Mapping American Attitudes Towards Refugees and Immigrants: Insights into Anti-Refugee and Anti-Muslim Sentiments

Merve Armagan Bogatekin (), Ivy Ho and Yan Wang
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Merve Armagan Bogatekin: Department of Psychology, Ibn Haldun University, İstanbul 34480, Türkiye
Ivy Ho: Department of Psychology, Univesity of Massachusetts Lowell, Lowell, MA 01854, USA
Yan Wang: Department of Psychology, Univesity of Massachusetts Lowell, Lowell, MA 01854, USA

Social Sciences, 2025, vol. 14, issue 3, 1-14

Abstract: The number of refugees across the world is increasing rapidly, as is the prevalence of Islamophobia. This flow of people and changing perceptions of them usually result in negative attitudes and hostility toward Muslims and refugees since they are perceived as the “outgroup”. This globally prevalent trend is usually attributable especially to refugees being perceived as a social, economic, or security threat. The goal of this paper is to understand Americans’ perception of outgroups and how they are related to anti-refugee and anti-Muslim sentiment by using a data-driven approach. We used latent class analysis (LCA) to determine whether there were any latent classes concerning outgroup attitudes in the US. Our results showed that people fall into four different categories regarding how they perceive Muslims, refugees, and minorities. At the same time, there were five different latent classes regarding how they perceive immigrants. This paper aims to explore this complex issue and help to reduce prejudice and intergroup conflict, ameliorate negative attitudes, and provide these groups with a stable social support system.

Keywords: Syrian refugees; anti-immigrant; intergroup conflict; allophilia; xenophobia (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: A B N P Y80 Z00 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
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