Suchergebnisse

AbstractImmigration in the United States is traditionally thought of as a federal‐level policy, but in recent years, states have been exceedingly active in this domain. We analyse the context and discourse of immigration‐related legislative resolutions from Southern border‐states, recipients of the heaviest immigration flows, and find that states do not respond in the same way to immigration challenges, and these differences occur over time and space. Some states seek to federalize the issue and push Congress to take action, while others are slowly incorporating immigrants into domestic politics and have begun to treat them as yet another state constituency. These findings have significant implications both for federal‐state relations in the immigration realm, and for immigrants themselves.

AbstractObjectiveIn 2020, for the first time, a VP candidate was a black woman of immigrant parentage. This article asks whether Kamala Harris' vice presidential candidacy may have motivated some white voters and especially those scoring high on racial resentment, anti‐immigrant attitudes, or sexism to vote for Trump instead of Biden.MethodsWe conducted an online priming experiment with non‐Hispanic white voters in August 2020, shortly after Harris was announced as the Democratic vice presidential nominee. Half of the samples were asked about their support for the president–vice presidential tickets, while the other half were asked only about support for a presidential candidate.ResultsOur results show that the Harris' selection may have affected vote choice by pushing many whites, especially among the most racially conservative whites into the Trump column. We find mixed results for anti‐immigrant attitudes and sexism.ConclusionWe conclude that one aspect of Harris' identity—race—dominated the minds of voters relative to other aspects of her identity.

This essay provides a critical review of the field of immigration policy studies from the perspective of measurement and modeling. It serves to contextualize and broaden the views presented in the special issue. As such, we combine insights from American and comparative politics, pinpoint key limitations and challenges in the field, and identify areas of strength within each subfield which could inform theory and measurement development for the other. Ultimately, the concerns about conceptualization, definition, and measurement that we identify and discuss herein, do not apply only to immigration policy studies but to policy studies writ large.

ObjectivesResearch has suggested that geosocial exposure to out‐groups is associated with heightened threat perceptions on the part of the dominant white majority. However, findings are not consistent.MethodsDrawing on realistic group conflict theory and research in political science that privileges the role of the economic context, we test if the effects of geosocial exposure are conditioned on individual expectations about the health of the macroeconomy using a unique data set from the New England states.ResultsWe show that a perceived increase in the presence of immigrants in the community positively correlates with restrictionist immigration policy preferences (in this case support for Arizona's anti‐immigration law), but only when people are pessimistic about the future of the state's economy.ConclusionThe information provided by the social context becomes relevant for people's policy preference formation only when they experience or expect material loss.

Studies of descriptive representation have focused on the ability of minority and female legislators to push through legislation that is beneficial to these constituencies. However, little is known concerning the role of such legislators in preventing the enactment of bills noxious to their constituencies' interests. This research note investigates the role of Latino legislators in deterring the introduction and blocking the enactment of restrictive and punitive immigration legislation. Using state‐level data from 2007, our results suggest that the relationship between the size of the Latino caucus in a state legislature and the introduction of restrictive bills is not statistically significant, but there is a strong negative statistical correlation between the size of the Latino caucus and the enactment of such laws. The data suggest that descriptive representation may play a role in blocking the passage of legislation harmful to disadvantaged groups.

Across states, there is substantial variation in the degree to which immigrants and their children are offered public assistance. We present a theoretical framework for analyzing the effects of policy decisions about immigrant inclusion. We apply the framework to investigate the effect of the state safety net on educational attainment. We focus on the years following welfare reform in 1996, when states gained considerable autonomy over welfare policy, including decisions about the eligibility of immigrant residents. Leveraging state‐level data from before and after reform, we estimate a difference‐in‐difference model to identify the effect of variation in immigrant inclusivity on educational attainment. We find that when states broaden the inclusivity of the social safety net to immigrants, young Latinos are more likely to graduate from high school. This effect is present beyond the group of Latino residents who receive additional benefits, suggesting that policy decisions about immigrants spill over to broader communities and communicate broader messages about social inclusion to racial and ethnic groups. We find similar patterns among Asian youth, but not among black and non‐Hispanic white youth. We conclude that immigrant inclusion has consequences for the life prospects of the growing population of youth in high‐immigrant ethnic groups.