Suchergebnisse

Has mass migration from Mexico since the 1980s contributed to a well-documented decline in US social capital? Theories linking ethnic diversity to lower social cohesion and participation (e.g., Putnam 2007, 30, 137) would strongly predict this effect. Yet the impact of immigration in particular, rather than ethno-racial diversity generally, on US social capital has not been examined. Assessing the impact of immigration is important because some have speculated that associations between measures of diversity and social capital found in the United States are a byproduct of the country's distinctively fraught history of black–white relations. This scope condition would greatly limit the applicability of Putnam's thesis. To assess the impact of Mexican immigration, this study leverages a dynamic measure of social capital and an instrumental variables design. The results address an important recent methodological critique of the broader literature and strongly corroborate the hypothesis that immigration erodes social capital.

Prominent social psychological and economic theories link ethnic diversity and low-skilled immigration to reduced provision of public goods. Both the level of ethnic diversity and the presence of low-skilled immigrants have increased dramatically in the United States since the 1960s. Immigration from Mexico has been the largest and most persistent driver of these demographic shifts. This dissertation theorizes and then explores empirically whether and how Mexican immigration has influenced local fiscal policy and related public preferences. Applying a new instrumental variables design, it finds little evidence that Mexican immigration has eroded local government spending on public goods or reduced tax receipts, though there is evidence that it has substantially increased the level of public debt. Subsequent chapters turn to explaining why Mexican immigration did not erode public goods spending as predicted. Leveraging the shock in the rate of naturalization among Mexican immigrants that followed the 1986 Immigration Reform and Control Act's legalization program, it argues that the acquisition of citizenship by Mexican immigrants helps explain non-negative effects of Mexican immigration on public goods provision and taxation. On the other hand, an analysis of 2006-2012 national survey data reveals that Mexican immigration does induce natives to express less support for public goods spending and taxation and less support for progressive taxation in particular. These findings suggest that while Mexican immigration does erode public support for the provision of public goods, these changes in public opinion do not in turn translate straightforwardly into the policy changes predicted in much of the literature on ethnic diversity and public goods. Finally, there is evidence that Mexican immigration increases mass polarization by heightening constraint between ideological identification, immigration policy preferences, and preferences over budgetary policy.

What do Americans want from immigration policy, and why? -- Civic fairness and group centrism -- Functional assimilation, humanitarianism and support for legal admissions -- Civic fairness and the legal-illegal divide -- Civic fairness and ethnic stereotypes -- Assimilation, civic fairness and the "circle of we" -- Conclusion.

What do Americans want from immigration policy and why? In the rise of a polarized and acrimonious immigration debate, leading accounts see racial anxieties and disputes over the meaning of American nationhood coming to a head. The resurgence of parochial identities has breathed new life into old worries about the vulnerability of the American Creed. This book tells a different story, one in which creedal values remain hard at work in shaping ordinary Americans' judgements about immigration. Levy and Wright show that perceptions of civic fairness - based on multiple, often competing values deeply rooted in the country's political culture - are the dominant guideposts by which most Americans navigate immigration controversies most of the time and explain why so many Americans simultaneously hold a mix of pro-immigrant and anti-immigrant positions. The authors test the relevance and force of the theory over time and across issue domains.

Threatened reactions to news about the approach of a racial majority-minority society have profoundly influenced Americans' political attitudes and electoral choices. Existing research casts these reactions as responses to changing demographic context. We argue instead that they are driven in large part by the dominant majority-minority narrativeframingof most public discussion about rising racial diversity. This narrative assumes the long-run persistence of a white-nonwhite binary in which the growing number of Americans with both white and non-white parents are classified exclusively as non-white, irrespective of how they identify themselves. Alternative narratives that take stock of trends toward mixed-race marriage and multiracial identification also reflect demographic fundamentals projected by the Census Bureau and more realistically depict the country's twenty-first century racial landscape. Using three survey experiments, we examine public reactions to alternative narratives about rising diversity. The standard majority-minority narrative evokes far more threat among whites than any other narrative. Alternative accounts that highlight multiracialism elicit decidedly positive reactions regardless of whether they foretell the persistence of a more diverse white majority. Non-white groups respond favorably to all narratives about rising diversity, irrespective of whether they include the conventional majority-minority framing.

AbstractFor Dauvergne (2016), one consequence of the "end of settler societies" is nativism, or what she calls "mean‐spirited politics": anti‐immigrant, anti‐Muslim, anti‐Multiculturalism. This accords with the prevailing tone of public opinion literature on the subject, which links anti‐immigrant hostility in settler societies to influxes of diversity and associated racial threat. In this essay, we determine just how closely this stylized vision of anxiety‐fuelled nativism resembles the true state of mass opinion about immigration. Using a variety of surveys fielded in recent years, we show that Americans: 1) hold generally positive views about immigration, though with a substantial dose of ambivalence about its consequences; 2) are not especially consistent in their policy attitudes over time; 3) express policy attitudes that readily depart from their underlying predispositions, and; 4) have only become more pro‐immigrant in recent years, and whatever partisan polarization exists on the issue stems from the fact that Republicans are becoming more positive at a slightly slower pace than Democrats. All of this suggests that, while there is a hard core of ethnocentrism and "mean‐spiritedness" in the U.S., the prevailing tone is much less negative than the standard portrayal assumes.

Projections of changes in racial demographics depend on how race is classified. The U.S. Census Bureau makes several different projections of the nation's racial demographic future, but the most publicized version projects our racial future in a way that narrows the definition of race groups to exclude people who are of mixed race or Hispanic. This definition results in projections of many fewer "whites," accelerating the impending decline of the country's white majority and perhaps heightening white audiences' anxiety about demographic change. We conducted an experiment that randomly assigned whites to read alternative news stories based on 2014 Census Bureau projections. One story emphasized growing diversity, a second emphasized the decline of the white population to minority status, and a third described an enduring white majority based on intermarriage and inclusive white identity. Much higher levels of anxiety or anger, especially among Republicans, were recorded after reading the white minority story than the alternative stories of diversity or an enduring white majority.