Political legacies and present perceptions of migrants

Abstract This paper examines the long-term impact of past political processes and events on current perceptions of immigration. As a case study, we focus on contemporary public perceptions of migrants by citizens of the Baltic states and ask how historical migration patterns and policies within the former Soviet Union are reflected in these perceptions. Our analysis is based on original survey data collected from nationally representative samples in Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania. Employing structural topic modeling (STM), we analyze over 1,100 responses to an open-ended survey question asking respondents to describe the group that comes to mind when thinking about immigrants in their country. Using STM allows us to identify socially meaningful themes, as highlighted by the respondents, and without bias from any predefined categories. Our findings demonstrate that, while Russia’s invasion of Ukraine featured significantly in the responses, the Soviet political legacy and the related Soviet era migration continue to shape perceptions of migrants in the Baltic States thirty years after their independence. Thus, even in the context of the most salient migration-related events, such as war, past geo-political processes can play a significant role in the formation of current public perceptions of immigration.