The Waiting is the Hardest Part: Queue Frames and US Immigration Attitudes

• In Event: Political Affect and Racialized Groups

Abstract

Irregular immigrants are frequently described as “cutting in line” ahead of ostensibly more deserving and law-abiding citizens. This common metaphor for demonizing immigrants came into common use in the US around 2003. More recently, it has been invoked by scholars including (but not limited to) Arlie Russell Hochschild in her study of Tea Party voters' reactions to an array of identity politics, social class, and social welfare program issues. We believe that the use of the frame of line-standing in politics has powerful and troubling implications for the ways in which many ordinary people think about distributive justice. In this paper we introduce insights from disciplines outside of political science (primarily sociology, management behavior, and law) to explore why line-standing is a powerful and pernicious political frame. We hypothesize that the line-cutting metaphor increases an association between waiting and deservingness. In turn, this association decreases support for immigrants seen as contravening the metaphorical line for citizenship. We test this hypothesis using a survey experiment embedded in the 2018 Cooperative Congressional Election Survey. In a series of questions about immigration levels and policy, we expose half of respondents to a line-cutting frame and half to no frame. We expect that the exposure to the line metaphor will increase negative associations and drive down support for a pathway to citizenship for undocumented immigrants.

Authors

• Elizabeth F. Cohen, Syracuse University

• Shana Kushner Gadarian, Syracuse University