Voted In, Standing Out: Elite Response to Immigrants' Political Accession

• In Event: Nativism and Nationalism

Abstract

Nativist policies and exclusionary attitudes are rising in Western democracies. At the same time, integrating ethnic minority immigrant communities into their host country's political life has become a challenge for these societies. What explains such exclusionary reactions, and what are their implications for minority immigrants' political engagement and representation? Building on threat theory linking political power to hostility against marginalized groups, we argue that when minority ethnic immigrants win political office, the native-born fear that immigrants pose a threat to their dominant position. This in turn, triggers an exclusionary reaction from the elites. We test these dynamics using data from over 500,000 news articles, from 350 regional and local UK newspapers, covering the last four General Elections, and a regression discontinuity design that leverages close election results between minority-immigrant and dominant group candidates. Our findings suggest a public backlash against minority immigrants integrating into majority settings. It is likely that such backlash may work as a deterrent to immigrants' political engagement. Our study thus advances a previously untested explanation for the low participation and lack of descriptive representation of immigrant minorities.

Authors

• Guy Grossman, University of Pennsylvania

• Stephanie Zonszein, University of Pennsylvania