Title: Attitudes about refugees and immigrants arriving in the United States: a conjoint experiment
Abstract: ABSTRACTABSTRACTFrom 2013 to 2018, the global refugee population increased by about 50 per cent. Although public opinion toward refugees plays a key role in shaping related policies, scholarly research on this topic remains limited. Using original data from a nationally representative conjoint survey experiment conducted in 2019, we examine whether US citizens' attitudes toward refugees are distinct from their attitudes toward other types of immigrants to the US, and how applicant attributes shape American citizens' preferences about admission of foreigners. We find that immigrant and refugee reasons (as defined by law) for migrating to the US affect attitudes, with refugee reasons garnering greater support. The labels "immigrant" and "refugee" on their own have smaller effects, in general, but can be salient in combination with other characteristics. We also find marked effects of newcomers' characteristics, especially country of origin, profession, gender and religion.KEYWORDS: Refugeesimmigrationpublic opinionattitudesconjoint methodsconjoint experiment AcknowledgementsThe authors wish to thank Lina Newton, Marcus Johnson, Jennifer Laird, Ke Li, James Rodriguez and Min Zhu for invaluable feedback on earlier drafts of this paper. Mariah Lutchman and Aida Murati, John Jay College McNair Scholars, provided research assistance on this project.Disclosure statementNo potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).IRB approvalThis study has been granted an exemption by the CUNY IRB (protocol number 2019-0526) and the Syracuse University IRB (protocol number 19-209).Additional informationFundingThis research was funded by two awards, Cycle 50 PSC-CUNY Research Award TRADB-50-315 and a John Jay Office for the Advancement of Research Seed Money Award 90616-24-01.
Publication Year: 2023
Publication Date: 2023-01-09
Language: en
Type: article
Indexed In: ['crossref']
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Cited By Count: 5
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