ABOUT THIS BOOK
The United States is once again experiencing a major influx of immigrants. Questions about who should be admitted and what benefits should be afforded to new members of the polity are among the most divisive and controversial contemporary political issues.
Using an impressive array of evidence from national surveys, The Politics of Belonging illuminates patterns of public opinion on immigration and explains why Americans hold the attitudes they do. Rather than simply characterizing Americans as either nativist or nonnativist, this book argues that controversies over immigration policy are best understood as questions over political membership and belonging to the nation. The relationship between citizenship, race, and immigration drive the politics of belonging in the United States and represents a dynamism central to understanding patterns of contemporary public opinion on immigration policy. Beginning with a historical analysis, this book documents why this is the case by tracing the development of immigration and naturalization law, institutional practices, and the formation of the American racial hierarchy. Then, through a comparative analysis of public opinion among white, black, Latino, and Asian Americans, it identifies and tests the critical moderating role of racial categorization and group identity on variation in public opinion on immigration.
REVIEWS
“The Politics of Belonging makes a profound contribution to the research on public opinion and immigration. Theoretically rich and innovative, it tackles the subject matter in an original and thought-provoking manner, deftly weaving a historical narrative of the creation of America’s immigration laws with the country’s racial hierarchy. Against this backdrop, Natalie R. Masuoka and Jane Junn offer a wealth of data to argue convincingly that public opinion on immigration is a reflection of racial attitudes.”
— Marisa A. Abrajano, University of California, San Diego
“The Politics of Belonging offers a timely, important, and forceful argument for how race and ethnicity structure the public’s understandings of American identity, racial/ethnic identity, and immigration policy. Natalie Masuoka and Jane Junn argue persuasively that a group’s position in the American social, economic, and political hierarchy influences how group members arrive at their views of who counts as an American and what shape immigration policy ought to take.”
— Cindy D. Kam, Vanderbilt University
“Natalie Masuoka and Jane Junn pose the central political question in an era of global immigration: Who should belong inside a nation? Taking a social structural approach that incorporates racial hierarchy and group position theory, they embed public opinion in a broader historical account of law and institutional practices. And in analyzing the contrasting dynamics of opinion across America’s main ethnic and racial groups, they uncover the crucial moderating role played by group identities. The result is the most thorough and authoritative account of public opinion about immigration yet to be done.”
— David O. Sears, University of California, Los Angeles
"Masuoka and Junn's,The Politics of Belonging . . . covers new ground on understanding the attitudes and political beliefs of communities that are often left out of national discussions of politics. [An] important read."
— Huffington Post
“Masuoka and Junn focus on American structural racism, particularly as it relates to immigration policy. . . . They persuasively argue that this structure is invisible to those who belong but clearly visible to those who have been deemed excluded, rendered invisible. . . . [The authors] write so clearly that this book is accessible to and recommended to all levels of readers.”
— Choice
“There’s a consistent level of nuance and innovation in [The Politics of Belonging] that I find remarkable. . . . This book opens the door for new theories and new methods precisely because it asks us larger questions about how, when, and why researchers see meaningful boundaries between and within groups. In doing so, it makes the study of public opinion more complex, which is a welcome development indeed.”
— Political Communication
“When studying public opinion regarding immigration, scholars tend to focus on the effect of partisanship or ideology on Americans’policy preferences. Rarely do political scientists consider factors like race or ethnicity as anything other than a simple control variable in the analysis. In The Politics of Belonging, however, Masuoka and Junn move the study of racial identity to centerstage by arguing that the distinct historical experiences of America’s largest racial groups—whites, African Americans, Latinos, and Asians—shape important differences in their attitudes toward immigration. But The Politics of Belonging is much more than a book about immigration; instead, it is a study of intergroup relations and the effects of the perceived racial hierarchy in American society. . . . A must-read.”
— Political Science Quarterly
“An original and important contribution to an understanding of immigration policy attitudes. . . . Masuoka and Junn provide a rich theoretical story of how one’s position in the American racial hierarchy influences one’s sense of belonging, which in turn affects opinions on immigration policy. The text deftly weaves together the development of the argument, with support backed up with empirics. The book is a must-read for anyone interested in understanding opinions on immigration, but the contribution goes well beyond that.”
