The ways in which welfare state programs structure people’s lives have been a central focus of research on policy feedback. While there is rich literature in the USA about racialized experiences with the state, we know little about how immigration history intersects with racial background in moderating experiences with the state nor have there been many studies in other liberal welfare regimes outside the USA. Our study aims to fill this gap by exploring how citizenship status over generations intersects with racial background in structuring interactions with welfare state programs in Canada. Analyzing data from Democracy Checkup surveys spanning from 2020 to 2023, we focus on how needs, capabilities, and experiences may structure government contact and the extent to which these factors explain differences across citizenship and racial categories. We document a recurring difference in the amount of contact among racialized respondents—non-citizens and third-generation citizens—that cannot be explained by either need or capability. Interestingly, our findings suggest that while the greater contact among racialized non-citizens is evaluated more positively in terms of procedure, third-generation racialized citizens generally evaluate their higher contact more poorly. These findings point to the importance of understanding racialized experiences with the state through the lens of citizenship.

This study investigates the impact of historical and ideological continuities in Turkey’s migration policies on contemporary attitudes toward Syrian refugees. It examines how ethnic homogenization and discrimination, rooted in the foundation of the Turkish Republic, continue to shape public perceptions and policy frameworks. The research is based on qualitative methodologies, including 41 semi-structured in-depth interviews conducted between July and December 2021 with Syrian refugees and Turkish community members residing in Altındağ, Mamak, and Ümitköy districts of Ankara. Participants were purposively selected to provide diverse perspectives on social integration and identity formation. The findings reveal a shift from initial acceptance under religious solidarity to increasing exclusion, driven by nationalist rhetoric. Despite official claims of promoting multiculturalism, Turkish policies and societal attitudes often reinforce prejudices, fostering a socio-political environment where racial and ethnic biases persist.

How closely related are modern anti-democratic beliefs among white Americans, and to what extent are these beliefs shaped by exclusionary racial attitudes? Using data from the Political Unrest Study, the Collaborative Multiracial Post-Election Survey (CMPS), Democracy Fund + UCLA Nationscape, and the Survey of the Performance of American Elections (SPAE), we find that support for voting restrictions, opposition to voting expansions, belief in widespread voter fraud, and support for overturning democratic election results load onto a single underlying dimension. While the prevalence of anti-democratic beliefs among white Americans has remained stable over the past decade, these beliefs have become increasingly interconnected. Furthermore, racial attitudes towards out-groups—including racial resentment, anti-immigrant sentiment, and white racial grievance—strongly correlate with anti-democratic beliefs, whereas in-group racial attitudes do not. Analysis of multiple waves of the American National Election Studies (ANES) reveals that racial resentment and white grievance now explain twice as much variation in anti-democratic beliefs as they did in 2012. Experimental evidence also demonstrates that white Americans react negatively to voting expansions when the racial implications of these reforms are made explicit. These findings underscore the growing alignment between anti-democratic beliefs and racial attitudes in contemporary U.S. politics.

We examine factors that explain differences in opinions among Asian Americans and Latinos regarding the government’s responsibility in addressing economic inequality. We utilize a subjective social position framework to better understand variations in attitudes about the role the government should play in addressing the differences in income between people with high and low incomes. We use ordered logit models to assess 2020 Collaborative Multiracial Post-Election Survey data. Respondent’s age, feelings of marginalization, perceptions of local context, and use of alternative financial services are more important for predicting support or opposition to the government addressing income inequality. Taken together, the subjective social position of individuals goes a long way in explaining individuals’ attitudes regarding this matter.

Research on campaign finance suggests that Americans prefer candidates who are not funded by Political Action Committees (PACs). However, prior research has not examined how perceptions of a candidate who is PAC-funded vs. PAC-free might differ for racial minority and female candidates compared to White, male candidates. Using experimental vignettes, we test the causal impact of PAC funding, race, and gender on voter perceptions of the candidate. We find that refusing PAC funds, for example, is associated with appearing more ethical and more likely to work for voters’ interests over special interests, less corrupt, and more capable of winning elections. However, we show that race, more than gender, interacts with PAC funding to impact voter perceptions. We find that White female and male candidates benefit the most from PAC refusal. While Black female and male candidates receive little or no significant change in perceptions, Black PAC-funded candidates are perceived favorably compared to White PAC-funded candidates. Our results have implications for White and Black political candidates considering their funding strategies. Additionally, we contribute to existing literature by showing that refusing PAC funds status does not signal the same qualities for all candidates.

