‘You opened my mind’: Latinx immigrant and receiving community interactional dynamics in the United States

Abstract

AbstractCommunities are continually shaped by immigration. As immigrants join receiving community members as members of the same community, all must co‐navigate emergent and evolving relationships. These intergroup relations can range from quite positive, marked by mutual enrichment and engagement, to quite negative, marked by prejudice and discrimination. This study seeks to illuminate immigrant and receiving community member relations by exploring what factors play a role in each group's attitudes and actions toward, and experiences with, one another. Thirty first‐ and second‐generation immigrants from Latin America and 30 third‐generation or more U.S.‐born respondents participated in semistructured interviews, which were thematically analyzed. Results indicated that while both intergroup contact (Allport, 1954) and the formation of common in‐group identities (Gaertner, Dovidio, & Bachman, 1996) helped to create positive intergroup relations, numerous personal characteristics–including values and beliefs, visible features, and relative power–affected experiences and attitudes. Further, in the absence of knowledge based on direct contact, media played a strong role in shaping attitudes toward both groups of community members. These findings show how attitudes and actions of immigrants and receiving community members are each shaped by experiences, or lack thereof, between these groups. Moreover, this pathway is iterative and reciprocal. Therefore, efforts aimed at increasing and improving positive intergroup relations must consider the bidirectional iterative process and experiences of both groups.