Terrorism, migrant crisis and attitudes towards immigrants from outside of the European Union

This paper analyses how terrorist attacks and high inflows of immigrants impact public attitudes towards immigrants from outside the European Union (EU). It makes an original contribution by analysing both effects in tandem, using an extended longitudinal framework to assess both shorter and longer term impacts and taking into account the role of uncertainty. Ordered probit regression models are applied to data from nine consecutive Eurobarometer (EB) surveys to examine impacts of 25 terrorist attacks in Western Europe in 2014–2018. Attacks with higher number of deaths significantly increase negative attitudes to immigrants although the effect fades over time. However, the 2015 migration crisis had a significant, greater and more sustained impact on attitudes towards immigrants than terrorist attacks. The differences in attitudes to migrants in the EU15 countries and post‐communist countries provide support for the assumptions of the intergroup contact theory rather than the group threat theory.