April 28, 2026 | News | PHD

Congratulations, ­­
Chia-Jung Tsai!

Chia-Jung Tsai from the Laboratory of Migration and Mobility at the Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research (MPIDR), successfully defended her doctoral thesis, “Factors Shaping Public Attitudes and Responses to Refugee and Immigrant Populations: Examining the Interplay of Demographics, Media, and Contextual Influences“, at the University Pompeu Fabra. Her findings contribute to our understanding of how public opinion toward refugees and immigrants is shaped by various factors, such as the media, demographic composition, and the COVID-19 pandemic.

Left to right: Jan Karem Höhne (UPF), Chia-Jung Tsai and John Palmer (UPF). On screen in the back (left to right): Bella Struminskaya (Utrecht University), Martin Kroh (University of Bielefeld) and Emilio Zagheni (MPIDR) © private

In her dissertation, Chia-Jung examined the factors that shape public attitudes toward refugees and immigrants in Germany. She placed particular emphasis on the interplay between demographic conditions, the media, and contextual influences such as historical divisions and the COVID-19 pandemic.

She demonstrated how media coverage amplified the effect of the influx of refugees on public attitudes toward immigration during the refugee crisis from 2011 to 2017. The effects were more pronounced in the eastern German states than in other parts of Germany. Using a survey experiment, Chia-Jung also demonstrated that a higher ratio of men to women in non-white refugee groups can intensify the perceived threat among locals. Gender-specific differences in threat perception are also evident here. She also focused on how the perception of health risks influenced ethnically motivated avoidance behavior during the COVID-19 pandemic. Her findings illustrate that the link between perceived threats and avoidance behavior—particularly toward people associated with Asian backgrounds—is mediated by trust in information from social media and personal acquaintances.

Chia-Jung was part of the International Max Planck Research School for Population, Health and Data Science (IMPRS-PHDS), a doctoral program combining demography, epidemiology and data science. The dissertation was supervised by Emilio Zagheni, John Palmer (UPF), Robert Gordon Rinderknecht, and Daniela Perrotta.