Beyond Anti-Urban Sentiment: Immigrants as a Rural Social Identity Out-Group

• In Event: Discrimination and Prejudice

Abstract

Previous research has established that rural identity predicts various factors corresponding to right-wing political support. This research rests on the assumption that some rural residents (i.e., those who socially identify with rural areas) feel resentful of non-rural areas – the primary out-group - because rural residents feel disrespected by such individuals. However, I argue that another out-group of rural identifiers are immigrants, a group perceived to be favored by the urban-centered elite. Such sentiment echoes expectations from right-wing populism as well as from Social Identity Theorists, who argue that groups lower in status, such as rural areas, try to preserve in-group status by shifting the negative out-group comparison with another low-status group. Using an original online two-wave panel survey and survey experiment of American adults (YouGov, N = 1,875), I find that: 1) rural social identifiers tend to hold stronger anti-immigrant policy attitudes than low rural social identifiers, controlling for other factors, 2) experimentally manipulating symbolic pro-rural sentiment significantly impacts feelings toward undocumented immigrants for stronger rural identifiers, and, 3) increases in rural social identity over time predict harsher immigration policy stances using cross-lagged models. These results suggest that rural social identity encompasses group-based considerations still related to place (i.e., perceived co-national versus foreigner) but existing outside of purely urban-rural categories.

Author

• Kristin Kay Lunz Trujillo, Harvard University