Concerns About Automation and Negative Sentiment Toward Immigration

2020 ◽  
Vol 31 (8) ◽  
pp. 987-1000
Author(s):  
Monica Gamez-Djokic ◽  
Adam Waytz

Across 12 studies ( N = 31,581), we examined how concerns about the rise of automation may be associated with attitudes toward immigrants. Studies 1a to 1g used archival data ranging from 1986 to 2017 across both the United States and Europe to demonstrate a robust association between concerns about automation and more negative attitudes toward immigrants. Studies 2a, 2b, 2c, and 3 employed both correlational and experimental methods to demonstrate that people’s concerns about automation are linked to increased support for restrictive immigration policies. These studies show this association to be mediated by perceptions of both realistic and symbolic intergroup threat. Finally, Study 4 experimentally demonstrated that automation may lead to more discriminatory behavior toward immigrants in the context of layoffs. Together, these results suggest that concerns about automation correspond to perceptions of threat and competition with immigrants as well as consequent anti-immigration sentiment.

2021 ◽  
pp. 136843022097829
Author(s):  
Rosemary L. Al-Kire ◽  
Michael H. Pasek ◽  
Jo-Ann Tsang ◽  
Joseph Leman ◽  
Wade C. Rowatt

Attitudes toward immigrants and immigration policies are divisive issues in American politics. These attitudes are influenced by factors such as political orientation and religiousness, with religious and conservative individuals demonstrating higher prejudice toward immigrants and refugees, and endorsing stricter immigration policies. Christian nationalism, an ideology marked by the belief that America is a Christian nation, may help explain how religious nationalist identity influences negative attitudes toward immigrants. The current research addresses this through four studies among participants in the US. Across studies, our results showed that Christian nationalism was a significant and consistent predictor of anti-immigrant stereotypes, prejudice, dehumanization, and support for anti-immigrant policies. These effects were robust to inclusion of other sources of anti-immigrant attitudes, including religious fundamentalism, nationalism, and political ideology. Further, perceived threats from immigrants mediated the relationship between Christian nationalism and dehumanization of immigrants, and attitudes toward immigration policies. These findings have implications for our understanding of the relations between religious nationalism and attitudes toward immigrants and immigration policy in the US, as well as in other contexts.


Author(s):  
Victoria M. Esses ◽  
Alina Sutter ◽  
Joanie Bouchard ◽  
Kate H. Choi ◽  
Patrick Denice

Using a cross-national representative survey conducted during the COVID-19 pandemic, we examine predictors of attitudes toward immigrants and immigration in Canada and the United States, including general and COVID-related nationalism, patriotism, and perceived personal and national economic and health threats. In both countries, nationalism, particularly COVID-related nationalism, predicted perceptions that immigration levels were too high and negative attitudes toward immigrants. Patriotism predicted negative immigration attitudes in the United States but not in Canada, where support for immigration and multiculturalism are part of national identity. Conversely, personal and national economic threat predicted negative immigration attitudes in Canada more than in the United States. In both countries, national health threat predicted more favorable views of immigration levels and attitudes toward immigrants, perhaps because many immigrants have provided frontline health care during the pandemic. Country-level cognition in context drives immigration attitudes and informs strategies for supporting more positive views of immigrants and immigration.


2008 ◽  
Vol 37 (1) ◽  
pp. 36-66 ◽  
Author(s):  
Oksana Yakushko

The current xenophobic cultural environment in the United States makes it imperative that psychologists understand the nature of xenophobia and recognize its consequences. This article explores sociological, social psychological, and multicultural research to examine the causes of negative attitudes toward immigrants. Xenophobia is presented as a concept descriptive of a socially observable phenomenon. Historical and contemporary expressions of xenophobia in the United States are examined and compared with cross-cultural scholarship on negative attitudes toward immigrants. Last, suggestions are provided for how counseling psychologists can integrate an understanding of xenophobia into their clinical practice, training, research, and public policy advocacy.


