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    Changing In-group Boundaries: The Role of New Immigrant Waves in the US
    21 Apr 2020Working Paper Summaries

    Changing In-group Boundaries: The Role of New Immigrant Waves in the US

    by Vasiliki Fouka, Shom Mazumder, and Marco Tabellini
    How do new immigrants affect natives’ views of other minority groups? This work studies the evolution of group boundaries in the United States and indicates that whites living in states receiving more Mexican immigrants recategorize blacks as in-group members, because of the inflow of a new, “affectively” more distant group.
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    Author Abstract

    How do social group boundaries evolve? Does the appearance of a new out-group change the in-group’s perceptions of other out-groups? We introduce a conceptual framework of context-dependent categorization, in which exposure to one minority leads to recategorization of other minorities when the former is perceived as more distant than the latter. We test this framework by studying how Mexican immigration to the U.S. affected whites’ attitudes and behaviors towards African Americans. We combine survey and crime data with a difference-in-differences design and an instrumental variables strategy. Consistent with the theory, Mexican immigration improves whites’ attitudes towards blacks, increases support for pro-black government policies, and lowers anti-black hate crimes, while simultaneously increasing prejudice against Hispanics. Immigration of groups perceived as less distant than blacks does not have similar effects. Our findings imply that changes in the size of one group can affect the entire web of inter-group relations in diverse societies.

    Paper Information

    • Full Working Paper Text
    • Working Paper Publication Date: March 2020
    • HBS Working Paper Number: HBS Working Paper #20-100
    • Faculty Unit(s): Business, Government and International Economy
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    Marco E. Tabellini
    Marco E. Tabellini
    Assistant Professor of Business Administration
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