 2 by the Politics Department of the University of Warsaw and wave 3 is funded by Centre for Excellence Grant Scheme, IDUB, University of Warsaw. The project is based at the Department of Politics and International Studies and Centre of Excellence in Social Sciences, University of Warsaw.
Project publications:
Letki, N., Dinesen, P.T., Walentek, D. & Liebe, U. (2026). „Have Populist Right Supporters’ Views on Refugee Policy Radicalized under the Ukrainian Crisis? Evidence from a three-wave survey experiment.” Party Politics, online first.
Walentek, D., Letki, N., Dinesen, P.T & Liebe, U. (2025). „Measuring the effect of media framing on behavior towards refugees.”European Union Politics 6(4), 714-735.
Letki, N., Walentek, D., Dinesen, P.T & Liebe, U. (2025). „Has the war in Ukraine changed Europeans’ preferences on refugee policy? Evidence from a panel experiment in Germany, Hungary and Poland.” Journal of European Public Policy, 32(1), 1-25. Jeremy Richardson 2025 JEPP Best Paper Award.
Letki, N., Walentek, D., Dinesen, P.T & Liebe, U. (2024). „We polled EU citizens on what they want asylum policy to look like – their answers may surprise you.” The Conversation.
Graban, A. (2024). „Instrumentalisation of fear and securitisation of “Eastern Borders Route”: the case of Poland-Belarus “border crisis” European Security 33(2), 236-260.
Letki, N., Walentek, D., Dinesen, P.T & Liebe, U. (2024). „Not the mode of allocation but refugees’ right to work drives European citizens’ preferences on refugee policy.” West European Politics, 47(4), 867-892.
Team
dr hab. Natalia Letki
Principal Investigator
dr Dawid Walentek
Postdoctoral Researcher
Artem Graban
PhD Student
Prof. Ulf Liebe
External Expert (University of Warwick)
Prof. Peter Thisted Dinesen
External Expert (University of Copenhagen)