The Immigrant Next Door: Long-Term Contact, Generosity, and Prejudice
85 Pages Posted: 9 Feb 2021 Last revised: 1 Apr 2022
There are 2 versions of this paper
The Immigrant Next Door: Long-Term Contact, Generosity, and Prejudice
The Immigrant Next Door: Long-Term Contact, Generosity, and Prejudice
Date Written: March 31, 2022
Abstract
We study how decades-long exposure to individuals of a given foreign descent shapes natives’ attitudes and behavior toward that group. Using individualized donations data from large charitable organizations, we show that long-term exposure to a given foreign ancestry leads to more generous behavior specifically toward that group’s ancestral country. To shed light on mechanisms, we focus on attitudes and behavior toward Arab-Muslims, combining several existing large-scale surveys, cross-county data on implicit prejudice, and a newly-collected national survey. We show that greater long-term exposure: (i) decreases both explicit and implicit prejudice against Arab-Muslims, (ii) reduces support for policies and political candidates hostile toward Arab-Muslims, (iii) leads to more personal contact with Arab-Muslim individuals, and (iv) increases knowledge of Arab-Muslims and Islam in general.
Keywords: contact, attitudes, immigration, prejudice
JEL Classification: D83, D91, P16, J15
Suggested Citation: Suggested Citation