Dissertation Project: Populism With(out) Immigrants
My dissertation analyzes the relationship between immigration and populism in the U.S., Latin America, and Western Europe.
(Please do not cite or circulate)
Chapter 1:
In the U.S. context, I explore whether immigrant presence and racial segregation affect different individuals' attitudes toward immigration and vote choice. I hypothesize that for conservatives, higher immigrant presence and/or racial segregation are related to more pro-immigration attitudes and a lower probability of voting for Trump. Further, even voters who are particularly against-immigration are less likely to vote for Trump if they live in counties that are racially segregated. With data from the U.S. Census, American Community Survey, and Cooperative Election Study (2020), I use Bayesian multilevel linear regressions with immigration attitudes as DV and then binomial logistic regressions with voting choices as DV. Most results support the hypotheses. This paper contributes to immigration politics by comparing the different effects of immigrant presence and racial segregation interacting with ideology and providing an alternative to the threat theory in explaining the divergent effects of racial segregation on liberals’ and conservatives’ immigration attitudes and voting choices.
Chapter 2:
The second chapter focuses on the populist right surge in Chile. I hypothesize that (1) higher immigrant presence is related to a higher probability of voters identifying with a political party; and that (2) higher immigrant presence is related to a higher probability of rightist voters voting for the populist right. With data from the 2017 Chile Census, temporary residence applications, and the Chilean Longitudinal Social Survey (2022), I first run logistic regressions on party identification, and then (multinomial) logistic regressions on voting choices. After holding the local economic context constant, the findings support my hypotheses. This study contributes to the study on immigration politics by providing evidence about how immigrant presence affects voters' movement into and out of partisanship and how this relationship affects their voting decisions in Chile.
Chapter 3:
The third chapter shifts attention to Western Europe and focuses on France (in process). I hypothesize that it is how voters perceive the level of immigrant presence rather than the presence in reality that affects the decision of voting for National Rally, the populist-right party.
Methodologies:
My dissertation adopts various advanced statistical methods. After matching fine-grained census data at the county level (or even lower) with individual-level surveys, I use Bayesian multilevel linear regressions and binomial/multinomial logistic regressions to analyze the data, combined with techniques of geospatial analysis. The local demographic data provides information about immigrants that has been overwhelmingly ignored by previous scholars (such as segregation), and the rigorous methods help isolate effects of strong confounders. I also use Python to scrape electoral results of France and Chile online for macro-level analysis.
Peer-Reviewed Papers
Chavarría-Mora, Elías, Chuang Chen, Valentina González-Rostani and Scott Morgenstern. 2024. “How Germane Are Moral and Economic Policies to Ideology? Evidence From Latin American Legislators.” Legislative Studies Quarterly 00(0): 1–15. https://doi.org/10.1111/lsq.12476.
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Working Papers
“How Immigrants and Racial Segregation Affect Immigration Attitudes and Voting for Trump”
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“Offsetting Partisan Decay Through Immigration: Evidence From Chile”
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Conference Presentations
APSA 2024; MPSA 2023, 2024; the 26th Annual Latin American Social and Public Policy Conference (2024); SEMINARIO PELA-USAL 2023; 1st Beijing Foreign Studies University & Sichuan University American Studies Graduate Forum 2018.