Overcoming prejudices and stigmatization towards refugees: A novel approach through deliberative citizen dialogues in Turkey

Can changing how refugees and asylum seekers are narrated in public debates help citizens reassess their prejudices? Which narratives would garner support from ordinary citizens and promise to generate an attitude shift? While hate speech and far-right narratives targeting forcibly displaced people, refugees and asylum seekers are reported extensively, little is known about how citizens would respond to alternative narratives that portray them as rights-bearing agents. This study uses an interdisciplinary theoretical framework that brings migration scholarship in dialogue with cognitive fields and social psychology and offers a novel participatory approach to generate data. In eight cities across Turkey, citizens were invited to deliberate three sets of 'de-stigmatizing narratives' based on (1) social solidarity, (2) collective memory of welcoming and settling refugees in the past, and (3) the injustices of exploitation that refugees encounter while earning a living. Participants were steered to discuss each narrative through (a) progressive framing (fairness, egalitarianism, and social cohesion) and (b) conservative-nationalist framing (maintenance of law, order, and identity). The findings reveal that engaging with de-stigmatizing narratives evokes affective empathy, leading to moderate, refugee-supportive attitudes among participants even in a context where anti-refugee attitudes have escalated to communal attacks targeting refugees. However, positive attitudes towards refugees display a local turn, varying by city and often after progressive frames are supported by conservative-nationalist ones. The study highlights the importance of participatory community mobilization and sub-national/local approaches to shift, counter, or replace prevailing narratives to help reduce misinformation and prejudices about refugees.