An Experiment on the Policy Effects of Immigrant Skin Tone

Abstract

Innovative natural experiments, observational research and theories of racial threat suggest that skin tone is a determinant of nativist sentiment, yet experiments which include immigrant skin tone as a treatment find little connection between the two. We argue that these contradictory findings can be partially explained by experimental designs which exclude information about immigrant geographic context, an essential component of threat. To address these issues, we design a survey experiment in which geographic context and immigrant skin tone are randomly manipulated. We find that skin tone has potent effects on support for anti-immigration policy when geographic context is included but has no effects when context is excluded. We argue that these results suggest that geographic context should be considered in future experiments which seek to measure the effects of immigrant skin tone on policy outcomes.