— Perspectives on Politics
“The Politics of Belonging should be influential for public opinion scholars. It showcases several important surveys, raises the importance of interactive effects by race on individual attitudes, and offers new insight into opinion on the issue of immigration.”
— International Migration Review
Politics of Belonging is ultimately a valuable text for the social sciences as it advances empirical examinations of the racial hierarchy. Masuoka and Junn provide an innovative quantitative approach to comparative race studies. One of the major strengths of their racial diamond model is its emphasis on malleability. They assert that ‘racial stereotypes are thus not obdurate constructs but specific to the time and context of political belonging’ and cite the changing positioning of Asian Americans as evidence of how dominant racist tropes for each group can change over time.”
— Journal of Asian American Studies
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Acknowledgments
Chapter 1. Public Opinion through a Racial Prism
DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226057330.003.0001
[Immigration, Public opinion, Race, Racial hierarchy, Immigrant incorporation, U.S. immigration policy, Immigration policy reform, Naturalization policy, Comprehensive immigration reform]
Chapter 1 begins by reviewing patterns of contemporary American attitudes about immigration. Although traditional theories of public opinion often explain political attitudes on immigration as a function of party identification, the most visible differences in opinion are across racial groups, where whites exhibit the most restrictive attitudes on immigration, followed by blacks, Asian Americans and Latinos. In this chapter, the authors develop the argument that location in the American racial hierarchy structures conceptions of belonging as well as the exercise of individual agency. A model of the "Racial Prism of Group Identity" (RPGI) is introduced. The implications of the distinction between race and ethnicity for the placement of racial groups are detailed, and the authors illustrate how racial categorization in the United States today is structured as a diamond-shaped racial hierarchy. (pages 13 - 35)
Chapter 2. Development of the American Racial Hierarchy: Race, Immigration, and Citizenship
DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226057330.003.0002
[American Political Development, Immigration policy, Citizenship, Race, American identity, Nativism, Colonialism, Whiteness, Racial hierarchy, Racial stereotypes]
Chapter 2 examines the development of the American racial hierarchy, the shifting meanings attached to racial categories, and their interaction with policies and practices delineating political belonging in the United States. Taking a historical perspective, the authors track developments that influence the contemporary diamond shape of the racial hierarchy including the link between the development of the American state in terms of economic growth and territorial expansion, the racial basis for citizenship and, and the path-dependent consequences of privileging whiteness for political attitudes at the individual level. Belonging to the American polity--whether through racial categorization as white or otherwise--is dynamic and continually being redefined, and the analysis in this chapter underscores the significance of immigration policy in the content of racial stereotypes and the construction of group identities. (pages 36 - 62)
Chapter 3. The Pictures in Our Heads: The Content and Application of Racial Stereotypes
DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226057330.003.0003
[Racial stereotypes, Prejudice, Race, Racial categorization, White attitudes, African American attitudes, Latino attitudes, Asian American attitudes]
Chapter 3 delineates and presents evidence on how the racial hierarchy American continues to structure political attitudes through the widespread and consistent association of negative and positive racial stereotypes. Stereotypes are most often used to measure racial prejudice. The analysis in this chapter utilizes stereotype content and valence to reveal a striking level of agreement in racial stereotyping across Americans of all racial and ethnic backgrounds. The authors argue that stereotypes represent the lingua franca of racial categorization rather than simply a measure of group-based prejudice. At the same time, while there is general agreement on the content of stereotypes, the analysis in this chapter demonstrates that the rates of stereotyping vary across racial groups. Whites are more likely to stereotype by race than African Americans, Latinos, or Asian Americans. The findings reveal how racial position determines individual reliance on group based stereotypes. (pages 63 - 87)
Chapter 4. Perceptions of Belonging: Race and Group Membership
DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226057330.003.0004
[Social Identity Theory, National identity, Racial group identity, Group membership, Boundaries of being American, Immigration policy, Citizenship attitudes, Linked fate]
