The Impact of Educational Content on Anti-Immigrant Attitudes

Abstract

How does education affect attitudes towards immigrants? Shifting the scholarly focus from levels of education to educational content, I argue that the effect of education depends on the type of national identification that educational content promotes. Content that promotes a narrower form of national belonging fosters more negative attitudes towards immigrants because it emphasizes a more exclusive notion of national membership. To test the implications of my theory, I leverage a textbook reform in Taiwan that introduced a new narrative promoting Taiwanese identity based on a common ancestral and historical background. Using a difference-in-differences design that compares academic and vocational paths affected differently by the reform, I find that the consumption of educational content emphasizing a narrower form of national identification induces exclusionary attitudes towards immigrants. The evidence suggests that higher levels of education do not necessarily increase positive attitudes towards outsiders -- it depends on what is taught.