Economics Or Culture? Measuring Economic Thinking And Cultural Enrichment Beliefs About Immigration.
Abstract
The present work attempts to distinguish people’s economic concerns about immigration from their (anti-)diversity attitudes, and examines how these economic concerns influence attitudes towards immigrants. To do this, we develop a scale to assess economic thinking and cultural enrichment beliefs about immigration (ETI/CBI). Economic thinking was associated with personality and ideological traits related to viewing the world as competitive and anti-diversity attitudes. Cultural enrichment beliefs on the other hand, were associated with traits associated with a preference for equity and pro-diversity orientations. Furthermore, economic thinking was associated with greater preferences to reduce immigration for all migrant groups except economic migrants, and preferences towards ethnic groups viewed as “model minorities”. Cultural enrichment beliefs on the other hand was associated with less restrictive immigration attitudes and preferences towards ethnic minority groups. A follow-up conjoint survey found that regardless of people’s economic thinking and cultural enrichment beliefs, people tended to prefer the same characteristics in newcomer migrants (i.e., highly educated, working in “useful” industries, etc.). Finally, economic thinking and cultural enrichment beliefs shaped how people perceive the humanity of various immigrant groups. Economic thinking about immigration was associated with greater animalistic dehumanization of family class migrants, temporary foreign workers, international students, and refugees relative to economic migrants and Canadians in general, as well as greater mechanistic dehumanization of all migrants. Cultural enrichment beliefs, on the other hand was associated with greater humanization (vs animalistic and mechanistic dehumanization) overall. These findings suggest that while there is some overlap in attitudes between those who dislike immigration for economic reasons and those who dislike immigration for cultural reasons, the two concerns are distinguishable from each other, and lead to different perceptions of immigrants.