The 2010s migrant crisis cost the lives of many immigrants on their way to Europe. In 2015 alone, about 3,800 immigrants and refugees died trying to cross the Mediterranean Sea on board of large vessels or small floating boats. Among those tragic incidents, two specific occurrences are investigated here: over the course of a week in April 2015, about 1,200 people drowned in two consecutive events after their boats capsized in the Mediterranean Sea. Later that year, on September 2^nd, Alan Kurdi, a 3-year-old Syrian boy, tragically drowned. We used these two incidents to investigate the “identifiable victim effect” on public opinion toward immigrants using a natural experiment framework, based on the timing of the European Social Survey in Portugal. Results showed that the tragic drowning of an identified child can affect a change in public sentiment, in contrast to the drowning of more than a thousand statistical victims. We also examined the temporal pattern and duration of the effect on public sentiment, and found that the impact of Alan Kurdi's death lasted for a little over a month and significantly abated, with public sentiment returning to the same level of opposition to immigration as before the incident.

2010年代的移民危机使许多移民在前往欧洲的途中丧生。仅在2015年，就有约3,800名移民乘坐大型船只或小型浮船试图越过地中海而丧生。在这些悲剧事件中，这里调查了两个具体事件：2015年4月的一个星期中，大约有1200人在其船在地中海倾覆后连续两次溺死。那年^下半年，9月2日，三岁的叙利亚男孩艾伦·库尔迪（Alan Kurdi）不幸溺水身亡。我们使用这两个事件，以自然实验框架为基础，根据葡萄牙欧洲社会调查在葡萄牙的时间，调查了公众舆论对移民的“可识别受害者效应”。结果表明，与一千多名统计受害者的溺水相比，被确认儿童的悲惨溺水会影响公众情绪的变化。我们还研究了对公众情绪影响的时间模式和持续时间，发现艾伦·库尔迪（Alan Kurdi）的死亡影响持续了一个多月，并且已大大减轻，公众情绪恢复到与移民之前相同的反对水平。事件。