Has Opposition to Immigration Increased in the United States after the Economic Crisis? An Experimental Approach

2014/05/03 by Mathew Creighton, Amaney Jamal, Natalia Malancu · 1 citation
Social Sciences · #Migration, Refugees, and Integration #Social and Intergroup Psychology #Migration and Labor Dynamics #Opposition (politics) #Immigration #Population #Demographic economics #Political science #Political economy #Economics #Development economics #Sociology #Law #Demography #Politics

paper · doi:10.1111/imre.12091

openalex publication_date 2014/05/03 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/06/11

Abstract

We employ two population-level experiments to accurately measure opposition to immigration before and after the economic crisis of 2008. Our design explicitly addresses social desirability bias, which is the tendency to give responses that are seen favorably by others and can lead to substantial underreporting of opposition to immigration. We find that overt opposition to immigration, expressed as support for a closed border, increases slightly after the crisis. However, once we account for social desirability bias, no significant increase remains. We conclude that the observed increase in anti-immigration sentiment in the post-crisis United States is attributable to greater expression of opposition rather than any underlying change in attitudes.

Citations

• Economic Explanations for Opposition to Immigration: Distinguishing between Prevalence and Conditional Impact
• Educated Preferences: Explaining Attitudes Toward Immigration in Europe
• Attitudes toward Immigrants, Immigration, and Multiculturalism in New Zealand: A Social Psychological Analysis
• Sources of Negative Attitudes toward Immigrants in Europe: A Multi-Level Analysis
• Social desirability bias in voter turnout reports: Tests using the item count technique
• Public Opinion Toward Immigration Reform: The Role of Economic Motivations
• Sectoral Economies, Economic Contexts, and Attitudes toward Immigration
• Public Attitudes Toward Immigration
• The Influence of Social Desirability Pressures on Expressed Immigration Attitudes*
• Who Is Against Immigration? A Cross-Country Investigation of Individual Attitudes toward Immigrants

Cited by

• Opposition to immigration [wikipedia]