How Party Affiliation Affects Perceptions toward Undocumented Immigrants: A Research Survey of University Students
Poster Number
070
Session Title
Immigation
College
College of Arts and Sciences
Department
Political Science
Faculty Mentor
Hye-Sung Kim, Ph.D., and Scott Huffmon, Ph.D.
Abstract
Today’s political climate is extremely polarized in several issues, including the topic of immigration. Democrats and Republicans, for example, show very different views on immigration policies, overall, as well as ones toward undocumented immigrants. In this study, using a “within-variation” experiment, the first action is to measure the extent to which people’s support for immigration is affected by various characteristics of immigrants, such as immigrants’ country of origin, age, legal status, education level, reason for coming to the United States, and risk of life in the country of origin. Then, using conditional analyses, this study will also explore how support for undocumented immigrants varies by partisan affiliations of respondents for the given characteristics of immigrants. For the country of origin characteristics, immigrants’ country of origin varies among five countries, Mexico, China, Iran, Philippines, Germany and Nigeria. The data will be collected via an online survey with a target population of students (ages 18-24) from Winthrop University and the Citadel, using a convenient sampling. It is expected that, in both university samples, party affiliation will have a significant impact on respondents’ support for undocumented immigrants, with less polarization than among general population samples. It is also expected that support for undocumented immigrants from Mexico will be less than support for those from other countries, particularly from Germany, but only among the respondents who identify themselves as republican.
Start Date
24-4-2020 12:00 AM
How Party Affiliation Affects Perceptions toward Undocumented Immigrants: A Research Survey of University Students
Today’s political climate is extremely polarized in several issues, including the topic of immigration. Democrats and Republicans, for example, show very different views on immigration policies, overall, as well as ones toward undocumented immigrants. In this study, using a “within-variation” experiment, the first action is to measure the extent to which people’s support for immigration is affected by various characteristics of immigrants, such as immigrants’ country of origin, age, legal status, education level, reason for coming to the United States, and risk of life in the country of origin. Then, using conditional analyses, this study will also explore how support for undocumented immigrants varies by partisan affiliations of respondents for the given characteristics of immigrants. For the country of origin characteristics, immigrants’ country of origin varies among five countries, Mexico, China, Iran, Philippines, Germany and Nigeria. The data will be collected via an online survey with a target population of students (ages 18-24) from Winthrop University and the Citadel, using a convenient sampling. It is expected that, in both university samples, party affiliation will have a significant impact on respondents’ support for undocumented immigrants, with less polarization than among general population samples. It is also expected that support for undocumented immigrants from Mexico will be less than support for those from other countries, particularly from Germany, but only among the respondents who identify themselves as republican.