This paper asserts that critiques of political science for neglecting Indigenous politics highlight a critical gap that risks overlooking significant conceptual and practical innovations. It emphasizes how Indigenous autonomy claims challenge traditional notions of sovereignty. Scholars of Indigenous politics in Latin America, publishing in area studies journals, provide essential insights into these autonomy claims and contribute valuable perspectives to the discipline. We identify rigorous scholarly work in English language, peer-reviewed journals exploring Indigenous autonomy, conceptualizing it as a multifaceted notion that encompasses political visions, practices, and social movement agendas. Through a comprehensive meta-analysis of literature in Latin American area studies, we argue that this field offers four fundamental insights. First, Indigenous peoples deploy diverse strategies to assert their rights, positioning themselves as active citizens and political agents rather than passive groups. Second, the emergence of multicultural institutions that integrate individual and collective rights is fundamentally reshaping politics and citizenship, leading to innovative governance structures. Third, accumulation by dispossession remains a crucial driver of wealth creation, severely undermining Indigenous autonomy and degrading their environments. Finally, a renewed emphasis on Indigenous territorial autonomy decisively challenges conventional views of state sovereignty, as Indigenous peoples assert territorial and nonterritorial rights.

This paper investigates the increasing, but complex, support for reparations among Democratic elected officials—highlighting their tendency to endorse the concept while deferring discussion of policy details. This strategic ambiguity is common in policy discourse and can be embedded within policy design, such as legislative proposals to create commissions tasked with studying and recommending future actions on reparations. The effectiveness of these reparations commissions is uncertain. They could represent productive steps toward genuine reparations or simply serve to alleviate political pressure without any substantial policy changes. We explore these potential outcomes in three inter-related analyses: a compilation and comparison of all bills mentioning slavery reparations introduced at the federal and state level, the first nationally representative public opinion poll asking about support for reparations commissions, and a content analysis of legislative bill texts establishing reparations commissions. Our findings suggest that while reparations commissions offer an effective way for Democratic policymakers to manage conflicting constituency pressures in the short term, their potential to propel forward, rather than stall, the reparations debate hinges on their design and execution.

A large literature considers the mid-century a key turning point in punitive public opinion in the United States. This article examines racial and geographic heterogeneity in changing public opinion during the mid-century using data on death penalty support from as early as 1953. I find that the punitive turn is characterized by divergence in death penalty support between Black and White people, and that White Southerners grew more supportive than Whites in the non-South from before to after the turn. Additional tests identify that this regional divergence is unlikely to have arisen by chance. Heterogeneity in partisanship and responsiveness to regional violent crime support is consistent with the idea that crime rates themselves were meaningful in punitive attitude formation only insofar as they were mediated by additional socio-political forces.

Discrimination is widely studied, with extensive research measuring discrimination on the housing and labor markets. This study examines how local governments address this well-documented issue, by conducting content analysis on 45 policy documents and by performing semi-structured in-depth interviews with 24 alder(wo)men and diversity officers across nine Belgian cities. We introduce a temporal framework combining why, what, how, and when local anti-discrimination policy and actions are established. Such a framework is useful, as we do not approach policy as fixed, but pay attention to how actions evolve over time, even within one so-called anti-discrimination policy.This enables scholars and policymakers to identify decision-making patterns, predict changes over time, and understand contextual influences. Besides, unlike existing models rooted in integration or diversity policy, our framework captures the unique aspects of anti-discrimination policy, enabling a thorough understanding of the (non-)adoption of concrete anti-discrimination actions.

How does interior immigration enforcement affect how undocumented immigrants describe their interactions with state and societal institutions? Although there is some evidence that points to a broad range of chilling effects that result when local law enforcement officials work with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) on federal immigration enforcement, there is no systematic study that collectively examines the impacts that may result with such enforcement efforts. We situate our paper as evidence of the homeland security state and show how contemporary interior immigration enforcement subjugates undocumented immigrants in nearly all facets of their interactions with state and societal institutions. To illustrate this, we embedded an experiment in a survey (n = 594) drawn from a probability-based sample of undocumented immigrants. When respondents are told that local law enforcement officials are working with ICE on federal immigration enforcement, they report that they would be less likely to report crimes they witness or are victims of to the police, use public services that require them to disclose their personal contact information, do business that requires them to disclose their personal contact information, and participate in public events where the police may be present, among other main findings.

