Social Mobility through Immigrant Resentment: Explaining Latinx Support for Restrictive Immigration Policies and Anti-immigrant Candidates

Various polls suggest that Donald Trump has enjoyed the support of a sizable minority of the Latinx electorate despite his racially offensive rhetoric and support for some of the most restrictive immigration policies in recent memory. Building on Social Identity Theory and Self-Categorization Theory, we contend that some Latinxs harbor negative stereotypes about immigrants, blame them for the status devaluation of the Latinx community, and cognitively distinguish themselves from Latinx immigrants. Rather than viewing anti-immigrant policies, rhetoric, and politicians as a direct status threat, those exhibiting this “Latinx Immigrant Resentment (LIR)” may regard them as a means to enhance the status and interests of “prototypical” Latinxs by signaling their distinction from “atypical” Latinxs. To evaluate this theory, we use the 2020 American National Election Study (ANES) and 2016 Collaborative MultiRacial Post-Election Survey (CMPS) as a proof-of-concept to first confirm that negative immigrant stereotypes and cognitive intragroup distinctions are associated with increased support for Donald Trump and restrictive immigration policies. We then introduce a more refined measure of LIR by fielding online surveys of US Latinxs administered through Lucid in 2020–2021 (N = 1,164) and 2021/22 (N = 1,017). We demonstrate the validity of this measure and its predictive power for attitudes toward Donald Trump, Ron DeSantis, and restrictive immigration policies after accounting for a range of rival explanations.