In a pre-registered between-subjects online experiment (N = 714), U.S. citizens were randomly assigned to humorous counterspeech, non-humorous counterspeech, or a control condition to examine effects on attitudes toward undocumented immigrants. Non-humorous counterspeech reduced negative perceptions relative to control, while humorous counterspeech produced no direct attitudinal effects. However, humor indirectly reduced anti-immigrant policy support by increasing negative emotions, which in turn predicted lower policy support. This negative emotional response marginally tended to be stronger among Democrats than Republicans. Findings suggest that while sincere counterspeech is more broadly effective, humor may mobilize existing allies through moral outrage. Implications for counterspeech strategy are discussed.

What is the relationship between concerns about the opioid crisis and undocumented immigration among the American public? Drug overdoses, largely driven by opioids, remain one of the most significant preventable causes of death in the United States, driving public concern about drug use. Alongside concerns about migrants at the U.S.-Mexico border, political rhetoric often blames undocumented immigrants for the opioid crisis. Accordingly, this project examines how such rhetoric shapes public perceptions of the crisis and the extent to which the public associates fentanyl trafficking with undocumented immigrants. Using data from the 2024 Western States Survey of around 4,000 respondents and a novel set of survey questions, we analyze attitudes toward the opioid crisis and perceived blameworthiness of undocumented immigrants. Preliminary results indicate that concern about opioids and blaming undocumented immigrants are distinct phenomena. These findings suggest attribution of blame reflects broader anxieties about (undocumented) immigration rather than substantive assessments of the opioid crisis.

In recent years, the Trump administration and several state governments have taken action against rising antisemitism in the United States. However, critics have stated that among the most troubling of these efforts are the federal government’s threats to deport international student protesters for what it perceives as fomenting hate against Jewish students across American campuses and hence threatening national security. While most would generally agree that expressions of hate toward any ethnic, racial, or religious group is wrong, there is considerable disagreement over what constitutes hateful or antisemitic speech. We hope to solicit feedback on an experimental design as part of a project in which we investigate whether perceptions of antisemitism vary according to the ethnicity/nationality of the student protester who expresses criticisms of the Israeli government and whether public support for/opposition to government action directed against the individual would also vary by the ethnicity/nationality background of the protester.

Racial differences in authoritarianism are often invoked to explain disparities in policy preferences and political behavior. Yet it remains unclear whether these gaps reflect genuine latent differences or artifacts of measurement. Using anchor-based multi-group confirmatory factor analysis (MG-CFA) across multiple nationally representative surveys, we detect systematic threshold non-invariance: Black and White respondents use response categories differently for some child-rearing items. Importantly, correcting for these measurement artifacts does not eliminate the Black–White gap—African Americans continue to exhibit higher latent authoritarianism under stringent measurement-equivalent models. Once measurement error is properly accounted for, these latent differences translate into substantively meaningful variation across a wide range of policy attitudes. Beyond authoritarianism, this framework provides a generalizable strategy for credible cross-group comparisons in public opinion research. The results highlight both the importance of rigorous invariance testing and the substantive consequences of latent psychological differences for political behavior.

Loyola U-Chicago

Does the institutional design of Congressional chambers systematically advantage certain groups of Americans? Building on our recent American Political Science Review paper examining racial disparities in federal lawmaking (Markarian et al., 2025), this project investigates how bicameral differences shape representational equity. Analyzing policy preferences of over 500,000 respondents, roll-call votes, and legislative outcomes over nearly two decades, we find the House provides substantially better policy representation than the Senate, with pronounced advantages for historically disenfranchised groups—particularly racial minorities, women, low-income individuals, and young Americans. These disparities do not stem from House members voting more consistently with constituent preferences when votes occur. Instead, the key mechanism is agenda control: the Senate systematically fails to consider broadly popular House-passed legislation appealing to marginalized groups. Simulations probing the filibuster's and malapportionment's independent effects suggest eliminating the filibuster would substantially reduce Senate representational biases. These findings demonstrate how Senate procedures create barriers to translating disenfranchised Americans' preferences into policy outcomes.

