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Discriminatory Immigration Bans Elicit Anti-Americanism in Targeted Communities: Evidence from Nigerian Expatriates

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 October 2021

Aaron Erlich Open the ORCID record for Aaron Erlich [Opens in a new window] ,
Thomas Soehl Open the ORCID record for Thomas Soehl [Opens in a new window]  and
Annie Y. Chen
Aaron Erlich*
Affiliation:
McGill University, Montréal, Canada
Thomas Soehl
Affiliation:
McGill University, Montréal, Canada
Annie Y. Chen
Affiliation:
McGill University, Montréal, Canada Dartmouth College, Hanover, USA
*
*Corresponding author. Email: aaron.erlich@mcgill.ca.
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Abstract

Do discriminatory US immigration policies affect foreign public opinion about Americans? When examining negative reactions to US actions perceived as bullying on the world stage, existing research has focused either on US policies that involve direct foreign military intervention or seek to influence foreign countries’ domestic economic policy or policies advocating minority representation. We argue that US immigration policies – especially when they are perceived as discriminatory – can similarly generate anti-American sentiment. We use a conjoint experiment embedded in a unique survey of Nigerian expatriates in Ghana. Comparing respondents before and after President Trump surpisingly announced a ban on Nigerian immigration to the United States, we find a large drop (13 percentage points) in Nigerian’s favorability towards Americans.

Keywords

Unexpected survey designconjoint experimentNigeriaGhanamigrationimmigration bananti-Americanism
Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of Experimental Political Science , Volume 10 , Issue 1 , Spring 2023 , pp. 76 - 87
Open Practices
Open data Open materials
Copyright
© The Author(s) 2021. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of The Experimental Research Section of the American Political Science Association

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Footnotes

This article has earned badges for transparent research practices: Open Data and Open Materials. For details see the Data Availability Statement.

We thank Aengus Bridgman, Patrick Kwasi Brobbey, Costin Ciobanu, David FitzGerald, Nicholas Kerr, and members of our respective research groups for feedback on earlier drafts of the paper. We thank Favour Daka for excellent research assistance. The research was carried out under Research Ethics Board approval #92–0719.

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