Book Project

Emotions and immigration salience

My current book project, Emotions and Immigration Salience, explores why ordinary citizens come to believe that immigration is the most important or politically salient issue in their countries. Given the myriad issues personally affecting them in their daily lives—such as unemployment, healthcare, and inflation—the fact that many citizens identify immigration as the most pressing political issue is puzzling. I argue that emotionally-resonant political discourse plays a critical role in explaining public concern with immigration. Specifically, I propose that immigration salience is catalyzed by discourse that animates anger toward immigrants, with this effect being strongest among individuals on the far right. Furthermore, I posit that anger has a stronger effect on immigration salience than anxiety, as extensive research in political and social psychology finds that anger heightens citizens’ reliance on group-oriented predispositions, such as nationalism and ethnocentrism, which should draw attention to immigrants as an alleged threat.

To empirically assess this theory, I adopt a multimethod research design involving a survey experiment, quantitative text analysis, and comparative case studies. Together, this evidence provides robust support for the argument that angry discourse plays a critical role in leading citizens to view immigration as a politically salient “problem” that needs to be “solved.”

This project advances our knowledge of anti-immigration politics while building on a firm foundation of existing scholarship in multiple fields of research, including public opinion, political psychology, political communication, and nationalism and ethnic politics. First, despite a flourishing scholarly literature on public opinion about immigration, there is a surprising lack of research exploring what makes this issue salient for ordinary citizens. Understanding the foundations of immigration salience matters, as a growing body of research suggests that immigration salience—rather than anti-immigration attitudes alone—catalyzes other outcomes of widely-recognized importance (e.g., voting for the far right). Second, while anti-immigration politics is instinctively emotional, existing scholarship struggles to make sense of the variety of emotions at play. Previous research frequently linked anti-immigration politics to anxiety, with anger being absent from much of the debate. Turning our attention from anxiety to anger matters, as substantial research demonstrates that these two emotions have different cognitive and behavioral effects. Third, a better understanding of immigration salience speaks to some of the most prominent debates in political science and important developments around the world, including the rise of the far right, democratic backsliding, and the resurgence of nationalism. Thus, this research should benefit a wide range of scholars and practitioners.