U Notre Dame

For this research design, I present the White Differential Norms Model, a theory on normative behavior. This theory examines the micro and macro components of norm development, focusing on how racial socialization (through family, peers, and other social networks) instills normative expectations. These norms are then internalized, and ultimately prompt White racial engagement. I argue that Whites who follow internalized color-conscious norms are more likely to act in racial justice movements. In contrast, Whites who follow the norm that racism is a thing of the past are less likely to support these movements. However, in highly salient cases of racial injustice, such as mediatic cases of police brutality, they are likely to mobilize because there is a violation of this norm. Their participation, however, is likely to be brief and performative. I test this theory via a survey experiment by priming norms to prompt racial participation among color-conscious and color-blind White Americans.

Theories of political participation expect that institutions conferring benefits increase engagement, while exclusion and stigmatizing policies demobilize. This paper shows both inclusion and exclusion can mobilize, but into different political arenas, depending on how institutional design structures collective incentives. I examine the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act (ANCSA) of 1971, which reorganized 229 village governments under 12 regional for-profit corporations, providing land and compensation and extinguishing claims. Alaska Natives alive in 1971 received corporate shares and voting rights, excluding those born after. Using regression discontinuity and difference-in-differences designs with federal election data and Alaska voter files, I find increased federal voting among those just excluded from benefits. However, archival evidence shows that when shareholders mobilized to amend ANCSA—extending shares to descendants and protecting lands and resources—the effect reversed. These findings show how institutional design can redirect political effort across governing arenas and embed durable forms of collective governance.

Does the electoral context shape interest in running for office among marginalized groups? Women, racialized groups, and youth have historically exhibited lower political ambition and candidacy rates, yet periods when identity-based marginalization becomes electorally salient have coincided with surges in candidates from these groups. I argue that contexts marked by the salience of marginalization can catalyze political ambition and candidate emergence. Survey experiments across multiple U.S. samples show that making marginalization salient, especially when coupled with demands for inclusion, boosts marginalized individuals' interest in running and nascent ambition. The findings support a contextual activation theory of political ambition, whereby marginalization salience activates ambition primarily among those already better positioned to consider running, such as individuals with higher political efficacy, qualifications, or baseline ambition. Observational evidence from state legislative elections suggests this psychological activation corresponds with patterns of real-world candidate emergence.

CSU Northridge

Immigration is a salient issue for many Latino voters. However, surprisingly little scholarship has been devoted to understanding how immigration can uniquely influence how Latinos vote in elections. In this paper, we fill this void by developing a comprehensive theory of immigration-based voting. We posit that immigration-based identity, social ties to immigrants, discrimination and fears associated with hostile-immigrant environments, and preferences towards immigration policies influence voting behavior differently in hostile and non-hostile contexts. To test our theory, we employ the Collaborative Multi-Racial Post-Election Survey (CMPS) dataset in 2016 and 2020. In 2016, Latino voters who worried about deportation, perceived discrimination against immigrants, and held pro-immigration policy preferences (pathway to citizenship) were more likely to vote for the Democratic candidate. In 2020, perceptions of discrimination towards immigrants and pro-immigration policy preferences influenced support for the Democratic candidate. These findings imply that immigration must be treated holistically, as it can influence Latino voters across different political contexts.

Lorrie Frasure, Natalie Masuoka

Media representations of migrants and racialized minorities play a consequential role in shaping intergroup relations, yet their cumulative influence is rarely integrated into dominant models of migration and integration. This chapter argues that mainstream media depictions operate as a macro-level institutional force that constructs intergroup symbolic environments, publicly circulating representational climates that define group status, threat, legitimacy, and belonging within the national community. Drawing on research from communication and social psychology, the chapter demonstrates how repeated portrayals of migrants as criminal, culturally incompatible, or burdensome cultivate hostility and exclusionary norms among majority audiences. At the same time, these depictions shape migrants’ perceptions of societal regard, identity compatibility, and institutional trust. Given that majority and minority populations navigate the same intergroup symbolic environments, media representations simultaneously structure both sides of the relational field, shaping the psychological conditions under which intergroup contact, conflict, and integration unfold.

