Age and Agency: Sources of Attitudes toward Refugee Children (With Kerim Can Kavakli).
Despite comprising over 40\% of the global refugee population, children have received little attention in studies on attitudes toward refugees. Across four pre-registered experiments in the U.S. and Turkey (N=9,884), we show that age serves as a key heuristic in refugee evaluations: children are perceived as more vulnerable, easier to integrate, and, crucially, lacking agency over their migration decisions. This effect is robust across demographic and political subgroups and is comparable in magnitude to gender-based differences in refugee support. Our results demonstrate that perceptions of refugee agency (shaped by demographic traits like age) play a central role in host community attitudes. These findings suggest that refugee advocacy efforts can increase public support for refugees by highlighting the prevalence of children among refugee populations. More broadly, our research highlights the need to integrate age groups beyond adulthood into studies on public opinion and migration policy.