July 15, 2020
Margaret E. Peters (UCLA)
(with Alisha Holland (Harvard), Yang-Yang Zhou (UBC))
Attitudes Towards Immigrants in Colombia: The Role of Partisanship
View the recording of the webinar here
Abstract
Most of what we know about public opinion on immigration has come from survey data in the US, Europe, and other wealthy countries. But, increasingly migrants (both economic and forced) are traveling within the developing world. Using an original face-to-face survey of Colombians with an embedded experiment, we ask two questions in the context of the Venezuelan migration to Colombia: (1) How supportive of Venezuelan migrants are Colombians? (2) What aspects of the migration is driving their opinions? We argue that concerns about Venezuelans’ political incorporation shape opinions. Colombia has seen a half-century long conflict between the right-leaning government and leftist rebels and the majority of Colombians favor center-right or right-wing parties. Venezuela, on the other hand, has been ruled by socialists since 1999. Thus, Colombians may be wary of Venezuelans partisan leanings. This is especially likely as more Venezuelans flee disastrous economic circumstances; prior to the economic collapse, those fleeing Venezuela were likely to be regime opponents, who would have held more right-leaning views. In addition to examining the support for our theory, we also examine the alternatives in the literature: labor market threat, fiscal burden, sociotropic concerns, and cultural concerns.