The article addresses the public responses to social crises and focuses on possible differences between people's attitudes to migration and economic crises. Based on the empirical results of the Slovenian Public Opinion - European Social Survey, the article analyses the public's attitudes to migrations in the 2002 to 2016 (or 2014) period. Its aim is to find, by interpreting the differences between individual opinion polls, some answers to the question of how big events like the economic recession (2008) and the so-called "refugee/migration crisis" (2015; 2000/2001) affect public opinion modelling. The analysis confirmed a correlation between the political discourse and public opinion responses to migration, and confirmed the apparent paradox between the professed general support for migrants and its drop when confronted with the physical presence of migrants on "our borders" or in "our territory". These public perceptions reveal the coincidence of political classifications as a central mechanism of public migration policies.

Public opinion Economic crisis sustainable development Contemporary migrations Classification of migrants Refugee crisis

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