Ramiro Martinez Florida International University
SES-1023317 Eric Stewart Florida State University
There has been increased interest in understanding the determinants of public sentiment toward Latinos in the United States. While there has been much public discourse about harsher punitive measures to prevent immigrants from crossing the border into the United States, little is known about the social context that generates support for anti-Latino sentiment. To better understand these processes, the investigators will analyze data from a recent national survey on attitudes towards immigrants and Latinos. The investigators will link the survey data to county-level crime, social, and economic data, as well as political and demographic data. The researchers will study whether punitive sentiment toward Latinos is the result of individual and macro level-influences. In particular, the plan is to examine census-based measures, such as size of the Latino population, immigration rates, unemployment rates, and other factors such as negative perceptions of Latinos are significantly to see if these are related to public support for punitive-Latino sentiment. They research will also investigate whether or not Latino population growth leads to anti-Latino hate crime victimization and/or immigrant restriction policies across counties in the United States.
Broader Impacts
Research findings will be of interest to students and researchers across multiple disciplines, as well as immigration and criminal justice policymakers in local, state, and federal government agencies. The results will be disseminated at the annual meetings of the American Society of Criminology and the American Sociological Association. Additionally, the study will produce a new aggregated data archive on immigration, Latino threat, and the impacts on U.S. society which will be made available for data analysis through Interuniversity Consortium for Political and Social Research (ICPSR).
This proposal emanates from the Racial Democracy, Crime, and Justice Network (RDCJN), an NSF-supported research network for encouraging collaboration on the study of race, crime, and justice and increasing racial and ethnic diversity in academia among faculty of color. Both PIs are original members of the RDCJN and are active in the Network. In line with the collaborative and nurturing goals of the RDCJN, the proposed project will provide an important original research experience for graduate students at two research institutions by incorporating them into the research process and exposing them to members of the Network and the PIs' institutions. The collaborative activity will also broaden the participation of underrepresented groups and enhance the infrastructure for research partnerships at the PIs home institutions. The lead PI is at a Hispanic Serving Research Institution and the co-PI is at a flagship state school well regarded for the large number of African American students that graduate from its programs each year. In addition, the PIs will incorporate findings from this research study into both graduate and undergraduate courses and make the data available to others teaching related courses. This study will allow the investigators to integrate research and education by training students at two institutions and providing them with original research and teaching experiences, thereby broadening their graduate education and making them more marketable to future employers and contributing to their future research agendas.
Intellectual merit and contribution: This unique collaborative project in part provides a rigorous test of the minority group threat thesis by empirically investigating how Latino population size and individual-level perceptions of Latino criminal, economic, and political threats influence anti-Latino sentiment (King and Wheelock, 2007). Individual attitudes are important to consider because individual perceptions of Latino threat are associated with larger demographic factors and other influences including general punitive attitudes. For example, threat hypothesis papers have looked at one influence or the other, but not both and most have been at the aggregate, not individual, level. Our proposed study will simultaneously capture micro- and macro-level characteristics that generate negative evaluations of Latinos. Furthermore, our use of multilevel models will give us a detailed picture of anti-Latino sentiment that is not currently available. Such research will help us inform policy geared towards a group that is new in many areas of the country. Taken together, this study will inform our understanding of social control practices and support for immigration control initiatives. What will emerge from the proposed study are answers to questions about the macro- and micro-level determinants of anti-Latino sentiment.To examine our research questions and data, we use multilevel models to detect direct and interactive relationships between Latino presence and perceived Latino threat on punitive sentiment. The findings show that Latino population growth and perceived Latino criminal and economic threat significantly predict increases in punitive Latino sentiment. Additionally, the interaction effect suggests that perceived criminal threat on punitive Latino sentiment is most pronounced in settings that experienced growth in the size of the Latino population. Broader Impact of this Research This project will directly benefit students and researchers across varied disciplines, as well as immigration and criminal justice policymakers in local, state and federal government agencies. Interested parties at the national and local level will enhance their understanding of attitudes towards Latinos and immigrants by examining relations in areas where concern about Latinos is high, and where there are concentrated levels of negative attitudes towards immigrants. The analysis of local attitudes can help policymakers shape their reactions in a manner that is consistent with local objectives and needs. To do this we will disseminate our key findings to audiences that focus on policy such as the annual conference of the National Council of La Raza, the National Association of Elected and Appointed Officials, the National Institute of Justice, or the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services - Department of Homeland Security. One of the PIs has experience in providing commentary on immigration and crime at various nonacademic forums and to the news media and is preparing a presentation to the Department of Research & Evaluation in the Office of Policy and Strategy at the USCIS. This project will also produce a new aggregated data archive on immigration, Latino threat and the impacts on U.S. society which will be made available for data analysis through ICPSR. This proposal emanates from the Racial Democracy, Crime, and Justice Network (RDCJN), an NSF-supported research network for encouraging collaboration on the study of race, crime, and justice and increasing racial and ethnic diversity in academia among faculty of color. Both PIs are original members of the RDCJN and are active in the Network. In line with the collaborative and nurturing goals of the RDCJN, the proposed project will provide an important original research experience for graduate students at two research institutions by incorporating them into the research process and exposing them to members of the Network and the PIs’ institutions. One university is a Hispanic Serving Research Institution, and the second university is a flagship state school well regarded for the large number of African American students that graduate from its programs each year. In addition, the PIs will incorporate findings from this research study into both graduate and undergraduate courses and make the data available to others teaching related courses. This study will allow us to train students at two institutions, providing them with original research and teaching experiences, broaden their graduate education, making them more marketable to future employers and contributing to their future research agendas.
