The politics of sea migrants in Southern Europe: public attitudes and policy implications

Journal article

Abstract:: This brief report reviews some recent research on the politics of sea migration at the Southern European border, and in particular Italy, with two primary objectives. First, I seek to briefly illustrate how public attitudes towards migrants at sea in this region are neither monolithic nor unconditionally concentrated in certain areas; rather, public reactions correspond to a combination of emotional and utilitarian considerations that exist across many receiving communities and make public opinion sensitive to migrants’ life experiences. Second, I note the implications of sea migration events and their associated public reactions for policy and agenda setting. I hereby discuss how public opinion activation is fundamental for policy reactions, and why institutional responsiveness has been disrupted and limited.

Files:: Genovese_2025_The_politics_of.pdf

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Language:: English
Keywords:: migration policy

public opinion

FFR

sea migrants

Southern Europe

refugees
Pubs id:: 1608323
Local pid:: pubs:1608323
Deposit date:: 2024-01-30

Copyright holder:: Federica Genovese
Rights statement:: © 2024 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial- NoDerivatives License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, and is not altered, transformed, or built upon in any way. The terms on which this article has been published allow the posting of the Accepted Manuscript in a repository by the author(s) or with their consent.

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