Young Adults' Feelings about Refugees amid the COVID-19 Pandemic: The Case of the Netherlands

Introduction 

The COVID-19 pandemic has created serious challenges both for individuals’ and societies’ resilience, demanding constant mental and behavioral adaptation. Generally, there are two competing views on how large-scale threats such as the COVID-19 pandemic may affect societies and the relations between different subgroups that exist within these societies. One position argues that the exposure to common threats may be helpful to appease once conflicting groups, as global threats may bring about a sense of unity by reinforcing broader and more inclusive group identities (i.e., identification with all humanity). Another position, however, posits that the perception of threat exacerbates existing intergroup conflicts by promoting an orientation toward a narrowly defined in-group (i.e., national group) that goes along with the perception of out-group members as competitors for limited resources. The present analysis series will explore how feelings about refugees are associated with the perception of the COVID-19 threat, national identification, identification with all humanity, contact with refugees, trust in the government, political orientation, and socio-economic status and gender across different countries. The analysis series will present descriptive results from survey data that has been collected from university-educated young adults (between 18 and 30 years old) through the convenience sampling method. This analysis will present data from the Netherlands