Reevaluating American Attitudes toward Immigrants in the Twenty‐First Century: The Role of a Multicreedal National Identity

Abstract

The past two decades have seen anti‐immigrant ideas permeate national political discourse in Europe and North America. Ideas previously confined to the political margins are now part of the mainstream. Appeals to traditional political ideas and loyalty to state institutions—seen as an antidote to such ideas—have failed to stem the tide of anti‐immigrant policies. We offer an explanation of why appeals to political institutions fail to curb anti‐immigrant sentiment. We demonstrate that past empirical research into dimensions of identity has failed to model interactive effects between dimensions, leading to mixed results concerning policy preference and identity formation. We also demonstrate that an interaction effect exists between civic and ethnocultural dimensions that moderate each other as affinity rises. We show that previous research blaming most negative policy preference on the ethnocultural dimension is incomplete. This has significant implications for those seeking to design policies and programs that moderate negative attitudes toward immigrants. Related Articles Podcast National Public Radio. . “Do America's Changing Demographics Impact Politics?” http://www.npr.org/2011/07/04/137609363/do‐americas‐changing‐demographics‐impact‐politics

Just Not Like Us: The Interactive Impact of Dimensions of Identity and Race in Attitudes towards Immigration

“…In general this approach does not fit the theoretical foundations that underpin the logic of these dimensions. Recent work by Byrne and Dixon confirms that the mixed empirical results of the impact of the civic-political dimension in past work are the result of the complex nature of the interactions between the civic-political and ethnocultural dimensions [15]. This theoretical model has the most explanatory power when interaction effects are explicitly included in empirical models of attitudes towards immigrants and there is interpretation of the conditional effects across the range of these dimensions, which is the methodological approach that we use here.…”

“…An extensive theoretical literature regarding attitudes towards immigrants has developed models based on dimensions of identity [5,[7][8][9][10][12][13][14][15][16][17][18][19][20]. In the multidimensional framework that has emerged from this literature there is a clear argument that the dimensions of identity are interactive, even though much of the empirical work has focused on models that test only independent effects of national identity and of race.…”

Review Essay: Nordic Welfare and U.S. Employment Policy: Public Policies that Reflect Equality as a Normative Political Value

“…Kvist and others' () research is focused more toward academics, and its comparisons are focused primarily within and among Nordic countries, and between Scandinavian countries and Europe. A recent study by Byrne and Dixon () adds a U.S. perspective and a more direct policy suggestion to one of the questions that Kvist and others consider: the question of immigration. Byrne and Dixon's study is an example of the findings of an in‐depth national study complementing a comparative collection in a way that broadens our global perspective and brings a practical utility to our research.…”

“…Byrne and Dixon () consider how the structure of identity translates to policy preference in the U.S. Taking as their premise that individuals construct identities from a structure of dimensions that determine the ease with which outsiders may join the polity, they find an interactive effect between ethnocultural and civic‐political dimensions.…”

“…Byrne and Dixon's study is an example of the findings of an in-depth national study complementing a comparative collection in a way that broadens our global perspective and brings a practical utility to our research. Byrne and Dixon (2013) consider how the structure of identity translates to policy preference in the U.S. Taking as their premise that individuals construct identities from a structure of dimensions that determine the ease with which outsiders may join the polity, they find an interactive effect between ethnocultural and civic-political dimensions.…”