Research in political communication suggests that the ways in which the media represent immigrants in the United States are largely racialized. To test immigrant racialized cues, we ran two survey experiments (in 2021 and 2023) in which respondents read a news story about an undocumented immigrant in the U.S., where both (1) race and national origin and (2) age-at-arrival are manipulated. Across both studies, respondents in the racialized-immigrant conditions reported about the same levels of support as in the white-immigrant conditions, contrary to the initial assumption that racial threat would be activated in the racialized conditions. However, we do find strong support that respondents in the childhood age-at-arrival treatments reported more support for the immigrant than those in the adulthood age-at-arrival treatments, regardless of race. In terms of racial resentment and attitudes about assimilation, we find that these variables reinforce these relationships. Results are considered as they relate to contemporary racial issues, immigration policy, and child migrants.

My ongoing dissertation project argues that U.S media coverage of Asian countries shapes American public’s attitudes toward Asian groups living in the United States, conceptualizing such cross-domain influence as spillover effect. So far, my preliminary analyses have found the following results: 1) Analyses of ANES survey data finds that public threat perceptions of foreign countries significantly spills over into public racial attitudes toward associated racial groups, particularly for Asians in 2016 and 2020, and for Latinos in 2016, but not for Whites in either year or for Latinos in 2020 2) Analyses of New York Times media data and weekly-basis UCLA nationscape survey data find that public feelings towards Asians correspond to sentiment of titles of NYT news mentioning China, with media effects lagged by 1-2 months. I propose to incorporate topic model analyses, extend the media analyses into 2012-2024 period and conduct survey experiments to further causally examine how media frames of China/Japan influence public opinions of Asian groups.

This paper examines how hybrid digital media shape pathways to office for immigrant and minority candidates in New York City’s 2025 mayoral election, an analytically important site because immigrants make up about 38% of the city’s population. In the political incorporation literature, incorporation refers to legal citizenship and, more broadly, to the processes through which immigrants and minority groups move from legal status and political participation to representation and officeholding. I analyze Zohran Mamdani’s 2025 campaign as the primary case for theory building and compare it with Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s 2018 congressional campaign and Andrew Yang’s 2021 mayoral campaign to clarify the scope conditions. The paper tests the hypothesis that hybrid digital media, when combined with offline organizing and institutional opportunities, can accelerate pathways to office by building visibility, signaling coalition breadth, and converting political credibility into electoral legitimacy. Using process tracing and structured content analysis of campaign materials, endorsements, election returns, financial records, and digital media metrics, I argue that Mamdani’s trajectory is best understood as a hybrid form of political incorporation.

In multiracial societies, skin color often functions as a politicized proxy for race, obscuring its independent political effects. India provides a unique case to isolate these effects: while colorism is pervasive, skin color is not a formal political category. This study examines the relationship between skin tone and caste-based voting, a cornerstone of Indian political behavior. Utilizing 93 semi-structured interviews alongside a survey of 5,100 voters in Uttar Pradesh and Tamil Nadu two states varying in median skin tone and political culture yet ranking among India's top markets for skin-lightening products —we find that darker-skinned individuals experience significant alienation within their proximate social ties, the very networks that sustain caste-based mobilization. Consequently, darker-skinned voters are consistently less inclined toward caste-based voting than their fair-skinned counterparts. These findings demonstrate that even in the absence of racialized politics, skin color remains a potent, independent driver of political behavior and social fragmentation.

States do not only regulate migration; they shape how citizens understand who belongs. I argue that migration governance functions as an institutional signaling system that constructs public attitudes toward migrants. Focusing on South Korea, Japan, and Taiwan, I examine a shared policy configuration - large-scale labor admission combined with categorical exclusion from membership - which I term "permanent temporariness."�Existing theories of immigration attitudes, centered on economic and cultural threat, cannot account for persistent exclusionary sentiment among populations with minimal competition, limited contact, and even cultural proximity to migrants. I propose instead that institutional design shapes public attitudes: visa categories and legal restrictions construct evaluative hierarchies that citizens internalize as social common sense. Drawing on policy feedback theory, I show how migration policy communicates migrant social worth. Using comparative and within-case evidence, I examine whether more exclusionary institutional signals are associated with more exclusionary public attitudes. This suggests that exclusionary attitudes are not simply products of citizen preferences, but of the institutional architecture states construct and can reconstruct.

