Waiting for Asylum: Reduced Institutional and Interpersonal Trust

Refugees arriving in Western countries spend long periods, often over a year, as asylum seekers. We examine how the period affects asylum seekers’ institutional and interpersonal trust. Drawing on theories of need gratification, we suggest that several needs are unfulfilled during this period of existential limbo. Still, some aspects in the new society are positive, especially in Sweden, the host country of this study. To study these combined forces, we rely on repeated interviews with the same asylum seekers as well as other quantitative approaches. Results show that both types of trust are reduced over time, suggesting that the negative aspects take precedence. We also present results based on a matching analysis, which indicate that interpersonal trust at the beginning of the asylum-seeking process is higher compared to similar refugees in Jordan and Lebanon. Overall, our results show that trust can be highly malleable in certain circumstances.