Refugee Integration and Host Community Social Cohesion in Europe

Abstract

The 2015–2016 European refugee crisis brought over 1.3 million asylum applications to European Union member states, generating significant political and social pressures in receiving communities. The sociological literature on immigrant integration and social cohesion has long grappled with the tension between the multiculturalism thesis—that cultural diversity enriches social life and can be managed through inclusive institutions—and the diversity-cohesion hypothesis proposed by Putnam (2007), which argues that ethnic diversity reduces social trust and civic participation in the short to medium term. This paper critically examines evidence from the 2015 refugee crisis on host community attitudes, social trust dynamics, and integration outcomes, using panel survey data and natural experiment designs exploiting the quasi-random dispersal policies used by Germany, Sweden, and Denmark. We find that initial proximity to refugee reception centers reduces trust among host community members in the short term, but that positive intergroup contact through employment and civic participation partially reverses this effect over a 2–3year horizon.