Deported U.S. military veterans experience what this study terms civic homelessness, the condition of holding deep civic identity and sacrifice while being formally expelled from the political community they served. Media coverage occasionally addresses mental health or immigration status, but rarely examines how these veterans interpret and communicate their own exclusion. This study asks: under what conditions do deported Latino military veterans employ rhetorical frames of repatriation, immigration reform, and access to benefits, and how do these frames function as advocacy? Drawing on qualitative interviews with deported veterans located in Mexico, this research analyzes how structural conditions prior to removal, including time in the United States, family ties, and combat experience, shape which rhetorical frames are employed. Findings suggest that these narratives operate as informal political participation, transforming personal exclusion into collective claim-making and extending framing theory beyond formal social movement contexts.

Although a relatively large theoretical and empirical literature explores the causes of refugee flows from developing and authoritarian countries, few scholars have looked at the potential for refugees to flee developed, democratic states such as Slovakia. Using logistic regression models of data from the "Ako sa máte, Slovensko?" survey of March and April of 2022--just after the most recent major Russian invasion of Ukraine--I analyze Slovaks' answers to questions on whether and where they would flee if their country became part of the war zone. Regression analysis suggests that pro-Western, pro-OĽaNO, urban, secular, and younger residents would be more likely to seek refuge outside the country. Some of these characteristics are opposite those of typical refugees described in the sociological literature, suggesting that studying Slovakia can help advance scholarship on the causes of forced migration.

How do everyday interactions with natives shape immigrant political integration? While prior research highlights how exclusionary policies and xenophobic discourse constrain integration, less attention has been paid to micro-level intergroup dynamics. Drawing on social identity and contact theories, I argue that positive interactions with natives reshape how immigrants perceive both themselves and the host society. Specifically, such interactions foster political integration through two psychological processes: decategorization, which reduces the salience of group boundaries, and recategorization, which encourages identification with a shared civic community.
To test these mechanisms, I field a chat-based experiment among first-generation third-country immigrants in Germany and Belgium. Participants collaborate with a virtual native partner on a community budget task and are randomly assigned to one of three interaction conditions that vary recognition and inclusion. I examine effects on political trust, efficacy, and belonging.

Claremont GU

The literature on White Americans' reaction to demographic change continues to focus on immigration despite the fact that the ethnic diversification of the United States is increasingly driven by non-White births. We extend past research on White backlash against ethnic diversification to the domain of reproductive policy---testing the idea that prejudiced Whites will support abortion in response to growing minority populations as a means of slowing demographic change via non-White reproduction. Using large-N and original surveys of the American public, we find that Whites residing in locales with substantial growth in the Latino population are more supportive of access to legal abortion. This relationship is not observed among non-Whites and is confined to Whites higher in prejudice. We replicate these findings with a series of experiments showing that priming prejudiced Whites to think about Latino population growth increases their support for racially-targeted abortion as well as other reproduction-limiting policies.

Why do co-ethnic migrants experience radically different forms of incorporation within the same host society? This article argues that differential state categorization is the primary mechanism that produces hierarchical belonging among co-ethnics. Through South Korean case, which classifies ethnically identical migrants from North Korea and China into divergent legal and administrative categories, it examines how state-constructed categorical distinctions shape migrants' intergroup relations, status perceptions, and boundary-drawing strategies. Using an original mixed-method design called the Randomized Priming Interview (RPI), conducted with 52 semi-structured interviews across both migrant communities, I test three hypotheses and findings show that: (1) state category distinctions must be cognitively activated to shape intergroup perception; (2) Chinese Korean migrants consistently internalize subordinate status while North Korean migrants require external reminders of their officially privileged position; and (3) migrants in higher and lower positions adopt divergent boundary-drawing strategies — internalizing ascriptive criteria or contesting them with attainable alternatives, respectively.

