Explaining immigration preferences: Disentangling skill and prevalence:

Research & Politics

Neil Malhotra¹ 

关键词: Immigration;    public opinion;    sociotropic attitudes;    skill premium;   

DOI  :  10.1177/2053168017734076

学科分类：社会科学、人文和艺术（综合）

来源: Sage Journals

【 摘 要 】

One of the most important and consistent findings to emerge from the study of immigration politics over the past decade is the seemingly uniform preference among mass citizenries for high-skilled immigrants. One potential conceptual flaw in this mounting body of literature is that skill is confounded with prevalence: people may prefer high-skilled immigrants not because they are skilled but because there are not very many of them. To address this possibility, we conducted an original experiment within a nationally representative survey of over 12,000 respondents. We conducted three main empirical tests and found that the skill premium is not confounded by prevalence. However, low-skilled Mexican immigrants specifically are disadvantaged when people are told that they are prevalent, a finding that comports with extant research on the construction of Latino immigration as a unique threat to American society.

【 授权许可】

CC BY-NC-ND