YOUTH 2020 - The position of young people in Slovenia

General trends in young people’s values and attitudes  59 1.5  VALUES AND BELIEFS ABOUT MIGRANTS, REFUGEES, AND ETHNIC MINORITIES We begin this section by considering data on the amount of social dis- tance young people have towards different groups, including refugees. Figure 1.12 shows that young Slovenes have become less distant in the past two years. The share of those feeling (very) bad about a different demographic group moving into their neighbourhoods has shrunk. The sharp reduction of felt social distance towards Western European families is particularly interesting. We must note, though, that the mean answer on a scale from 1 to 5 has not significantly changed (it has moved from 2.30 to 2.27). This is due to a reduction in the share of those answer- ing the question with a 4 or a 5. The middle has increased considerably (those answering with a 3 have gone from 38% to 63%). The reduction in social distance is to be explained primarily with the increased tolerance of young Slovenians towards “new neighbours” in general, which is tied to the aforementioned trend of increasing tolerance among young people. We included the “Western European family” case in our questionnaire so as to measure how respondents react to those migrating from a cul- turally familiar environment, which then allowed us to compare this baseline with reactions towards other, less familiar “new neighbours”.