An article, co-authored by Professor Brad Jones and CSUS Assistant Professor Danielle Josten Martin, was recently accepted for publication. The article, entitled "Path to Citizenship or Deportation? How Elite Cues Shape Opinion on Immigration in the 2010 U.S. House Elections," will be published by Political Behavior.
The abstract of the article reads:
"The ascendency of the immigration issue has been concomitant with massive increases in the Hispanic population in the United States. Further, the rate-of-change of the Hispanic population in the U.S. has been highest in states sometimes referred to as “new destination” states – states that heretofore had limited experience with large Hispanic populations. This paper examines the relationship between individuals’ opinions on illegal immigration as a function of characteristics of the Hispanic population. We argue that because the Hispanic population has been inextricably tethered to the illegal immigration issue, opinion on immigration policy among non-Hispanics residing in geographic areas with large numbers of Hispanics or areas where the rate-of-change in this population has been high will gravitate to higher preferences for restrictionism. The mechanism underlying this prediction emanates from social identity theory, which predicts that when ingroup/outgroup differences are made salient, individuals are more prone to think in group-based terms. We hypothesize that legislative campaigns can serve as a catalyst to make group-based judgement salient. Using data from the 2010 U.S. House elections, we show that in high Hispanic populated states or where the rate-of-change in the Hispanic population has been high, restrictionist attitudes among individuals increases as candidate emphasis on the issue of illegal immigration increases."
