Contemporary Contours of National Belonging: Experimental and Survey Approaches for Understanding the Structures of the American Hierarchy

Abstract

Establishing the criteria for belonging and status within the national community is a fundamental social process in contemporary society. Access to symbolic and material resources is determined by one’s status and group position in the body politic. In this dissertation, I direct our attention to the gradational nature of American identity. I argue that “American” is not a binary category, but rather one that is hierarchical and relational in construction. I refer to this hierarchy of Americanness as the “American hierarchy.” I use original experimental and survey data to reveal the structures undergirding the American hierarchy and how status in the national community is shaped through political contestation. Specifically, I argue boundary work plays a crucial role in determining status and the structure of the American hierarchy. I show that discourse that frames immigrants as worthy ingroup members or threatening outgroup members not only defines immigrants but also influences the contours of the national hierarchy, including how “American” itself is defined. In the first empirical chapter, I examine the effects of typical immigration discourse on immigration attitudes. This chapter focuses primarily on the effect of pro-immigrant political rhetoric that constructs ingroup membership in terms of normative values related to work, family, and societal contribution. With three distinct samples (n = 6,330 US adults), I test the effect of typical pro-immigrant political discourse, what I refer to as the “worthy-immigrant narrative”, where immigrants are framed as morally deserving ingroup members, on attitudes towards immigration and replicate findings on the effect of framing immigrants as undeserving outgroup members. Findings provide robust evidence that exposure to worthy-immigrant narratives, in which immigrants are portrayed as hardworking, law-abiding, economic contributors, and community members, causes people to report more positive attitudes towards immigration. In the second empirical chapter, I apply a conjoint experiment on a nationally representative sample of 1,067 non-Hispanic White U.S. adults to establish the effect and relative weight of ascriptive and acquired characteristics on perceived Americanness from the perspective of White Americans. Results show 1) nativity and immigration statuses are the most consequential characteristics in evaluations; 2) Asians, Blacks, and Latinos with identical immigration statuses, work histories, criminal backgrounds, education, and other attributes, as Whites are perceived as less American than the latter; 3) norm violation is severely penalized with the symbolic revocation of citizenship. Norm violation was operationalized as being unemployed for 3 years, receiving welfare, and having a criminal history of assault. I refer to this as “the stigmatized triad,” and, on average, it reduces one’s perceived Americanness essentially as much as being a non-citizen. Results from an accompanying racial attitudes survey show White people explicitly believe that the distribution of moralized characteristics that matter for being truly American, and Americanness itself, vary across racial groups. The third empirical chapter builds on the first two and asks: Can immigration discourse influence how White Americans evaluate Americanness? In this chapter, I layer a priming experiment on top of the conjoint experiment, where a nationally representative sample of 3,433 non-Hispanic White respondents are randomly exposed to immigration discourse before evaluating the Americanness of individual profiles. Findings show both worthy-immigrant narratives and anti-immigrant rhetoric reduce the importance of being a native-born citizen in evaluations of Americanness. Importantly, these discursive strategies, particularly anti-immigrant discourse, increase the negative effects of moralistic shortcomings. Said differently, in the control condition, non-citizens are perceived as less American than US-born individuals who are unemployed for 3 years, receive welfare, and have a criminal history that includes an assault (i.e. the stigmatized triad). However, when exposed to typical pro- or anti-immigrant discourse, both of which are predicated on moralistic and implicitly racial understandings of American identity, native-born citizens with the stigmatized triad are perceived as less American than non-citizens. The final empirical chapter examines the racialized structure of the “American hierarchy”—a structure based on perceptions about identity and legitimate membership in the national community (i.e. “Americanness”)—from a group position perspective. In this chapter, I ask: Where are racial groups positioned in the American hierarchy? To study this, I use original data from a national racial attitudes survey of non-Hispanic White adults in the United States that I fielded via YouGov in August 2021 (n= 1,067). Respondents were asked to explicitly rate the Americanness of four ethnoracial groups in the United States: Asians, Blacks, Latinos, and Whites. Results show that among White Americans, partisanship shapes perceptions of the racial order and distance between groups in the American hierarchy. Though the order varies, several features are common across partisan lines: 1) Whites are never ranked below the second position, 2) Asians are never ranked first or last, and 3) Latinos are never ranked above the third position. Additionally, racial attitudes, particularly among Democrats, are related to different perceptions about the racial structure of the American hierarchy. Findings highlight the existence of conflicting perspectives on the social arrangements between racial groups. Together, this dissertation reveals a deeply racial and moralized conception of American identity, so much so that the combination of an individual’s employment status, government assistance, and criminal history can demote the Americanness of a U.S.-born citizen to that of non-citizens. Moreover, results show that the perceived American hierarchy is neither fixed nor universal. Rather, beliefs about the position and relative distance between racial groups vary by political partisanship, racial attitudes, and political messaging around immigration.