Perceptions of stereotypically immigrant groups as darker-skinned and politics of immigration in the United States and Britain

ABSTRACT Recent evidence indicates that anti-immigration attitudes in white-majority societies have a “racial hue” as they at least partially derive from aversion toward prevalent immigrant groups. Building upon this result, I argue that there is variation in the degree to which people think of stereotypically immigrant groups as darker-skinned, and that this variation has implications for attitudes toward immigration. To test these conjectures, I propose an instrument to measure the associations between social groups and light vs. dark skin tone based on the implicit association test architecture. Using original survey studies in the United States and Britain, I demonstrate that respondents in the two countries indeed tend to perceive stereotypically immigrant groups – Hispanics and Muslims – as darker-skinned than stereotypically native ones (Anglos and Christians respectively). Further, individual differences in these perceptions are related to group-specific prejudice, opinions about immigration, and partisan affect.