Europe remains a destination of an ongoing influx of asylum seekers. The
attempts to build an EU-wide political consensus around refugee policy have so
far failed. This article provides a perspective on EU citizens’ preferred policy
towards refugees and asylum seekers at both the EU and domestic levels. A
hidden policy consensus is identified in which European citizens across all social
and ideological backgrounds prefer refugees to have the right to work but their
freedom of movement to be restricted while their application for asylum is being
processed. At the same time, the mode of refugee allocation between countries,
which has been prominent in political debates across Europe, is relatively unimportant to respondents, as they focus on the domestic level rather than EU-level policy. The widespread consensus on support for refugees’ participation in the labour market may unite EU citizens around cautious hospitality by deemphasising allocation principles, and stressing country-level solutions.