Relocating Prejudice: A Transnational Approach to Understanding Immigrants’ Racial Attitudes

Abstract

Immigration is changing the racial composition of many societies. Yet leading theories of racial prejudice, even in a multiracial context, focus on dynamics in a single nation-state and fail to account for the experiences of the foreign-born. We adopt a transnational approach that incorporates processes creating prejudice from both inside and outside the receiving society and that shows how attitudes move across borders through immigration, transnationalism, and globalization. We draw upon two in-depth studies of immigrants and those who stay in the home countries, focusing on Koreans’ and Dominicans’ attitudes toward Black Americans. By situating existing theories of racial prejudice within a transnational framework, we illustrate how models of transnationalism are relevant not just within immigration scholarship, but to more general processes of social change.