Immigration and Punitive Responses to Criminal Violence

• In Event: The Politics of Migration in Latin America

Abstract

Several Latin American democracies are experiencing simultaneous policy challenges: an unprecedented wave of Venezuelan migrants, a rise in criminal violence, and increased authoritarian attitudes among the mass public. Our paper asks whether Latin American citizens favor a more punitive response to criminal violence when crimes are perpetrated by Venezuelan migrants. We argue that natives favor a harsher response against newcomers because crimes perpetrated by immigrants activate threat perceptions, which leads people to draw a sharper distinction between in-groups and out-groups. We test this expectation by using public opinion data from Chile. We assess whether salient assassinations of police officers lead to more punitive anti-crime preferences when the perpetrator is Venezuelan. We also conduct a survey experiment to evaluate whether the national origin of a criminal suspect (Chilean or Venezuelan) affects the punishment preferences of people in Chile. Finally, we assess the effectiveness of two policy interventions to reduce punitive discrimination against Venezuelan migrants.

Authors

• Giancarlo Visconti, University of Maryland, College Park

• Miguel Carreras, University of California, Riverside

• Sofia B. Vera, University of Kansas