Countering the trump effect in Canada: strengthening support for immigrants using national identity

Abstract

ABSTRACT Social norms are based on expectations of what others believe and do, and so they can shift in response to what trendsetters—highly visible media or political leaders—say or do. There is evidence that former President Trump as a trendsetter has weakened norms against expressing anti-immigrant attitudes in the US. As such, we ask: can trendsetters affect anti-immigrant norms across national borders? Can such spillovers be mitigated by countervailing norms attached to a national identity? We conduct two survey experiments to determine if there is potential for a Trump spillover effect in Canada and whether it can be mitigated by norms attached to Canadian identity. We find that priming Trump can weaken norms against expressing anti-immigrant sentiment in Canada. We also find that priming Canadian identity can mitigate the Trump as trendsetter effect, and attaching pro-immigrant norms to Canadian identity can strengthen norms against expressing anti-immigrant attitudes. The potential for a political trendsetter to have effects on immigration attitudes across national borders and the potential for national identity norms to mitigate such effects are important to understand given the recent global spread of anti-immigrant sentiment.