Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-dh8gc Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-05T04:50:06.764Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Political Trust and Support for Immigration in the American Mass Public

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  17 March 2020

David Macdonald*
Affiliation:
Department of Political Science, Florida State University, USA
*
*Corresponding author. E-mail: [email protected]

Abstract

Immigration is one of the most salient and important issues in contemporary American politics. While a great deal is known about how cultural attitudes and economics influence public opinion toward immigration, little is known about how attitudes toward government influence support for immigration. Using cross-sectional data from the American National Election Studies (ANES), panel data from the ANES and General Social Survey, as well a Mechanical Turk (MTurk) survey experiment, I show that political trust exerts a positive and substantively meaningful influence on Americans' support for immigration. Politically trustful individuals, both Democrats and Republicans, are more supportive of pro-immigration policies. These findings underscore the political relevance of trust in government and show that public attitudes toward immigration are not driven solely by feelings about immigrant groups, partisanship, core political values, nor personality traits, but are also affected by trust in government, the actor most responsible for managing immigration policy.

Type
Article
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2020

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Abrajano, M and Alvarez, RM (2019) Answering questions about race: how racial and ethnic identities influence survey response. American Politics Research 47(2), 250274.10.1177/1532673X18812039CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Abrajano, M and Hajnal, ZL (2015) White Backlash: Immigration, Race, and American Politics. Princeton, NJ: University Press.Google Scholar
Abrajano, MA, Hajnal, Z and Hassell, HJ (2017) Media framing and partisan identity: the case of immigration coverage and white macropartisanship. Journal of Race, Ethnicity and Politics 2(1), 534.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Achen, CH (2002) Toward a new political methodology: microfoundations and ART. Annual Review of Political Science 5, 423450.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Alesina, A and Glaeser, E (2004) Fighting Poverty in the US and Europe: A World of Difference. Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Angrist, JD and Pischke, J-S (2015) Mastering ‘Metrics: The Path From Cause to Effect. Princeton, NJ: University Press.Google Scholar
Berinsky, AJ, Huber, GA and Lenz, GS (2012) Evaluating online labor markets for experimental research: Amazon.com's Mechanical Turk. Political Analysis 20(3), 351368.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Boomgaarden, HG and Vliegenthart, R (2009) How news content influences anti-immigration attitudes: Germany, 1993–2005. European Journal of Political Research 48(4), 516542.10.1111/j.1475-6765.2009.01831.xCrossRefGoogle Scholar
Brader, T, Valentino, NA and Suhay, E (2008) What triggers public opposition to immigration? Anxiety, group cues, and immigration threat. American Journal of Political Science 52(4), 959978.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Branton, R et al. (2011) All along the watchtower: acculturation fear, anti-Latino affect, and immigration. Journal of Politics 73(3), 664679.10.1017/S0022381611000375CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Burns, P and Gimpel, JG (2000) Economic insecurity, prejudicial stereotypes, and public opinion on immigration policy. Political Science Quarterly 115(2), 201225.10.2307/2657900CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Chanley, VA, Rudolph, TJ and Rahn, WM (2000) The origins and consequences of public trust in government: a time series analysis. Public Opinion Quarterly 64(3), 239256.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Chavez, L (2013) The Latino Threat: Constructing Immigrants, Citizens, and the Nation, 2nd Edn. Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University Press.10.1515/9780804786188CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Citrin, J et al. (1997) Public opinion toward immigration reform: the role of economic motivations. Journal of Politics 59(3), 858881.10.2307/2998640CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Citrin, J, Levy, M and Wright, M (2014) Multicultural policy and political support in European democracies. Comparative Political Studies 47(11), 15311557.10.1177/0010414013512604CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Citrin, J and Luks, S (2001) Political trust revisited: déjá vu all over again? In Hibbing, JR and Theiss-Morse, E (eds), What Is It About Government That Americans Dislike? Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, pp. 926.Google Scholar
Citrin, J and Stoker, L (2018) Political trust in a cynical age. Annual Review of Political Science 21, 4970.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Converse, PE (1964) The nature of belief systems in mass publics. In Apter, D (ed.), Ideology and Discontent. New York: Free Press, pp. 206261.Google Scholar
