Immigrants Confronting Immigration: Political Reactions to Culturally Distant Outgroups

Ignacio Jurado and Josep Serrano-Serrat

No mwqhr_v1, SocArXiv from Center for Open Science

Abstract: This paper examines how social group boundaries are renegotiated in response to demographic change, focusing on immigration from culturally diverse backgrounds. Using a survey experiment in Spain, we explore how Latin American immigrants—who share linguistic and cultural affinities with natives—react to the perceived growth of Moroccans, a more culturally distant immigrant group. Drawing on social identity and political economy theories, we argue that exposure to Moroccan immigration prompts Latinos to align more closely with natives, reflecting a dynamic of strategic boundary-making. Results show that Latinos perceive themselves as closer to Spaniards and more socially recognized, accompanied by a shift toward defining \textit{“being Spanish”} in cultural rather than birth terms. We find no corresponding change among natives, who, if anything, perceive Latinos as less similar to them. These findings suggest that boundary-making is a fluid and strategic process that is influenced by relative cultural distance to other immigrant groups.

Date: 2026-03-18
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-exp and nep-mig
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://osf.io/download/69b98f4279cc9dfdf6e37e59/

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:osf:socarx:mwqhr_v1

DOI: 10.31219/osf.io/mwqhr_v1

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in SocArXiv from Center for Open Science
Bibliographic data for series maintained by OSF ().