Migrants, Between Discrimination & Prejudice: Experimental Evidence from Mexico

• In Event: Democratic Attitudes, Populism, and Opposition to Immigration in Latin America

Abstract

The number of migrants worldwide has been increasing rapidly in the last fifteen years. In parallel, the rhetoric of the populist right that seeks to criminalize them has become more intense. While there are numerous studies in migrant reception countries, little is known about the degree to which public opinion reacts to migrants in transit countries. After deriving hypotheses about the way in which the national origin and skin tone of the migrant can influence the propensity of individuals to be criminalized, we test these hypotheses using an original experiment developed in Mexico, the country with the highest volume of migration of transit in the world. We find that other things constant, migrants are more likely to be criminalized when they have a darker skin tone. Surprisingly, contrary to mainstream social identity theory and consistent with the “black sheep hypothesis” we find that darker skin-tone respondents are more and no less likely to criminalize their co-ethnics. Also contrary to our initial expectations we find that Mexicans tend to be more lenient towards Central American migrants than citizens from other regions.

Author

• Daniel Zizumbo-Colunga, CIDE