How Hard-Work Narratives Shape Immigrants' Attitudes Towards Racial Inequality (Pre-Recorded)

• In Event: Privileging Migrants' Voices

Abstract

Immigrants to the US are often portrayed as a uniquely hard-working and self-sacrificing group. Even during times of increased anti-immigrant sentiment, arguments about immigrants' perseverance and unique work ethic take center stage among defenders of immigration. In this paper, I ask how these narratives, which I term "immigrant hard-work narratives", shape immigrants' perceptions of racial inequality in the US.

Narratives about deservingness and hard work are pervasive in Americans' beliefs about racial inequality. Portrayals of African-Americans as lazy and undeserving are often used to justify racial hierarchies. On the other hand, immigrant hard-work narratives position immigrants as an inherently deserving group, sometimes in implicit contrast to African-Americans. I hypothesize that immigrant hard work narratives play a different role for immigrants and native-born Whites. For immigrants, these narratives are a type of positive ingroup narrative, which elevates their group over that of "undeserving" African-Americans, and thus increases anti-Black attitudes. However, native-born Whites' views of immigrants are folded into their broader views of racial "Others", which includes African-Americans. As such, belief in immigrant hard work narratives does not negatively affect native-born Whites' perceptions of African-Americans.

Using a combination of ANES, GSS, and CCES data, I find that immigrants of all races are more likely to see African-Americans as lazy than native-born Americans of the same race. These views are especially prevalent among more acculturated immigrants, suggesting that American culture plays a role in fomenting anti-Black attitudes. Using an original survey of immigrants and native-born Americans, I find a positive relationship between belief in immigrant hard-work narratives and anti-Black attitudes among immigrants, but not native-born Whites. Furthermore, an original survey experiment shows that priming these narratives increases anti-Black sentiment in immigrants, but again, not in native-born Whites. These results shed light on how immigrants learn to justify racial inequality in the US during the process of incorporation.

Author

• Masha T Krupenkin, Boston College