Immigrant Assimilation as a Status Threat to Native-born Americans

What is it about?

Opposition to immigration is often based on claims that Latino immigrants and their descendants are incapable of assimilation and “undeserving” of the benefits of citizenship. This raises an interesting question: Are nativist reactions to these claims strongest where immigrants are lagging behind in terms of language acquisition and other indicators of cultural assimilation, or where they are actually blending in to mainstream American culture? Two competing theories of status threat are tested through an analysis of county-level voting returns on California’s Proposition 227, a proposal to eliminate bilingual education in the state. On one hand, opposition to bilingual education programs could be highest where immigrants are failing to learn English, since native-born citizens could view the acceptance of other languages/cultures as an attack on their dominant cultural practices. On the other hand, opposition to these language programs could be highest where immigrants are already learning English quickly, since immigrants who speak English well are better positioned to compete with native-born citizens for the rights and benefits of citizenship. Although we might expect, and even hope, that claims about the inability of Latino immigrants to assimilate would be least appealing where objective circumstances refute them, findings suggest that these claims are more likely to motivate nativism in settings where they are furthest from the truth.

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Why is it important?

Conservative presidential candidates are generating widespread popularity based, in part, on their willingness to make outlandish claims about the dangers of welcoming Latino immigrants and those of other ethnic origins. Proposals to exponentially increase deportations are widely supported. Statements about banning Muslims from entering the country are actually entertained by some as viable policy options, rather than dismissed as old-fashioned bigotry. In this cultural and political climate, it is important for social scientists to evaluate the adequacy of our theoretical paradigms for explaining this era of “new immigrant contestation” (Steil and Vasi 2014). Are dominant paradigms such as ethnic competition and status politics sufficient, or might additional theories provide more accurate explanations for certain forms of immigrant opposition? I argue that the “status devaluation” framework is a necessary, but currently missing, piece of the theoretical arsenal for explaining ethnic conflict and contemporary nativism. I draw on Bourdieu’s well-known concept of status markets and McVeigh’s power devaluation theory to develop this argument. This article also sheds light on an important puzzle in contemporary U.S. conflicts over immigration—namely, increasing nativism despite strong evidence of Latina/o immigrant assimilation. Recent scholarship has highlighted how certain immigrant groups, especially those of Mexican origin, are portrayed as “underserving” of the benefits of social, political, and cultural inclusion. The boundaries between “deserving” and “underserving” can be reinforced by narratives that depict Latina/o immigrants as threatening. The status devaluation model explains why these threat narratives can actually be more effective at generating a nativist response in places where they are contradicted by objective circumstances. Thus, the arguments I develop in the paper could help explain why opposition to immigrant inclusion seems to be increasing at a time when more and more evidence indicates that Latina/o immigrants are assimilating at least as quickly as the European migrants of the early twentieth century.