Public Attitudes toward Immigration

Annual Review of Political Science, 2014, Volume 17, Forthcoming

30 Pages Posted: 4 Jul 2013 Last revised: 2 Oct 2013

See all articles by Jens Hainmueller

Jens Hainmueller

Stanford University - Department of Political Science; Stanford Graduate School of Business; Stanford Immigration Policy Lab

Daniel J. Hopkins

University of Pennsylvania

Multiple version iconThere are 2 versions of this paper

Date Written: September 2013

Abstract

Immigrant populations in many developed democracies have grown rapidly, and so too has an extensive literature on natives’ attitudes toward immigration. This research has developed from two theoretical foundations, one grounded in political economy, the other in political psychology. These two literatures have developed largely in isolation from one another, yet the conclusions that emerge from each are strikingly similar. Consistently, immigration attitudes show little evidence of being strongly correlated with personal economic circumstances. Instead, research finds that immigration attitudes are shaped by sociotropic concerns about its cultural impacts — and to a lesser extent its economic impacts — on the nation as a whole. This pattern of results has held up as scholars have increasingly turned to experimental tests, and it fits the evidence from the United States, Canada, and Western Europe. Still, more work is needed to strengthen the causal identification of sociotropic concerns and to isolate precisely how, when, and why they matter for attitude formation.

Keywords: immigration attitudes, political economy, political psychology, prejudice, cultural threat, public opinion

JEL Classification: F1, F22, J61, J31, R13

Suggested Citation

Hainmueller, Jens and Hopkins, Daniel J., Public Attitudes toward Immigration (September 2013). Annual Review of Political Science, 2014, Volume 17, Forthcoming, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=2289270 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2289270

Jens Hainmueller (Contact Author)

Stanford University - Department of Political Science ( email )

Stanford, CA 94305
United States

HOME PAGE: http://www.stanford.edu/~jhain/

Stanford Graduate School of Business ( email )

655 Knight Way
Stanford, CA 94305-5015
United States

Stanford Immigration Policy Lab

30 Alta Road
Stanford, CA 94305
United States

Daniel J. Hopkins

University of Pennsylvania ( email )

Stiteler Hall
Philadelphia, PA 19104
United States

HOME PAGE: http://www.danhopkins.org

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