YOUTH 2020 - The position of young people in Slovenia

60 Figure 1.13: Social distance felt towards different social groups, 2018 and 2020. Do you think immigrants from abroad made slovenia a worse or a better place to live in? (0 = »a lot worse«; 10 = »A lot better«) Slovenia Italy Hungary Austria Germany 3.0 3.5 4.0 4.5 5.0 5.5 6.0 2002 2010 2012 2014 2016 2018 2020 Source: Youth Studies Southeast Europe 2018/2019, Mladina 2020. Looking at the data in this light, we can see that such a “relative social distance” felt towards refugees is high. In 2020, only 7% of young people had misgivings about new neighbours from Western Europe, while the share of those expressing worries about refugees stood at 56%. The dif- ference is a whopping 49 percentage points. This difference – what we call “relative social distance” – was higher in 2020 than in 2018, when it stood at 40.6 percentage points. It is true that, in 2020, the intolerance of Slovenian young people towards both the Roma and refugees in general was lower than in 2018; the intolerance towards Roma was 9 percentage points lower. Still, the more indicative “relative social distance” was higher in 2020 than in 2018.