Framing Contentious Events at the U.S. Southern Border and Support for Migration

• In Event: Popular Mobilization and State Violence in Latin America

Abstract

Immigration from Latin America through Mexico to the United States southern border has increasingly produced confrontations with security forces, such as migrants demonstrating against and facing possible repression from the United States Border Patrol. Does the framing of these contentious immigration events affect public support for their participants and U.S.-Mexico bilateral immigration policy? This paper argues that migrant-security agent confrontations are akin to other contentious events, and that attitudes toward event participants depends on the portrayal of participant motives, racial identity, and countries of origin. In particular, we expect migration framed as evading political repression, composed of racial identities corresponding to respondents’ in-groups, and fleeing regimes corresponding to respondents’ out-groups will generate support for migrants and opposition to immigration restrictions. With survey experiments in the United States and Mexico, we test our hypotheses, potentially revealing tensions in the immigration policy implications of our findings across the two cases.

Authors

• Pearce Edwards, Carnegie Mellon University

• Daniel Arnon, University of Arizona