You Can Go Your Own Way: How Transit-Country Migration Attitudes Are Influenced by European Union Ideals

Western Balkan countries aspiring to membership in the European Union (EU) provide the region with soft border control, housing or repulsing migrants who had hoped to reach Western Europe. These policies can be unpopular domestically, especially compared to the third option of ignoring migrants and letting them travel on their way. To justify providing such migration management, transit-country governments attribute their policy choices to a combination of European values and mandates imposed by European organizations. Do their constituents respond to such externalized attributions of responsibility? Relying on cellphone samples collected using random digit dialing (RDD) in Albania and Kosovo during winter 2018–2019, our survey experiment tests whether reminding respondents of EU expectations actually sways transit-country public opinion. We find that an EU-oriented framing does increase citizens’ support for pro-refugee policies somewhat but does not necessarily increase the relative willingness to house the migrants, even among pro-EU respondents. If anything, it increases the temptation to let migrants travel on their way, accentuating the oft-noted underlying tension between Europe’s perceived security interests and publicized ideals.