Acceptance of climate migrants in Norway
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We investigated the joint effects of reason for migration (economic vs. climate), race (Black vs. White), and socioeconomic status (low vs. high) on migrant acceptability judgments among a national sample of Norwegian residents (N = 1637) using a preregistered survey experiment. The results indicate that climate migrants are more acceptable to participants than economic migrants, and White migrants are preferred to Black migrants. There was also an interaction between reason for migrating, race, and social status whereby Black, low social status, and economic migrants were less accepted than any other migrant profile. Our study suggests that framing migrants’ motivation in terms of environmental influences, compared with economic motivations, has potentially major effects on migrant acceptance in receiving societies.
