Causal impact of the 2015 European refugee crisis on resident immigrants’ life satisfaction

Purpose By exploiting the exogeneity of the unexpected 2015 European refugee crisis, the paper’s purpose is to analyze the causal impact of the crisis on resident immigrants’ life satisfaction. Due to the ongoing anti-immigrant sentiments, we argue that the refugee crisis and the build-up to it affect how resident immigrants are looked upon in a negative light; this in turn could consequently be reflected in their life satisfaction. We anchor the natives’ hostility toward the refugees and immigrants on the group-threat theory. Design/methodology/approach Using two waves of the European Values Study, we exploit the exogenous source of variations generated by the crisis and employ a difference-in-differences estimation framework to identify the causal impact. Findings Our findings indicate negative impact of the refugee crisis on resident immigrants’ life satisfaction. We find negative impact of the refugee crisis on the life satisfactions of resident immigrants with low education levels. Our results also suggest that resident immigrants in Western European countries experience lower life satisfaction after the crisis. Originality/value The literature so far mostly revolves around the impact of the crisis on natives’ objective well-being. We find it surprising that the literature has not fully utilized the rare opportunity afforded by the refugee crisis to analyze its impact on resident immigrants’ subjective well-being. Peer review The peer review history for this article is available at: https://publons.com/publon/10.1108/IJSE-01-2024-0093