The Political Salience of Immigration: Evidence from Colombia

• In Event: Policies and Attitudes towards Refugees in the Global South

Abstract

What explains the political salience of immigration? Existing theory provides a rich set of expectations and evidence around the valence of immigration, but little to predict when people and parties will prioritize immigration as an important political issue (that is, its political salience). We will present results from an upcoming survey experiment of 4,000 Colombians to understand the drivers of the political salience of immigration. The context of the Venezuelan refugee crisis in Latin America is particularly puzzling as we see that right-wing leaders, such as Colombia's Duque and Brazil's Bolsonaro, have not vilified migrants and refugees the way right-wing populist counterparts in the US and Europe have. Furthermore, much of the Latin American public views immigration negatively, but nonetheless do not view it as important, even in the context of large-scale Venezuelan immigration. We provide a framework for how people use heuristics to make cognitively challenging assessments about the relative importance of immigration. This evidence will also test the power of politicians to leverage these cognitive shortcuts in order to strategically activate the salience of immigration.

Authors

• Natalia Salgado Bueno, Emory University

• Daniel Masterson, University of California, Santa Barbara

• Daniel Rojas, University of British Columbia

• Ugo Medrado Correa