Chapter 4 analyzes in detail the critical but often omitted antecedent to attitude formation of group identity. In the context of immigration policy, group identification with the nation and with one's racial group are both important. This chapter documents the variation in national and racial group identities across whites, blacks, Asian Americans and Latinos. Given the racial prerequisites for American citizenship, members of different racial groups have experienced varying degrees of inclusion in the nation. The degree to which each group is accepted and the extent to which groups have received a conditional welcome to the polity informs the level attachment to both the nation and racial groups. Exclusion from the polity has encouraged greater emphasis on racial group identity and solidarity among minorities, but all Americans feel positive affect and attachment to the United States regardless of race and ethnicity. This analysis lays the foundation for the hypothesis tested in the next chapter that both national and racial group identities will work concurrently but in distinctive ways for different racial groups in political attitudes on immigration. (pages 88 - 121)
Chapter 5. The Racial Prism of Group Identity: Antecedents to Attitudes on Immigration
DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226057330.003.0005
[Immigration, Public opinion, Methodology, Inferential statistics, Racial identity, Linked fate, National identity, Immigration entry policy, Immigration abode policy]
Chapter 5 analyzes the antecedents of immigration attitudes by identifying and testing the Racial Prism of Group Identity (RPGI) model. Existing literature on immigration attitudes commonly points to partisanship, economic outlook and racial prejudice as key explanation of variation in public opinion. The authors argue that while these are all important factors in political attitudes on immigration, conventional scholarship does not sufficiently take into account the position of individuals in the American racial order and its systematic effect on political attitudes. The RPGI model specifies the inclusion of national and racial group attachment as relevant explanatory factors of public opinion on immigration. The authors articulate their methodological strategy of taking a comparative relational approach to analyzing public opinion. This perspective argues for estimating inferential models separately for whites, African Americans, Latinos and Asian Americans. This approach offers a more effective method for understand how and why national identity and racial group identity influence political attitudes on immigration in distinct ways for Americans classified by race. (pages 122 - 155)
Chapter 6. Framing Immigration: "Illegality" and the Role of Political Communication
DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226057330.003.0006
[Political communications, Framing, Priming, Elite influence on public opinion , Experiments in political science, "Illegal" Immigration, Racial appeals, Media, Latinos as "illegal", Asian Americans as "model minority"]
Chapter 6 documents how racial groups respond differently to political messages on immigration. Public opinion on immigration policy is strongly influenced by elite messages. This chapter focuses on two strategies employed by political elites today: framing immigrants as "illegal" and priming citizens to think about the race of the immigrant. The analysis in this chapter documents that white Americans are much more concerned about illegal immigration than either African Americans or Latinos. Results from an embedded survey experiment designed to prime respondents to think about a particular racial group when considering immigration policy found that racial priming does not have uniform effects across the four racial groups. Instead, racial priming succeeded in making respondents of some racial groups more positive toward immigrants, and in other cases, evoking more restrictive positions on immigration policy. (pages 156 - 184)
Conclusion: The Politics of Belonging and the Future of US Immigration Policy
DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226057330.003.0007
[Comprehensive immigration reform, US immigration policy, Public opinion, Citizenship, Racial coalitions, Political mobilization, Electoral politics, Racial hierarchy]
The conclusion reiterates the authors' position that the development of laws, legal precedents, institutional practices, and the racial taxonomy in the United States are critical to understanding the context in which the politics of belonging takes place. Public opinion on immigration reflects the systematic variation in constraint on attitudes through their position in the racial order. Analyzing public opinion through the prism of race yields three lessons for understanding the future of US immigration policy. First, immigration and naturalization policy define the context of political belonging experienced by Americans. Second, immigration is the central engine for racial formation in the United States, simultaneously accounting for the persistence of the racial hierarchy and serving as the mechanism behind the dynamism in both the shape of the racial order and the meaning of the racial categories themselves. Third, because race structures individual-level political attitudes, public opinion on immigration policy reform will depend on the both the demographic composition of the population and the ability of grassroots organizations, opinion leaders, and elites to mobilize Americans. (pages 185 - 198)
Notes
References
Index
