Racial Diversity and Immigration Attitudes: Evidence from the United States

• In Event: Immigration and Migration

Abstract

IPE scholars have only begun to consider how race may shape one’s economic policy preferences. While this subject stands as an important new research agenda, scholars need to consider more than one’s own race or racial identity because that individual-level attribute is also embedded within a larger racial environment. This project seeks to understand that larger environment with a focus on workplace racial diversity, asking how racial diversity in the professional setting may influence individual-level immigration attitudes? One possible answer to this question comes from the “contact” hypothesis, proposing that greater exposure to people of different races may reduce in-group/out-group rivalries, leading to more pro-immigration attitudes. A contrary possibility comes from the “conflict” hypothesis, proposing that competition with people from other races may exacerbate in- group/out-group rivalries, leading to more anti-immigration attitudes. This paper considers these rival possibilities using two sets of evidence from the United States.

Our first set of evidence comes from multiple waves of the General Social Survey, which included a question to some respondents about the racial diversity of their work environment. Regressing one’s pro-immigration attitude on this measure of their workplace diversity, we find a significant positive correlation, controlling for a set of potential confounding factors. This positive relationship, consistent with the contact hypothesis, does not appear to be strongly conditional on one’s educational attainment. While the strongest positive relationship can be observed for those with the most education, this relationship is not negative, or consistent with the conflict hypothesis, even for those with the least education. This positive relationship is, however, conditional on race as it appears only for white respondents; there is no significant relationship between immigration attitudes and one’ racial diversity at work for non-whites.

Our second set of evidence comes from a survey experiment conducted through Lucid facilities where 2,400 voting-age Americans were randomly assigned treatments about racial diversity in the American workplace. The first treatment primed a racially diverse workplace environment with pictures and factual information about growing diversity in American professional settings. The second treatment primed a racially homogenous workplace environment with pictures of an all-white professional setting and factual information about white privilege in hiring/promotion within American companies. We again find results consistent with the contact hypothesis as respondents exposed to the first treatment had significantly more pro-immigration attitudes compared to the untreated control group, while those receiving the second treatment did not.

Authors

• David H. Bearce, Texas A&M

• Brendan J. Connell, Lyon College