Craig, MA and Richeson, JA (2014) Not in my backyard! Authoritarianism, social dominance orientation, and support for strict immigration policies at home and abroad. Political Psychology 35(3), 417429.10.1111/pops.12078CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Crepaz, MML (2008) Trust Beyond Borders: Immigration, the Welfare State, and Identity in Modern Societies. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.Google Scholar
Dancygier, RM and Donnelly, MJ (2012) Sectoral economies, economic contexts, and attitudes toward immigration. Journal of Politics 75(1), 1735.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dancygier, RM and Laitin, DD (2014) Immigration into Europe: economic discrimination, violence, and public policy. Annual Review of Political Science 17, 4364.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Delli Carpini, MX and Keeter, S (1997) What Americans Know About Politics and Why It Matters. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
Easton, D (1965) A Systems Analysis of Political Life. New York: Wiley.Google Scholar
Easton, D (1975) A re-assessment of the concept of political support. British Journal of Political Science 5(4), 435457.10.1017/S0007123400008309CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fairbrother, M (2019) When will people pay to pollute? Environmental taxes, political trust and experimental evidence from Britain. British Journal of Political Science 49(2), 661682.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Farris, EM and Mohamed, HS (2018) Picturing immigration: how the media criminalizes immigrants. Politics, Groups, and Identities 6(4), 814824.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Faulkner, N, Martin, A and Peyton, K (2015) Priming political trust: evidence from an experiment. Australian Journal of Political Science 50(1), 164173.10.1080/10361146.2014.979759CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Feldman, S and Stenner, K (1997) Perceived threat and authoritarianism. Political Psychology 18(4), 741770.10.1111/0162-895X.00077CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fitzgerald, J, Curtis, KA and Corliss, CL (2012) Anxious publics: worries about crime and immigration. Comparative Political Studies 45(4), 477506.10.1177/0010414011421768CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Garand, JC, Xu, P and Davis, BC (2017) Immigration attitudes and support for the welfare state in the American mass public. American Journal of Political Science 61(1), 146162.10.1111/ajps.12233CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gerber, AS and Green, DP (2000) The effects of canvassing, telephone calls, and direct mail on voter turnout: a field experiment. American Political Science Review 94(3), 653663.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gerber, AS et al. (2017) Self-interest, beliefs, and policy opinions: understanding how economic beliefs affect immigration policy preferences. Political Research Quarterly 70(1), 155171.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hainmueller, J and Hiscox, MJ (2010) Attitudes toward highly skilled and low-skilled immigration: evidence from a survey experiment. American Political Science Review 104(1), 6184.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hainmueller, J and Hopkins, DJ (2014) Public attitudes toward immigration. Annual Review of Political Science 17, 225249.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hainmueller, J and Hopkins, DJ (2015) The hidden American immigration consensus: a conjoint analysis of attitudes toward immigrants. American Journal of Political Science 59(3), 529548.10.1111/ajps.12138CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hajnal, Z and Rivera, MU (2014) Immigration, Latinos, and white partisan politics: the new democratic defection. American Journal of Political Science 58(4), 773789.10.1111/ajps.12101CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hartman, TK, Newman, BJ and Bell, CS (2014) Decoding prejudice toward Hispanics: group cues and public reactions to threatening immigrant behavior. Political Behavior 36(1), 143163.10.1007/s11109-013-9231-7CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hawes, DP and McCrea, AM (2018) Give us your tired, your poor and we might buy them dinner: social capital, immigration, and welfare generosity in the American States. Political Research Quarterly 71(2), 347360.10.1177/1065912917738576CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Haynes, C, Merolla, J and Ramakrishnan, SK (2016) Framing Immigrants: News Coverage, Public Opinion, and Policy. New York: Russell Sage Foundation.Google Scholar
