YOUTH 2020 - The position of young people in Slovenia

General trends in young people’s values and attitudes  61 Even though the last two years have seen a fall in social distance felt by youth towards all of the measured groups, this measure remains high in the case of the Roma and refugees. Only 7% of young Slovenes would feel uneasy about a Western European family moving into their neighbourhood, but a whole 56% would feel similar unease in the case of refugees moving in. That young Slovenians have misgivings about refugees is also attested by the high share of those that agree with the claim that our government should be more restrictive towards illegal immigrants; 30% of respond- ents somewhat agree with the statement, while a further 34% complete- ly agree with the statement. Additional analyses show a strong correlation between agreeing with this statement and feeling social distance towards refugees (r = 0.52; p < 0.01). Furthermore, 46% of all respondents both say that they would like the government to increase border restrictions and control, and feel social dis- tance towards refugees. This leads us to conclude that almost half of young Slovenians do not think fondly of accepting refugees coming to Slovenia. That those wanting stricter border control actually have negative atti- tudes towards refugees themselves is corroborated by other correlations. Respondents agreeing with the statement about border control feel sig- nificantly higher social distance towards the Roma (r = 0.39; p < 0.01) also agree much more that employers should favour Slovenes when con- sidering job applicants (r = 0.59; p < 0.01), and are much more convinced that Slovenia has become a worse country to live in due to immigrants coming here from other countries (r = 0.51; p < 0.01).