Too Old to Forget: The Dynamics of Political Trust among Immigrants
| Author | Chiara Superti,Noam Gidron |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/0032321720980899 |
| Published date | 01 August 2022 |
| Date | 01 August 2022 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
https://doi.org/10.1177/0032321720980899
Political Studies
2022, Vol. 70(3) 624 –654
© The Author(s) 2021
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DOI: 10.1177/0032321720980899
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Too Old to Forget: The
Dynamics of Political Trust
among Immigrants
Chiara Superti1 and Noam Gidron2
Abstract
Scholars have argued that immigrants’ trust in institutions is the result of the exposure to host-
country institutions but also shaped by past experiences in the country of origin. These experiences
create a “home-country point of reference,” a political/institutional memory that becomes the
relevant comparison for any political/institutional interaction in the host country. We develop
further this concept and unpack its key determinants—the age at migration and the historical
conditions of the home country at the specific time of migration. Only those immigrants who
were too old to forget the historical and contextual features of the country-of-origin institutions
at the time of migration will rely on this comparison when interacting with institutions in the
host country. Across time, there is both a continuous positive/negative accumulation of trust for
the host-country institutions among those with less/more democratic points of reference. We
examine immigrants’ political trust using survey evidence from Israel.
Keywords
political trust, immigration, home-country point of reference, Israel
Accepted: 13 November 2020
As immigrants have become large minorities both in many Western (United Nations,
2017) and non-Western countries (Boucher and Gest, 2018), societies have diversified
and immigrants’ political behavior and integration have become intertwined with natives’
political attitudes. Much of the scholarly work in political science has focused on under-
standing the influence of immigrants’ presence on natives’ political views (Hopkins,
2010; Newman, 2013), immigrants’ legal and socioeconomic features (Hainmueller and
Hiscox, 2010; Wright et al., 2016), and immigrants’ origins (Abrajano and Hajnal, 2017;
Newman and Velez, 2014; Pérez, 2010). Less research has been devoted to immigrants’
points of view and political attitudes (see Dinesen, 2012, 2013; Dinesen and Hooghe,
1Columbia University, New York, NY, USA
2Hebrew University, Jerusalem, Israel
Corresponding author:
Chiara Superti, Columbia University, 420 West 118th Street, New York, NY 10027-6902, USA.
Email: cs3546@columbia.edu
980899PSX0010.1177/0032321720980899Political StudiesSuperti and Gidron
research-article2021
Article
Superti and Gidron 625
2010; Maxwell, 2010a, 2010b, 2013). Our article adds to this emerging literature by
showing how differences among immigrants shape their views of political institutions in
the receiving country. We demonstrate the relevance of immigrants’ national and histori-
cal backgrounds, including the time of arrival. By doing so, we follow scholarly calls
(Garcia-Rios et al., 2019; Jones-Correa, 1998; Junn and Masuoka, 2008; Lee, 2008) to go
beyond traditional, misguided approaches that treat immigrants as homogeneous groups,
either based on their regions of origin such as Latinos or Asians, or period of arrival.
Our work focuses on one specific type of attitude: political trust among immigrants.
High levels of political and generalized trust are associated with many positive political
and economic outcomes, such as increased social capital, political participation, and eco-
nomic growth (Alvarez et al., 2008; Hetherington, 1998; Levi and Stoker, 2000;
Nannestad, 2008). This makes trust an important component of immigrants’ integration
processes. But how do immigrants form their political attitudes toward the host country’s1
institutions? Is political trust mainly a cultural trait that is inherited from one’s parents
(Uslaner, 2008), or is it shaped by individuals’ direct experiences with the local commu-
nity and institutions (Dinesen, 2012; Maxwell, 2013; Nannestad et al., 2014; Pop-Eleches
and Tucker, 2011; Rothstein and Stolle, 2008)? Do immigrants’ political attitudes reflect
the political culture of their country of origin (Fisman and Miguel, 2007; Menjívar and
Bejarano, 2004; Röder and Mühlau, 2012a), or are they mostly determined by the institu-
tions of the host country (Dancygier and Saunders, 2006; Maxwell, 2013)?
In our article, we seek to push forward current debates about the origins and malleabil-
ity of immigrants’ trust, both theoretically and methodologically. Like other scholars
(Menjívar and Bejarano, 2004; Röder and Mühlau, 2012a, 2012b), we claim that a home-
country point of reference can shape immigrants’ trust in the institutions of the host coun-
try. When interacting with political institutions in the host country, immigrants have in
mind their prior experiences in the country of origin. However, unlike some previous
studies, we unpack the determinants of points of reference: intense, direct, positive, or
negative emotional experiences that turn into consolidated long-term memories (Cahill
et al., 1996; McGaugh, 2000). Immigrants’ experiences in the months or years prior to
migration often carry that sort of emotional weight. As such, the home-country point of
reference tends not to disappear for several years (if ever) and works symmetrically for
immigrants carrying more positive frames of reference than those with more negative
ones. Immigrants’ previous experiences with political institutions accumulate to shape
their levels of trust in the political system of the host country.
We derive two important implications from our theory: the importance of the person’s
age at the time of immigration and of the home country’s institutional setting at the time
of migration. Since we claim that what matters is the direct experience in the country of
origin prior to migration, we expect to find that only immigrants who have lived long
enough in the country of origin before migrating will carry a home-country point of refer-
ence. Moreover, if the memories that persist are those from recent past experiences, then
we expect the specific historical context at the time of migration to be at the core of immi-
grants’ comparisons of the host country to the country of origin.
We empirically test these theoretical predictions using four waves of the European
Social Survey (ESS; waves 5–8) in Israel (Norwegian Social Science Data Services,
2002) and democratic score data from the V-Dem project (Coppedge et al., 2017). On one
hand, we find that trust in legal, legislative, and political institutions among immigrants
is indeed fluid and increases after migration for individuals who are most likely to com-
pare their current institutional experience to worse ones in the country of origin and who
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