Can Immigrants Be Good Citizens? A Conjoint Experiment in Three Democracies

• In Event: Experimental Research About Attitudes Toward Pluralism and Discrimination

Abstract

What makes a good citizen? Are foreign-born citizens penalized for obtaining citizenship by naturalization, a designation that signals immigrant status? Using a preregistered conjoint experiment in three, immigrant-receiving advanced democracies (United States, United Kingdom, and Germany), I examine how individuals weigh the relative value of immigrant status alongside other behavioral and ascriptive attributes of democratic citizenship. The findings confirm the idea that native-born citizens are evaluated as “good citizens” more than foreign-born citizens in all three cases, despite differences in citizenship policy and immigrant history. Similarly consistent results across three cases also show that “good citizens” are defined as more participatory, informed, self-sufficient, and Christian. The implication is that people evaluate good citizens in ways we would expect that promote participatory democracy, but also in ways that preserve ethnocultural norms and exclusion despite (or in spite) of robust diversity.

Author

• Sara Wallace Goodman, University of California, Irvine