Intergroup Contact and Host Community Attitudes Toward Immigrants in Plainstown: A Mixed Methods Study

• In Event: Top Papers in Intergroup Communication: Advances in Theorizing and Measuring Intergroup Contact

Abstract

Understanding the dynamic interplay between cultural natives’ attitudes toward immigrants and immigrants’ adaptation is essential to facilitating peaceful and cooperative intergroup relations (i.e., the good life) within immigrant-receiving societies. This mixed methods study triangulated quantitative and qualitative data to investigate the relationship between intergroup contact and cultural natives’ attitudes toward immigrants. Native-born residents of Plainstown (pseudonym), a rural community in the Midwestern U.S., were surveyed about their contact with, and attitudes toward, members of a growing local immigrant population. The attitudes assessed in this study were host receptivity and host conformity pressure, two factors of the host environment that Kim (2001) theorizes influence the cross-cultural adaptation of cultural strangers. Concurrent with quantitative measures of these variables, the survey included two open-ended questions that explored the quality of natives’ contact with local immigrants and how the theoretical constructs of host receptivity and host conformity pressure were reflected in respondents’ open-ended comments.

Authors

• Kelly McKay-Semmler, U of South Dakota

• Sama Hitendra Patel, U of South Dakota

• Rachel Anne Prodanovich, University of South Dakota

• Shane Michael Semmler, U of South Dakota