Objections to asylum seeker centers: Individual and contextual determinants of resistance to small and large centers in the Netherlands

Abstract

Over the last 15 years, numerous asylum seeker centres (ASCs) have been founded in the Netherlands, often preceded and followed by neighbourhood unrest. In this contribution we show to what extent people object to the foundation of ASCs of different sizes. We set out to answer the question of which individual and contextual characteristics contribute to explaining objections to ASCs of different sizes. We use a large-scale survey of a representative sample of the Dutch population. To these individual level data we added contextual information related to the postal code and the municipality respondents live in. We find that objection to large centres is far more widespread than objection to small centres. Lower educated people object more strongly to centres, whatever the size. People with high incomes tend to object to large centres more strongly than people with low incomes. At the contextual level we find that in neighbourhoods with high values for real estate, people object more strongly to small centres. Municipalities with high percentages of low income populations object to small centres more strongly. The percentage of ethnic minorities at the postal code or municipality level is not related to objection to centres, whereas the actual presence of an ASC in the neighbourhood decreases objections.