Who’s in Your ‘Hood: The Relationship between Neighborhood Diversity and Americans’ Acceptance of Immigrants

Why have Americans historically felt threatened by the influx of immigrants? Academics have attempted to explain native-born Americans’ resistance to immigration in terms of perceived threats to identity, values, and beliefs. These threats are symbolic: they relate to intangible, individual factors that cannot be measured. This quality makes it difficult for academics to predict when native-born Americans will respond negatively to immigration.

In “Acculturating Contexts and Anglo Opposition in the United States,” Benjamin J. Newman establishes a systematic relationship between immigration and cultural threats. Newman begins his study by borrowing from the “defended neighborhoods hypothesis,” which states that racial hostility between African Americans and whites likely emerges in integrated neighborhoods that were previously predominantly white. The author applies this theory to immigration by focusing on the growth of the Hispanic population and estimating the response of the native-born Anglo-American to cultural threats, thus forming the “acculturating context.”

The theory behind the acculturating context asserts that residing in a community with low initial levels of a foreign population makes individuals less resilient to the culture shock associated with an influx of immigrants. In other words, residing in diverse communities makes individuals feel less threatened by a rapid increase in an immigrant population.

The acculturating context yields three predictions. First, white Americans living in areas with initially-large Hispanic populations should be less likely to experience culture shock due to an ensuing influx of immigrants. Secondly, individuals residing in communities with few Hispanics should be more likely to support anti-immigration policies. Finally, some non-cultural issues surrounding immigration–including concerns that immigrants use public services without paying taxes, take jobs, and increase crime–are not associated with this cultural aversion; the author contends that feelings about cultural vulnerability can decrease while concerns over non-cultural threats persist.

Using the 2005 Citizenship, Involvement Democracy Study, Newman surveyed the immigration stance and place of residence of 725 non-Hispanic whites throughout the United States. The author employs 1990 and 2010 Census data to identify an initial baseline and rate of growth for the Hispanic populations in each respondent’s community.

Using regressions, Newman discovers statistically significant evidence in support of prediction one: For counties with small initial Hispanic populations, a large increase in the Hispanic population was associated with a 28 percent increase in the cultural threat perception among whites. Furthermore, the author finds a negative, although statistically insignificant, relationship between large initial Hispanic populations and perceptions of cultural threats. These results suggest whites living in semi-homogenous communities in 1990 were more likely to be threatened by the rapid increase in the Hispanic population than those in more diverse communities. The author uses the first prediction to argue for prediction two: the regression evidence supports an indirect relationship between anti-immigration policies and initial levels of a Hispanic population.

Finally, Newman tests prediction three and finds no relationship between concern over non-cultural immigration threats and the initial size of a community’s Hispanic population. However, he does find a statistically significant relationship between the growth of a community’s Hispanic population and an increase in white residents’ concerns over non-cultural threats, suggesting immigration opposition rises with the immigrant population, even in diverse communities.

Newman links symbolic ideas of cultural threat perception to data. He demonstrates that living in a diverse community prepares individuals to embrace influxes of immigrant populations. The author, however, recognizes that his research is limited to white-Hispanic interactions. As such, he suggests that the study be duplicated for non-white native-born groups.

Feature Photo: cc/(David Ohmer)