The Immigrant Next Door: Long-Term Contact, Generosity, and Prejudice / Leonardo Bursztyn, Thomas Chaney, Tarek Alexander Hassan, Aakaash Rao.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Bursztyn, Leonardo.

Contributor:

National Bureau of Economic Research.

Chaney, Thomas.

Hassan, Tarek Alexander.

Rao, Aakaash.

Series:

Working Paper Series (National Bureau of Economic Research) no. w28448.

NBER working paper series no. w28448

Language:

English

Physical Description:

1 online resource: illustrations (black and white);

Place of Publication:

Cambridge, Mass. National Bureau of Economic Research 2021.

Summary:

We study how decades-long exposure to individuals of a given foreign descent shapes natives' attitudes and behavior toward that group. Using individualized donations data from large charitable organizations, we show that long-term exposure to a given foreign ancestry leads to more generous behavior specifically toward that group's ancestral country. To shed light on mechanisms, we focus on attitudes and behavior toward Arab-Muslims, combining several existing large-scale surveys, cross-county data on implicit prejudice, and a newly-collected national survey. We show that greater long-term exposure: (i) decreases both explicit and implicit prejudice against Arab-Muslims, (ii) reduces support for policies and political candidates hostile toward Arab-Muslims, (iii) leads to more personal contact with Arab-Muslim individuals, and (iv) increases knowledge of Arab-Muslims and Islam in general.

Notes:

Print version record

February 2021.