The impact of a sudden asylum seeker influx on host attitudes: Quasi-experimental evidence from South Korea

Seonho Shin

World Development, 2025, vol. 192, issue C

Abstract: How native residents, in response to asylum seekers’ inflows, change their attitudes and perceptions toward non-natives has recently become a topic of intense research. However, most previous studies have focused exclusively on Western countries. The present study offers the first evidence on this issue from an East Asian context, specifically investigating South Korea, which has not traditionally been a destination for forcibly displaced individuals (excluding North Korean defectors). For causal evidence, this paper exploits the sudden influx of Yemeni asylum seekers to Jeju Island in South Korea, which only impacted the island ‘locally’—due to the region’s unique visa-exemption policy and the government’s immediate restrictions on the asylum seekers’ post-arrival cross-region movement off the island. Furthermore, the geographic feature of the island eliminates spill-over concerns, providing a unique, ideal quasi-experimental setting. The difference-in-differences estimates suggest that the abrupt influx of asylum seekers decreased host residents’ multicultural acceptance and negatively affected their attitudes and perceptions toward non-natives. Notably, strong heterogeneity seems to exist, depending on hosts’ economic (e.g., education, income, employment status) and non-economic (e.g., age, multicultural education) factors. This study extends its examination to various other outcomes, such as neighborhood preference and national pride.

Keywords: Asylum seekers; Outgroup attitudes and perceptions; Multicultural acceptance; Difference-in-differences (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: F22 J15 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0305750X2500066X
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:wdevel:v:192:y:2025:i:c:s0305750x2500066x

DOI: 10.1016/j.worlddev.2025.106981

Access Statistics for this article

World Development is currently edited by O. T. Coomes

More articles in World Development from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().