Relational Asians? Attitudes towards Immigrants in Three Asian Countries

• In Event: Public Attitudes, Immigration, and Refugees

Abstract

Do theories regarding the determinants of attitudes towards immigrants travel to non-Western contexts? I apply and extend the existing explanations for attitudes towards immigrants to East Asia, where a large portion of immigrants are coming for a family unification reason, claiming marriage ties with natives or blood connections to native ancestors. Drawing on social psychology literature on the impact of an individual’s cultural background on their attitudes and behaviors, I argue that immigrant attitudes of people from collectivistic cultures are largely motivated by interpersonal ties. To do so, I use a choice-based conjoint design that enables me to manipulate many attributes at once. Specifically, immigrant characteristics that represent different dimensions of successful assimilation, such as profession, education level, language skill, religious affiliation, number of native friends, migration motivation, gender, and country of origin, are manipulated within a table comparing two pairs of immigrants. The findings of this paper indicate that native preferences for immigrants in Asia largely follow a similar pattern to those found in the Western context, but they differ in that kinship and friendship connections are emphasized as well. This offers insight into the importance of considering regional contexts in explaining migration preferences.

Author

• Boyoon Lee, Queen's University