Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Immigrant Assimilation And Male Racial Labor Market Inequality, Patrick Leon Mason

Patrick L. Mason

At the height of the US civil rights movement in the mid-1960s foreign-born persons were less than 1 percent of the African American population (Kent, 2006). Today, 16 percent of America’s African Diaspora workforce consists of first or second generation immigrants and 4 percent are Hispanic. African American immigrants experience racialized labor market assimilation, with intergenerational improvement, education, and exogamous heritage being important paths of labor market assimilation. After living in the US for 9 – 15 years, first generation black immigrants will have wage and workhours penalties at least as large as native African Americans. The immigration process selects …

Decoding Prejudice Toward Hispanics: Group Cues And Public Reactions To Threatening Immigrant Behavior, Todd K. Hartman, Benjamin J. Newman, C. Scott Bell

Todd K. Hartman

Consistent with theories of modern racism, we argue that white, non-Hispanic Americans have adopted a “coded,” race-neutral means of expressing prejudice toward Hispanic immigrants by citing specific behaviors that are deemed inappropriate—either because they are illegal or threatening in an economic or cultural manner. We present data from a series of nationally representative, survey-embedded experiments to tease out the distinct role that anti-Hispanic prejudice plays in shaping public opinion on immigration. Our results show that white Americans take significantly greater offense to transgressions such as being in the country illegally, “working under the table,” and rejecting symbols of American identity, …

Social Dominance And The Cultural Politics Of Immigration, Benjamin J. Newman, Todd K. Hartman, Charles S. Taber

Todd K. Hartman

We argue that conflict over immigration largely concerns who bears the burden of cultural transaction costs, which we define as the costs associated with overcoming cultural barriers (e.g., language) to social exchange. Our framework suggests that the ability of native-born citizens to push cultural transaction costs onto immigrant outgroups serves as an important expression of social dominance. In two novel studies, we demonstrate that social dominance motives condition emotional responses to encountering cultural transaction costs, shape engagement in cultural accommodation behavior toward immigrants, and affect immigration attitudes and policy preferences.

[Impact Factor: 1.614 (2011); Rank: 12 of 148 (Political Science); …