Political wrangling over Critical Race Theory (CRT) in the United States has produced policies banning its teaching in jurisdictions across the country. However, laws touted as “anti-CRT” have little in common with the original, academic origins of the phrase. In this study, we use a Qualtrics-based survey experiment to assess how participants’ support for a ban will change depending on whether the ban reflects core tenets of academic researchers’ use of CRT, the phrase itself, or elements common to many of the laws intended to ban it. We find that these three different frames do indeed change support for such policies, and the effects are dependent upon partisanship. We interpret our results to be empirical evidence of the phrase “Critical Race Theory” complicating political discourse.

Do Indigenous peoples in present-day Canada display lower levels of diffuse support than non-Indigenous settlers? Given settler colonial relations (both historic and contemporary) and Indigenous peoples’ own political thought, we can expect that Indigenous peoples would have even lower perceptions of state legitimacy than non-Indigenous peoples. However, there are conflicting expectations regarding whether the descriptive representation of Indigenous peoples in settler institutions is likely to make a difference: on one hand, Indigenous people may see themselves reflected in these institutions and consequently feel better represented; on the other hand, these forms of representation do not challenge the underlying colonial nature of these institutions. Using data from the 2019 and 2021 Canadian Election Studies, our statistical analysis demonstrates that: (1) diffuse support is significantly lower among Indigenous peoples than non-Indigenous peoples, including people of color; (2) Indigenous respondents across multiple peoples have similarly low levels of diffuse support, and (3) being represented by an Indigenous Member of Parliament does not change the levels of diffuse support among Indigenous peoples. Overall, our research highlights the outstanding challenges to achieving reconciliation through the Canadian state and points to ways large-N analyses may be made more robust.

Do locals discriminate against themselves by favoring foreigners with higher expected purchasing power? Drawing on theories of prejudice, discrimination, and colonialism, I argue that in colonized and post-colonial countries, local home sellers discriminate against local potential homebuyers while favoring foreigners with expected higher purchasing power, anticipating a more profitable transaction. I support this argument with evidence from a preregistered online audit study targeting discriminatory attitudes toward local home buyers. In the study, fictitious home buyers with distinctive language and ethnic names emailed 1,512 home sellers (realtors and homeowners) across all municipalities in Puerto Rico. Home sellers reported more houses available to Americans and invited them to more house showings than Puerto Ricans. My estimates indicate that ethnic discrimination exists in the Puerto Rican housing market. These findings provide new insights into ethnic dynamics in colonized and post-colonial societies and underscore concerns about recent legislation that turned Puerto Rico into a tax haven.

What is the effect of personal discrimination on the political engagement of ethnic and racial minorities? Existing research theorizes increased engagement, but evidence is mixed. The discrimination and political engagement link is tested across six countries: Canada, Denmark, France, Germany, the United Kingdom, and the United States. Interest in politics and political actions (e.g. protest and donations) show constant relationships: people who have experienced discrimination have more interest in politics and take more political actions. There is no clear evidence of different effects of political vs social discrimination. However, the link between turnout and discrimination varies systematically across countries: a positive correlation in three separate American datasets, but mixed and null in other countries. This may be the result of the distinctive American conflict over voting rights for racial minorities. The conclusion discusses priorities for future research, including a focus on establishing causal relationships and testing mechanisms.

This paper analyses the ethnic penalty by focusing on the racialization of labor market outcomes beyond the migrant penalty. An illegitimate statistical or taste-based discrimination can be revealed specifically by distinguishing migrants into ethnic groups. Accordingly, ethnic penalty based on five different ethnic groups was estimated through the difference in employment and job quality with respect to natives. The analysis was conducted at the country and European average levels using 16 European countries under a framework of ethnic penalty processes in the labor market. According to the analysis, Eastern Europeans were the most prominent ethnicity regarding higher employment across the 16 countries, although they were mostly posited in unskilled jobs. Migrants from the Middle East and North Africa were shown to be subject to a double penalty in both measures, and the penalty tendency was much clearer for females. Asians and South Americans showed the least penalty, while sub-Saharan Africans were revealed to hold an in-between position.

