“When I Was Growing up”: the Lasting Impact of Immigrant Presence on Native-Born American Attitudes towards Immigrants and Immigration

Maureen Eger, Umeå University
Mikael Hjerm, Umeå University
Jeffrey Mitchell, Umeå University

Scholarship, including seminal research on prejudice, identifies adolescence as a critical period for the development of attitudes. Yet most sociological research on prejudice, especially in the form of anti-immigrant sentiment, focuses on the relationship between contemporaneous social conditions and attitudes towards out-groups while neglecting the demographic context during one’s impressionable years. Therefore, we design research to investigate the relationship among temporally distal and temporally proximal sub-national contexts and native-born attitudes towards immigration and immigrants. To do this, we merge geocoded data from the General Social Survey (1994-2016) with a unique U.S. state-level dataset (1900-2015). Results from multilevel models reveal that immigrant presence during adolescence is a more consistent predictor of attitudes towards immigration and immigrants in adulthood. Thus, while the majority of sociological research on anti-immigrant sentiment asks if societal conditions matters, our results suggest that a more important question is when the context matters.

No extended abstract or paper available

 Presented in Session 154. Migrants and Immigration Experiences