Xenophobia & Racial Resentment Toward Early COVID-19 Policy Responses

• In Event: Elites, Immigration Policy, and the Politics of Division

Abstract

Travel restrictions and immigration policy controls were a key feature of early United States mitigation policy to slow the spread of the 2020 coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic. To what extent was widespread public support for these policies a function of anti-immigrant and racial resentment attitudes? To examine determinants of support, we conducted an original survey of 3,000 American citizens to collect data on health behavior, attitudes, and opinions about how to respond to the crisis. Measuring immigration attitudes, racial resentment, as well as support on a number of immigration policy items – from halting all international travel to closing the US-Mexico border – we find latent anti-immigrant and racial positions are the strongest and most consistent determinant of support for mitigation policies, controlling for health concerns and news consumption. These results suggest that in the United States, pandemics can prey on pre-existing, negative outgroup attitudes to implement policies that may or may not be effective as a public health response.

Authors

• Sara Wallace Goodman, University of California, Irvine

• Thomas Pepinsky, Cornell University

• Shana Kushner Gadarian, Syracuse University