How does inter-ethnic and co-ethnic trust differ under modern corporate management practices, and how do exogenous shocks affect these relationships? Capitalist and managerial classes manage ethnic relationships with workers in order to maintain firm growth and stable working relations, especially in ethnically diverse communities. The differential management of ethnic relationships may prioritize profit maximization at the expense of sharpening social and ethnic tensions. However, economic and social shocks like COVID change these relationships given the shift in profitability and the threat of economic recession. We seek to examine these differences using two waves of survey data from 20,000 employees from the largest listed corporations in Malaysia pre- and post-COVID. Drawing from the varieties of capitalism, racial capitalism, and management literatures, we explore the ethnic dynamics of the working class and their robustness to said shocks as a means to understand and categorize the nature of corporate capitalism.

Afghan Americans occupy a distinctive position within U.S. racial politics. The Census Bureau formally classifies them as Asian, yet two decades of War on Terror policies have racialized Afghan Americans in ways that parallel the experiences of Arab Americans and communities from the broader Middle East. This tension raises questions about how Afghan Americans navigate competing pan-ethnic categories whose boundaries continue to shift. This paper examines patterns of pan-ethnic identification among Afghan Americans using two waves of survey data collected through a community-based participatory research partnership with the Afghan American Community Organization in 2024 and 2025, complemented by data from the Collaborative Multiracial Post-Election Survey (CMPS). Together, these sources will inform the design of a third survey wave being fielded in summer 2026. Preliminary findings suggest that Afghan Americans' pan-ethnic attachments do not map neatly onto existing Census categories, reflecting the layered effects of formal classification, foreign policy, and lived racialization.

How consistent are people's political beliefs? Specifically, do immigrants hold consistent political beliefs toward their home and host countries? Research on immigrants' incorporation tends to focus on their deficits in political resources compared to natives. In this project, I leverage immigrants as carriers of dual political identities, testing whether their political beliefs are consistent between their home versus new country, with an empirical focus on Korean and Chinese immigrants in the US. Rather than dismiss discrepancies between home and host country beliefs as “incoherent�, I hypothesize cohort, home regime, and identity salience effects as mediators of value transference. The case selection of Korean and Chinese immigrants allows for a comparative analysis, as the two groups are categorized as the same racial minority status in the US, but carry different political experiences back home. This project challenges and contributes to existing research of political behavior and preference formation, and also to the field of political psychology within international relations.

The Latinx immigrant criminality narrative—the false association of Latinx immigrants with crime and violence—is a persistent narrative in US politics, most notably articulated by Donald Trump. Yet despite the fact that all empirical evidence renders the claim false, a substantial percentage of Latinx immigrants endorse the criminality narrative. This study considers the implications of endorsement of the immigrant criminality narrative, addressing the question: does endorsement of the criminality narrative predict support for draconian immigration policies in the US? Using data from the 2025 Latino Immigrant National Attitudes Survey (LINAS), we show that beliefs in the criminality narrative strongly predict support for ending birthright citizenship, invoking the Alien Enemies Act, and establishing a national registry for undocumented immigrants—three extreme and punitive immigration policies proposed during Donald Trump’s 2024 presidential campaign.

This study examines how ethnic framing in Supreme Court immigration rulings shapes perceptions of judicial legitimacy among Latino and non-Latino Americans. Building on theories of judicial legitimacy, ethnic identity, and group threat, the study investigates whether rulings framed as targeting Latino immigrants differentially affect evaluations of the Court compared to rulings framed as affecting other immigrant groups or immigration policy more generally. Using an experimental survey design, participants were randomly assigned to one of three vignette conditions describing a Supreme Court decision with varying ethnic frames. Consistent with the possibility that diffuse support for the Court is relatively stable, the findings show that ethnic framing does not significantly alter Latino perceptions of Supreme Court legitimacy. Similarly, the framing of the ruling does not meaningfully affect non-Latino respondents’ emotional reactions or approval of the Court. These results suggest that judicial legitimacy, particularly with respect to the Supreme Court, may be relatively insulated from short-term framing effects, even in highly racialized policy domains such as immigration. The study contributes to research on law, race, and political behavior by clarifying the conditions under which ethnic identity does and does not shape evaluations of legal institutions.