Hero, RE and Preuhs, RR (2007) Immigration and the evolving American welfare state: examining policies in the US States. American Journal of Political Science 51(3), 498517.10.1111/j.1540-5907.2007.00264.xCrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hetherington, MJ (1998) The political relevance of political trust. American Political Science Review 92(4), 791808.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hetherington, MJ (2005) Why Trust Matters: Declining Political Trust and the Demise of American Liberalism. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Hetherington, MJ and Globetti, S (2002) Political trust and racial policy preferences. American Journal of Political Science 46(2), 253275.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hetherington, MJ and Husser, JA (2012) How trust matters: the changing political relevance of political trust. American Journal of Political Science 56(2), 312325.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hetherington, MJ and Rudolph, TJ (2008) Priming, performance, and the dynamics of political trust. Journal of Politics 70(2), 498512.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hetherington, MJ and Rudolph, TJ (2015) Why Washington Won't Work: Polarization, Political Trust, and the Governing Crisis. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hopkins, DJ (2010) Politicized places: explaining where and when immigrants provoke local opposition. American Political Science Review 104(1), 4060.10.1017/S0003055409990360CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hopkins, DJ (2015) The upside of accents: language, inter-group difference, and attitudes toward immigration. British Journal of Political Science 45(3), 531557.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hopkins, DJ, Sides, J and Citrin, J (2019) The muted consequences of correct information about immigration. Journal of Politics 81(1), 315320.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Huntington, SP (2004) Who Are We? The Challenges to America's National Identity. New York: Simon and Schuster.Google Scholar
Hussey, LS and Pearson-Merkowitz, S (2013) The changing role of race in social welfare attitude formation: partisan divided over undocumented immigrants and social welfare policy. Political Research Quarterly 66(3), 572584.10.1177/1065912912453506CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Intawan, C and Nicholson, SP (2018) My trust in government is implicit: automatic trust in government and system support. Journal of Politics 80(2), 601614.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Jardina, A (2019) White Identity Politics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Johnston, CD, Newman, BJ and Velez, Y (2015) Ethnic change, personality, and polarization over immigration in the American Public. Public Opinion Quarterly 79(3), 662686.10.1093/poq/nfv022CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Keele, L (2005) The authorities really do matter: party control and trust in government. Journal of Politics 67(3), 873886.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Keele, L (2007) Social capital and the dynamics of trust in government. American Journal of Political Science 51(2), 241254.10.1111/j.1540-5907.2007.00248.xCrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kinder, DR and Kam, CD (2009) Us Against Them: Ethnocentric Foundations of American Opinion. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.10.7208/chicago/9780226435725.001.0001CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kinder, DR and Kalmoe, NP (2017) Neither Liberal nor Conservative: Ideological Innocence in the American Public. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Lu, L and Nicholson-Crotty, S (2010) Reassessing the impact of Hispanic stereotypes on White Americans’ immigration preferences. Social Science Quarterly 91(5), 13121328.10.1111/j.1540-6237.2010.00733.xCrossRefGoogle Scholar
Macdonald, D (2019) “Replication Data for: Political Trust and Support for Immigration in the American Mass Public” http://doi.org/10.7910/DVN/YOABB5, Harvard Dataverse, V1CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Malhotra, N, Margalit, Y and Hyunjung Mo, C (2013) Economic explanations for opposition to immigration: distinguishing between prevalence and conditional impact. American Journal of Political Science 57(2), 391410.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Merolla, J, Ramakrishnan, SK and Haynes, C (2013) ‘Illegal’, ‘Undocumented,’ or ‘Unauthorized’: equivalency frames, issue frames, and public opinion on immigration. Perspectives on Politics 11(3), 789807.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
McLaren, L (2011) Immigration and trust in politics in Britain. British Journal of Political Science 42(1), 163185.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
McLaren, L (2012) The cultural divide in Europe: migration, multiculturalism, and political trust. World Politics 64(2), 199241.10.1017/S0043887112000032CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Morisi, D, Jost, JT and Singh, V (2019) An asymmetrical ‘president-in-power’ effect. American Political Science Review 113(2), 614620.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Newman, BJ (2013) Acculturating contexts and Anglo opposition to immigration in the United States. American Journal of Political Science 57(2), 374390.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Newman, BJ and Johnson, J (2012) Ethnic change, concern over immigration, and approval of state government. State Politics & Policy Quarterly 12(4), 415437.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Newman, BJ, Hartman, TK and Taber, CS (2012) Foreign language exposure, cultural threat, and opposition to immigration. Political Psychology 33(5), 635657.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Newman, BJ et al. (2015) Easing the heavy hand: humanitarian concerns, empathy, and opinion on immigration. British Journal of Political Science 45(3), 583607.