The Role of Geographic Context in the Local Politics of US Immigration

Abstract

In recent years, immigration has emerged as a highly contentious local issue in the United States, particularly in non-traditional settlement areas like new metropolitan gateways and suburban communities. This paper uses survey data from the Pew Research Center to analyse how geographic context within and across metropolitan gateways influences both perceptions of the local impacts of immigration, as well as respondents' attitudes toward immigration as a national issue. While immigrant concentration is positively associated with perceptions of immigration as a local problem, a relative absence of immigrants in a respondent's community predicts negative attitudes towards immigrants at the national level. Further, areas that respond unfavourably to immigration at the local level do not always coincide with the areas that are most opposed to immigration to the United States more generally. As such, this analysis identifies tangible differences between immigration as a local and national issue, suggesting a distinct unevenness in the multi-scalar politics of US immigration.