Immigrant Political Behavior

Session Submission Type: Full Paper Panel

Session Description

Immigrants are growing as a population and a political force worldwide. 45 countries offer some voting rights to non-naturalized residents. Naturalized citizens are substantial voting blocks in multiple industrial democracies, including the US. This panel explores the political behavior of immigrants in comparative perspective. It includes 2 papers on immigrants in the US, 1 from Colombia, and a fourth comparing industrialized democracies. The panel is also methodologically rich - the papers present an original survey, a survey experiment, behavioral experiments, and a meta-analysis.

Mayya Komisarchik and Bethany Lacina will present a meta-analysis of research on immigrants’ opinions about immigration policy. Their paper utilizes surveys from three decades and multiple industrialized democracies. Contrary to popular belief, immigrants are only tepid supporters of liberal immigration policy. The goal of this paper is to assess the plausibility of three sources of immigrants’ attitudes toward immigration: assimilation pressures; individual-level cost/benefit analysis; and sociotropic cost/benefit analysis. This paper’s use of observational data will set the stage for three new empirical studies of immigrant political behavior.

Roberto Carlos and his coauthors will give a paper that proposes a theory of anti-immigrant attitudes among Latinxs living in the United States. They argue that even documented or locally-born Latinx individuals may experience embarrassment over illegal entries by people from Latin America. At APSA, Carlos et al. will be presenting the results of a survey vignette experiment that measures whether undocumented migration is a source of embarrassment for Latinx respondents and tests the hypothesis that this embarrassment is a strong predictor of immigration policy attitudes.

Margaret Peters, Daniel Rojas, and Yang-Yang Zhou use behavioral experiments to explore how migrants react to stereotypes about their group. Their focus is on Venezuelan immigrants living in Colombia. A Colombian stereotype about such immigrants is that they are lazy and reliant on state support. The authors expect that Venezuelan migrants behave more generously toward Colombians in experimental games when their migrant identity has been made made known compared to game in which they can pass as a local. When their identity as migrants is revealed, Venezuelans display more generosity, trying to counter the stereotypes against them.

Jesse Acevedo (University of Denver) will deliver a paper on abortion policy preferences among Salvadoran-born people living in the United States. This will be a presentation of new results from an original on-line survey. This paper broadens the focus of the literature on immigrant political behavior, turning away from the usual focus on attitudes toward immigration and examining other salient political attitudes. The results will also shed new light on debates on assimilation, given the large gap between abortion attitudes in the United States compared to El Salvador.

Finally, this panel will benefit from two discussants with substantial expertise in the study of citizenship and migration: Janelle Wong and Hannah Walker.

Sub Unit

• Division 32: Race, Ethnicity, and Politics

Individual Presentations

• Transnational Abortion Policy Preferences across the Salvadoran Diaspora - Jesse Acevedo, University of Denver

• Dignity Beliefs: A Lab Experiment with Venezuelan Migrants and Colombians - Margaret E. Peters, University of California, Los Angeles; Daniel Rojas, University of British Columbia; Yang-Yang Zhou, Dartmouth College

• Anti-immigrant and Pro-immigrant Attitudes in the Latinx Community - Vanessa Cruz Nichols, Indiana University; Clinton Willbanks, University of Texas at Austin; Christopher Cassella, University of Texas at Austin; Seung Wook Ethan Yoo, University of Texas at Austin; Roberto Carlos, University of Texas, Austin; Miranda Sullivan; Allison Verrilli, University of Texas, Austin

• Immigrants on Immigration: Evidence from 30 Years of Survey Data - Mayya Komisarchik, University of Rochester; Bethany Lacina, University of Rochester

• Who Votes? Influences on Latino Subgroup Turnout since 1980 - Beth Ginsberg, University of Connecticut; Sarah Van Perez, University of Texas Rio Grande Valley

Chair

• Bethany Lacina University of Rochester

Discussants

• Janelle Wong

• Hannah Walker University of Texas at Austin