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Newman, BJ and Malhotra, N (2019) Economic reasoning with a racial hue: is the immigration consensus purely race neutral? Journal of Politics 81(1), 153166.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Newman, BJ, Shah, S and Collingwood, L (2018) Race, place, and building a base: Latino population growth and the nascent Trump campaign for president. Public Opinion Quarterly 82(1), 122134.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Newton, K and Zmerli, S (2011) Three forms of trust and their association. European Political Science Review 3(2), 169200.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Nicholson, SP (2012) Polarizing cues. American Journal of Political Science 56(1), 5266.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Ostfeld, M (2017) The backyard politics of attitudes toward immigration. Political Psychology 38(1), 2137.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pantoja, A (2006) Against the tide? Core American values and attitudes toward US immigration policy in the mid-1990s. Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies 32(3), 515531.10.1080/13691830600555111CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pardos-Prado, S and Xena, C (2018) Skill specificity and attitudes toward immigration. American Journal of Political Science 63(2), 286304.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pérez, EO (2010) Explicit evidence on the import of implicit attitudes: the IAT and immigration policy judgments. Political Behavior 32(4), 517545.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rocha, RR, Knoll, BR and Wrinkle, RD (2015) Immigration enforcement and the redistribution of political trust. Journal of Politics 77(4), 901913.10.1086/681810CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rudolph, TJ (2017) Political trust as a heuristic. In Zmerli, S and van der Meer, TWG (eds), Handbook on Political Trust. United Kingdom: Edward Elgar Publishing Ltd, pp. 197211.10.4337/9781782545118.00023CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rudolph, TJ and Evans, J (2005) Political trust, ideology, and public support for government spending. American Journal of Political Science 49(3), 660671.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rudolph, TJ and Popp, E (2009) Bridging the ideological divide: trust and support for social security privatization. Political Behavior 31(3), 331351.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Schildkraut, DJ (2011) Americanism in the Twenty-First Century: Public Opinion in the Age of Immigration. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Scholz, JT and Lubell, M (1998) Trust and taxpaying: testing the heuristic approach to collective action. American Journal of Political Science 42(2), 398417.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sears, DO et al. (1980) Self-interest v. symbolic politics in policy attitudes and presidential voting. American Political Science Review 74(3), 670684.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sides, J and Citrin, J (2007) European opinion about immigration: the role of identities, interests and information. British Journal of Political Science 37(3), 477504.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sniderman, PM, Hagendoorn, L and Prior, M (2004) Predisposing factors and situational triggers: exclusionary reactions to immigrant minorities. American Political Science Review 98(1), 3549.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Uslaner, EM (2002) The Moral Foundations of Trust. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Valentino, NA, Brader, T and Jardina, AE (2013) Immigration opposition among US whites: general ethnocentrism or media priming of attitudes about Latinos? Political Psychology 34(2), 149166.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Valentino, NA et al. (2019) Economic and cultural drivers of immigrant support worldwide. British Journal of Political Science 49(4), 12011226.10.1017/S000712341700031XCrossRefGoogle Scholar
Velez, Y and Lavine, H (2017) Racial diversity and the dynamics of authoritarianism. Journal of Politics 79(2), 519533.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wright, M, Levy, M and Citrin, J (2016) Public attitudes toward immigration policy across the legal/illegal divide: the role of categorical and attribute-based decision-making. Political Behavior 38(1), 229253.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Xu, P (2017) Compensation or retrenchment? The paradox of immigration and public welfare spending in the American States. State Politics & Policy Quarterly 17(1), 76104.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Ybarra, VD, Sanchez, LM and Sanchez, GR (2016) Anti-Immigrant anxieties in state policy: the great recession and punitive immigration policy in the American States, 2005–2012. State Politics & Policy Quarterly 16(3), 313339.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Zaller, JR (1992) The Nature and Origins of Mass Opinion. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Supplementary material: PDF

Macdonald supplementary material

Appendix

Download Macdonald supplementary material(PDF)
PDF 494 KB
Supplementary material: Link

Macdonald Dataset

Link