Previous work suggests that African American and Latino voters lack political cohesiveness. Recently, these findings have been cited by opponents of “minority aggregation,” which is the idea that African Americans and Latinos can be thought of as constituting a single “class of citizens” when filing claims under the Voting Rights Act. I replicate one influential study, Rocha (2007), with updated data and greater attentiveness to moderating conditions that are meaningful in voting rights law. My findings suggest African Americans and Latinos are more cohesive than previously thought, especially in majority–minority jurisdictions. Furthermore, cohesion cannot be explained solely by shared partisanship.

Using a national audit of mayors in the United States, this paper examines responsiveness to Latine lesbian and gay constituents who request that their city issue an LGBTQ pride proclamation. Drawing on theories of intersectionality, descriptive representation, and political institutions, we articulate the conditions under which mayors are responsive to public-facing constituency service requests to issue LGBTQ pride proclamations. We find that mayors are more responsive to requests from lesbian couples than gay couples. In addition, baseline responsiveness to our inquiry was influenced by mayors’ identity characteristics. LGBTQ mayors were more likely to respond than non-LGBTQ mayors, but Latine mayors were less likely to respond than non-Latine mayors. In addition, mayors who represent cities where nondiscrimination ordinances protect LGBT people from discrimination were more responsive than mayors who represent cities where LGBT people are not protected from discrimination. These findings demonstrate how intersectional frameworks can advance audit experiments and that shared descriptive characteristics do not inevitably translate into responsiveness, a common assumption in single-axis studies of representation.

How does the general public perceive immigrants, whom do they think of when thinking about “immigrants,” and to what extent are these perceptions related to the actual composition of immigrant populations? We use three representative online surveys in the United States, South Africa, and Switzerland (total N = 2,778) to extend existing work on the perception of immigrants in terms of geographic coverage and individual characteristics. We also relate these responses to official statistics on immigration and integration patterns. In all three countries, there are significant discrepancies between perceptions of immigrants and their real proportion in the population and characteristics. Although we observe clear country differences, there is a striking pattern of people associating “immigrants” with “asylum seekers” in all three countries. We consider two possible explanations for the differences between perceptions and facts: the representativeness heuristic and the affect heuristic. In contrast to previous research, we find only partial support for the representativeness heuristic, whereas the results are consistent with the affect heuristic. We conclude that images of “immigrants” are largely shaped by pre-existing attitudes.

Seven decades after Brown v. Board, Black students continue to lag White students. This article analyzes six experiments conducted over three decades to study whether, consistent with social identity theory, White Americans are more supportive of funding increases for nonracially targeted educational programs that benefit their racial ingroup compared to race-targeted programs. We also ask whether racial prejudice is a factor, if implicit or explicit racial priming accounts for any observed differences, and if the effects have changed over time. Our results show that consistent with social identity theory, White Americans are more likely to favor funding increases for public schools or programs for poor children, categories that are majority White, than programs targeted to Black children. Furthermore, we find no evidence of implicit or explicit racial priming. Across all experiments and all years, interactions between racial priors and the treatments are null. We conclude that ingroup favoritism, not prejudice nor racial priming, explains racially discriminatory support for increases in education funding.

Researchers are increasingly reliant on online, opt-in surveys. But prior benchmarking exercises employ national samples, making it unclear whether such surveys can effectively represent Black respondents and other minorities nationwide. This paper presents the results of uncompensated online and in-person surveys administered chiefly in one racially diverse American city—Philadelphia—during its 2023 mayoral primary. The participation rate for online surveys promoted via Facebook and Instagram was .4%, with White residents and those with college degrees more likely to respond. Such biases help explain why neither our surveys nor public polls correctly identified the Democratic primary’s winner, an establishment-backed Black Democrat. Even weighted, geographically stratified online surveys typically underestimate the winner’s support, although an in-person exit poll does not. We identify some similar patterns in Chicago. These results indicate important gaps in the populations represented in contemporary opt-in surveys and suggest that alternative survey modes help reduce them.