Foreign-Born Population Growth, Negative Outgroup Contact, and Americans’ Attitudes Towards Legal and Unauthorized Immigration
| Author | James Laurence,Harris Hyun-soo Kim |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/00323217211005920 |
| Published date | 01 February 2023 |
| Date | 01 February 2023 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
https://doi.org/10.1177/00323217211005920
Political Studies
2023, Vol. 71(1) 175 –197
© The Author(s) 2021
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DOI: 10.1177/00323217211005920
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Foreign-Born Population
Growth, Negative Outgroup
Contact, and Americans’
Attitudes Towards Legal and
Unauthorized Immigration
James Laurence1,2 and Harris Hyun-soo Kim3*
Abstract
Individual attitudes towards immigration are powerfully driven by ethnic context, that is, size
of foreign-born population. We advance the literature by examining how the change (growth)
in foreign-born population, in addition to its size (level), is related to two distinct outcomes:
natives’ views on legal and unauthorized immigration. By analysing a probability US sample, we
find that an increase in the state-level immigration population is positively related to Americans’
approval of a policy aimed at containing the flow of undocumented immigrants. The proportion of
immigrants in a state, however, is not a significant predictor of support for such restrictive policy.
With respect to legal immigration, neither the amount of recent change in, nor the size of, the
immigration population matters. Our study provides strong evidence for contextual effects: net of
compositional factors, a dynamic change in foreign-born population has an independent impact on
how Americans view unauthorized, but not legal, immigration.
Keywords
anti-immigrant attitudes, ethnic context, level of and change in immigration, legal versus
unauthorized immigration, outgroup contact
Accepted: 9 March 2021
Introduction
We are in an ‘age of migration’, characterized by accelerating transnational movements
of people across the globe (Castles et al., 2003). The question of how immigrant flows
affect public opinion in host societies, therefore, is of critical importance. Indeed, the
1Cathie Marsh Institute for Social Research, University of Manchester, Manchester, UK
2WZB Berlin Social Science Center, Berlin, Germany
3Department of Sociology, Ewha Womans University, Seoul, Republic of Korea
*Both authors contributed equally.
Corresponding author:
Harris Hyun-soo Kim, Department of Sociology, Ewha Womans University, Seoul 03760, Republic of Korea.
Email: harrishkim@ewha.ac.kr
1005920PSX0010.1177/00323217211005920Political StudiesLaurence and Kim
research-article2021
Article
176 Political Studies 71(1)
recent influx of refugees into Western Europe and the rise of populist politics in North
America and elsewhere clearly attest to the fact that immigration has become one of the
most salient issues facing societies today (Norris and Inglehart, 2019). A voluminous
body of scholarship has emerged in response, analysing the factors associated with atti-
tudes towards immigrants and immigration policies among the native-born population
(for review, see Fussell, 2014; Hanimueller and Hopkins, 2014). In particular, extensive
research has sought to investigate if, how and why context matters for public opinion on
immigration (Gravelle, 2019; Hopkins, 2010; Kaufmann and Harris, 2015; Newman and
Velez, 2014; Van Heerden and Ruedin, 2019). Despite the growing amount of evidence,
however, there is no clear consensus on the connection between contextual factors, for
example, ethnic heterogeneity or immigrant population, and attitudes towards immigra-
tion. The main objective of our article is thus to provide new evidence on this ongoing
issue by analysing a probability sample of US adults.
Increasingly, scholars have explored how the ethnic composition of one’s wider social
environment, particularly the size and makeup of the immigrant population therein, is
associated with subjective views on immigrants and immigration. Much of the research
has approached this question through the threat- versus contact-hypothesis theoretical
framework (for a full discussion, see Oliver and Wong, 2003). Briefly, the threat-hypoth-
esis posits that exposure to a higher proportion of ethnic outgroups (including immigrant
populations) may lead individuals to increasingly perceive those outgroups as a threat
(Blalock, 1967). In contrast, according to the contact-hypothesis, increasing proximity to
immigrants in one’s environment under ‘optimal conditions’ (Allport, 1954) can improve
intergroup attitudes via greater opportunities for interaction with immigrants (Newman,
2013; Stein et al., 2000).
Applying the threat-contact framework, the current literature has produced diver-
gent results. On one hand, studies demonstrate negative associations between immi-
grant-group size (especially percent-Hispanic) and attitudes towards immigrants
observed across US counties, congressional districts and states (Avery et al., 2017;
Branton et al., 2011; Butz and Kehrberg, 2016; Hood and Morris, 1997, 1998). Yet,
other work finds positive relationships: for example, states with higher immigrant
populations report lower race-hate crimes (Stacey et al., 2011), or positive views
towards policies designed to naturalize illegal immigrants (Facchini et al., 2017). At
the same time, the effects of immigrant-group size may depend on which ethnic groups
are studied (Ha, 2010; Hood and Morris, 1997), the level of segregation in an area
(Laurence et al., 2019; Rocha and Espino, 2009), or the dominant political/media-
narratives towards immigration (Hopkins, 2010). This mixed, and often conditional,
set of findings suggests that while the weight of evidence tends towards the threat-
hypothesis, it is far from clear if, when and why immigration leads to less positive
attitudes towards immigration (Kaufmann, 2017; Kaufmann and Goodwin, 2018;
Newman, 2013; Pottie-Sherman and Wilkes, 2017).
In this article, we contribute to the scholarship by investigating three interrelated areas
of research. Specifically, we test the relative impact of (1) the size of the immigrant popu-
lation versus the rate of change in the immigrant population on (2) individuals’ attitudes
towards legal and undocumented immigration (i.e. American’s views on building the
US–Mexico border wall and whether the government should increase or decrease the
entry of legal immigrants) and (3) how far the posited mechanisms of threat and negative
contact (i.e. interaction with ‘immigrants who speak little or no English’) can explain any
observed effects of context on immigration-related attitudes. Several studies have sought
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