2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Siyuan Yu

What demographic backgrounds are associated with a person’s attitudes toward immigrants and immigration policies? Applying group threat theory and contact theory, I propose that race, age, education, political views, and religiosity all affect how people view immigration. To test the hypotheses, I analyze data from the 2014 General Social Survey, in which adults living in households in the United States are randomly selected and interviewed. A subset containing 1,022 respondents who answered every question relevant to this study is selected from the 2014 GSS. The univariate analysis shows that most Americans do not agree with the statement that immigrants undermine American culture, and that Americans are divided on whether the number of immigrants should be increased nowadays. The multivariate result indicates that education and political views are the most significant predictors of how one views immigrants and immigration policies, correspondingly, while race, age, and religiosity have no statistically significant relationships with either dependent variable. Statistical findings support the hypothesis that the more liberal a person is, the more likely the person is to agree that immigrants do not undermine American culture and to say that the number of immigrants nowadays should be increased. Contact theory is consistent with the result of this study. However, the findings also demonstrate that immigration is a complicated issue. This study is valuable in understanding the acceptance of immigrants across demographic groups. It also invites additional research on this important topic that will affect the future of the United States.


Author(s):  
SCOTT WILLIAMSON ◽  
CLAIRE L. ADIDA ◽  
ADELINE LO ◽  
MELINA R. PLATAS ◽  
LAUREN PRATHER ◽  
...  

Immigration is a highly polarized issue in the United States, and negative attitudes toward immigrants are common. Yet, almost all Americans are descended from people who originated outside the country, a narrative often evoked by the media and taught in school curricula. Can this narrative increase inclusionary attitudes toward migrants? We draw from scholarship showing that perspective-taking decreases prejudice toward out-groups to investigate whether reminding Americans about their own immigration history increases support for immigrants and immigration. We propose that priming family experiences can indirectly stimulate perspective-taking and induce empathy toward the out-group, which we test with three separate survey experiments conducted over two years. Our findings show that priming family history generates small but consistent inclusionary effects. These effects occur even among partisan subgroups and Americans who approve of President Trump. We provide evidence that increased empathy for immigrants constitutes one mechanism driving these effects.


Author(s):  
Peter Westwood

Abstract This article describes the evolution of inclusive education in Hong Kong, moving from segregation via integration to inclusion. The outside influence of education policies and trends from Britain, Australia, and the United States are identified, and the current situation is described. In particular, obstacles that are encountered on the route to inclusion are compared with those found in other countries. These obstacles include large class size, teachers’ often negative attitudes, parents’ expectations, teachers’ lack of expertise for adapting the curriculum and for providing differentiated teaching, and ongoing conflicts between the notion of ‘inclusive schooling for all’ and the ‘academic standards agenda’.


2002 ◽  
Vol 96 (4) ◽  
pp. 871-872
Author(s):  
Leah Haus

Faced with similar economic circumstances, France and the United States adopted different immigration policies at various times in the twentieth century. Jeffrey Togman asks why. To account for this variation in public policy outcome, he points to the different structure of political institutions in the two countries.


2021 ◽  
Vol 18 (5) ◽  
pp. 519-532
Author(s):  
Stephanie Pedron

This paper examines historic federal immigration policies that demonstrate how the United States has rendered entire groups of people living inside and outside of its territory as outsiders. Collective representations like the Statue of Liberty suggest that the U.S. is a nation that welcomes all immigrants, when in reality, the U.S. has historically functioned as a “gatekeeper” that excludes specific groups of people at different times. The concurrent existence of disparate beliefs within a society’s collective consciousness influences the public’s views toward citizenship and results in policy outcomes that contrast sharply from the ideal values that many collective representations signify. As restrictive immigration controls are refined, insight into how immigrant exclusion via federal policy has evolved is necessary to minimize future legislative consequences that have the potential to ostracize current and future Americans.


2021 ◽  
pp. 54-85
Author(s):  
Elliott Young

Nathan Cohen, a Russian-Brazilian Jew, was declared insane and deported from the United States in 1914. After being twice refused landing in Brazil and Argentina, Cohen remained trapped on a ship in New York’s harbor with no country willing to accept him. Cohen’s well-publicized story reflected Americans’ fear of immigrants and immigrants’ difficulty navigating increasingly restrictive immigration policies. This episode also reveals how psychiatric evaluations were used at the beginning of the twentieth century to identify, detain, and deport supposedly “unfit” and “mentally defective” immigrants. At the beginning of the twentieth century, the mental hospital was by far the carceral institution most likely to hold both immigrants and citizens, and the rate of mental hospital incarceration then is equivalent to the rate in the more recent era of mass incarceration in jails and prisons.


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