Collateral Damage

Abstract

Collateral Damage provides an overview of how political communication influences the process of incorporation with the broad society as well as its political parties. Sean Richey shows that how politicians talk about immigrants affects how their children perceive America and their feelings about the nation. These perceptions and feelings in turn greatly influence the children’s desire to incorporate into American political society. He also shows that regardless of a speaker’s intended outcome, what is said can still have a deleterious effect on incorporation desire, a communicative process that he terms “collateral damage.” Richey uses new experimental and survey evidence, as well as the rhetoric of Donald Trump as a test case, to examine how anti-immigration communication influences the incorporation of the children of immigrants.

Concerns about the Deportation of Friends or Family Members Shape U.S.-born Latines’ Feelings about U.S. Immigration Policy with Implications for Collective Action for Immigrants’ Rights

“…To our knowledge, this is the first experimental evidence that concerns about the deportation of friends or family members affects U.S.-born Latines' feelings about U.S. immigration policy. In the real world, a variety of factors can make deportation concerns salient, including anti-immigrant rhetoric by prominent politicians (Abrego, 2019;Asad, 2020;Jones et al, 2021;Richey, 2023) and increased attention to deportation and detention by immigration activists (White, 2016). We found, second, that anger, fear, and identity conflict were all independently associated with greater willingness to engage in collective action for immigrants' rights.…”

Concerns about the deportation of friends or family members shape U.S.-born Latines’ feelings about U.S. immigration policy with implications for collective action for immigrants’ rights.

“…To our knowledge, this is the first experimental evidence that concerns about the deportation of friends or family members affects U.S.-born Latines’ feelings about U.S. immigration policy. In the real world, a variety of factors can make deportation concerns salient, including anti-immigrant rhetoric by prominent politicians (Abrego, 2019; Asad, 2020; Jones et al, 2021; Richey, 2023) and increased attention to deportation and detention by immigration activists (White, 2016). Second, we found that anger, fear, and identity conflict were all independently associated with greater willingness to engage in collective action for immigrants’ rights.…”