Cultural Awareness and the Perception of Refugees in the United States

Background and Purpose

The study aims to understand how the general public views refugees and what factors are associated with negative or positive views on refugees. Refugees may face social, cultural, and economic barriers to adapting to life in a new country. How the general public perceives refugees may exacerbate or lower these barriers. Understanding the public’s attitudes toward refugees can help social workers identify and overcome barriers to ensuring social harmony and integrating culture. It also provides implications for policies to support refugees. The study uses recent and unique survey data to examine how the public thinks about refugees.

Methods

Our study employed a unique approach, collecting data from a nonprobability sample of 815 U.S. residents through the Amazon Mechanical Turk (MTurk) service. To gauge public perception of refugees, we devised eight survey items on a Likert scale. Four items were designed to measure the extent to which refugees are seen as a societal burden or threat (negative), while the other four measured the extent to which refugees are seen as a societal benefit (positive). The survey also included basic sociodemographic questions and a scale to measure cultural awareness, adapted from Tartakovsk and Walsh’s (2016) study. We also included questions about the respondents' interaction with refugees. Descriptive statistics and structural equation models were then employed to explore how the respondents’ cultural awareness and interaction with refugees are associated with their perception of refugees.

Results

Our analysis revealed that respondents' overall perceptions of refugees tended to be neutral. The majority of the respondents viewed that refugees brought benefits and threats to the United States. We found respondents with a higher level of cultural awareness are also more likely to report having a positive perception of and overall more favorable feeling toward refugees. Also, those who reported extensive interactions with refugees tended to have more positive views of refugees. Interestingly, the same group of people also showed a higher level of negative views of refugees. This could suggest that their experiences with refugees have been mixed or complex. On the one hand, positive interactions such as forming friendships or collaborating closely with refugees may have enriched their lives and expanded their perspectives, contributing to their positive perceptions. Conversely, negative encounters such as concerns about job competition or frustrations with language and cultural barriers could have led to their negative perceptions.

Conclusions and Implications

While the study's findings may not apply universally, they suggest the vital connection between cultural awareness and the public's perception of refugees. This highlights the importance of fostering cultural understanding and diversity in refugee policy. The results also suggest that while creating more opportunities to interact with refugees could contribute to more positive views, it is also equally important to understand what kinds of interactions those should be.