Invisibility Expectations & US Attitudes toward Migrant Political Participation

• In Event: The Politics of Migrant Visibility and Invisibility

Abstract

This paper examines the ways in which societal expectations of migrants’ social and political (in)visibility amplify existing prejudices and increase xenophobic attitudes and support for exclusionary policies when these expectations are violated. It also examines the contextual and psychological factors among native-born residents that can intensify or mitigate this backlash response in the face of migrant political activism. Building on and testing a theory developed through qualitative research and survey data in Latin America, we use data from an original representative survey in the United States to explore the individual-level factors underpinning an asymmetrical politics of gratitude that demands immigrant social conformity and political passivity. The ‘invisibility bargain’ conceptual framework describes a set of informal expectations structuring how native-born citizens relate to immigrants. The theory suggests that tolerance for immigration is highly contingent on the perception of migrants’ valued contribution to the host society and on their social and political invisibility. Violating these tacit expectations leads to social sanction and political backlash. The larger project from which this paper derives examines how ideological predispositions, psychological tendencies, contact with immigrants and mediated cultural cues condition individual-level manifestations of these expectations, including demands for immigrant social conformity and negative reactions to immigrant political action. We present some initial results here.
In order to test the theory, an online survey with a representative sample of 1,800 U.S. adults was fielded by YouGov in September 2021 with support from Russell Sage Foundation. The survey includes an embedded experiment exposing respondents to photographs of protest marches that vary visual cues of minority religious and linguistic identities in order to disentangle the differential influence of intersecting and overlapping forms of identity and identify which one(s) have greater explanatory power in amplifying anti-immigrant backlash responses to migrant political activism. Dependent variables measure attitudes toward immigrants with different legal, social and economic characteristics, and tolerance for various forms of immigrant political action registered through rights-oriented, norms-oriented and affective reactions. Theoretical expectations derived from the literature, results of a pilot version of the survey, and initial examination of data suggest that we will find attitudinal expressions of demands for immigrant invisibility in large minorities and pluralities of Americans. Conservative identification, social dominance orientation and authoritarianism are expected to intensify these attitudes, while frequent and positive contact with immigrants should moderate them. We provide individual-level quantitative evidence for tacit socio-political demands imposed on immigrants to the United States, and for key factors that moderate these prevailing expectations. Our study carries implications for the public appeal of anti-immigrant discourse and identifies widespread anti-democratic attitudinal tendencies that, while outside the orbit of explicit far-right ideologies, nonetheless may provide openings for xenophobic political groups and parties. The study also has implications for how policies and political strategies to encourage host-migrant integration can be framed in order to minimize backlash and improve intergroup tolerance.

Author

• Jeffrey Daniel Pugh, University of Massachusetts Boston