WICE · Welcoming immigrants in Central and Eastern Europe: lessons from Russia's invasion of Ukraine

The negative attitudes towards immigration in Central and Eastern European (CEE) countries were on clear display during the 2015/2016 immigration crisis, particularly in the Visegrád Group countries, but also in the Baltics. Against this backdrop, the overwhelming support for Ukrainians fleeing the war in CEE has come as a surprise to many. It has highlighted the huge inequalities in the treatment of Ukrainians vs. other third country asylum seekers and clearly revealed conditionality of migration and integration systems as well as their potential for change. While there have been countless examples of populist leaders being able to successfullystoke hostility towards immigrants, there is little evidence to indicate what can systematically decrease anti-immigrant sentiments in CEE on such a broad scale.Making use of the unique historical conditions, the project draws from scientific disciplines often overlooked in research on attitudes towards migrants (memory studies, history, security studies, political science, behavioural economics, communication etc.) aiming to generate an original understanding of societal attitudes that go beyond ‘xenophobia’ and ‘prejudice’, and raises broader questions about the relationship between structural, political, cultural, economic, ideological, and agential influences on attitudes towards immigration.The project is based on case studies of three CEE countries (Poland, Latvia, Hungary) and Italy as a benchmark case. While most previous research focuses on negative narratives surrounding immigration, this project seeks to learn from the experience with Ukrainian refugees in CEE and looks for practical solutions on how to effectively counter the negative narratives. In addition to qualitative research methods, it relies on a novel experimental survey design based on full factorial analysis to test how attitudes are influenced by different characteristics of migrants and different framing (information treatment)