Special Eurobarometer 346: New Europeans

This Eurobarometer survey has been commissioned in order to gain insight in European citizens' connectedness to other countries. Connectedness is a broad, rich concept; it can take several forms, objective or subjective. The challenge in this research was to identify a category of 'New Europeans': who are they, where can we find them? They were defined as people who live in the EU and have connections with more than just the country where they live. "New Europeans" tend to be hidden in the existing data sources and include children of migrants, mixed couples, international students, retirement migrants and expats.
Building analytical variables:
Two key analytical variables were constructed
• 'New Europeans by ancestry'
• 'New European by openness'
• 'Old Europeans'
In this report, we compare the answers from respondents who are 'New Europeans by openness' from those who are not in this category: we will name the latter 'respondents not open to other countries'. Similarly, we compare the answers from respondents who are 'New Europeans by ancestry' from those who are not in this category: we will name the latter 'respondents without foreign descent'.
Four different types of connectedness:
• Family background
Respondents’ place of birth and that of their parents and grandparents, supplemented with the citizenship of their grandparents at birth.
• Personal links
Respondents’ personal relationships with other people who live abroad or come from abroad: close friends, brothers, sisters, children, parents and/or a partner they live or have lived with.
• Personal experience
Respondents’ own experience of living in another country in the past because of work, education or owning property.
• Socio-cultural links
This can take various forms, such as a preference for foreign cuisine, an interest in news, cultural life or sports of another country, spending leisure time abroad or having foreign language skills.

The results by volumes are distributed as follows:

• Volume A: Countries
• Volume AA: Groups of countries
• Volume A' (AP): Trends
• Volume AA' (AAP): Trends of groups of countries
• Volume B: EU/socio-demographics
• Volume B' (BP) : Trends of EU/ socio-demographics
• Volume C: Country/socio-demographics

Researchers may also contact GESIS - Leibniz Institute for the Social Sciences: https://www.gesis.org/eurobarometer