Events

Immigration attitudes are central to political contestation around the world. Scholars suggest that in receiving countries in the Global North, the roots of such attitudes lie with voters’ fears of economic, cultural, and security threats. In the context of growing South-South migration, we describe a new fear about immigration that can shape political attitudes: how the presence of migrants from particular countries can spark “that could be me” fears among voters, who may view immigrants as literally embodying what could one day happen to them if their own country became as oppressive or chaotic as the sending country. Such fears, we suggest, can arise independently of perceptions that immigrants represent economic, cultural, or security threats. The Venezuelan migration shock across Latin America provides a useful context for exploring our hypothesis. Receiving countries in the region are culturally and economically very similar, but vary in terms of the level of Venezuelan immigration and the strength of right-wing populist forces that seek to leverage immigration for electoral gain in domestic politics. To assess the extent and impact of “that could be me” fears, we fielded a preregistered survey-experiment simultaneously in six Latin American countries that vary on these two dimensions, cueing voters to think about Venezuelans versus immigrants from elsewhere. We find that across countries, a large immigrant inflow from Venezuela does drive fears about employment and crime, while “that could be me” fears are more important in low –immigration countries. In addition, where right-wing populist forces are strong, Venezuelan immigrants spark fears among conservative voters of impending political doom at home – even when few immigrants are present. Our argument offers a new way to think about the consequences of immigration on political attitudes – even in relatively low-immigration contexts, and particularly in the Global South, where “that could be me” fears are potentially quite common.

The Political Science Seminar Series is convened by Desmond King and David Rueda For more information on this or any of the seminars in the series, please contact politics.secretary@nuffield.ox.ac.uk.