The formation of attitudes toward immigration in Colombia

Abstract

What explains elevated hostility toward immigrants? We identify two concerns that affect support for immigration: labor market competition and social proximity between immigrants and natives. Relying on a conjoint experiment embedded in an original face-to-face survey, we explore these dynamics in one of the largest migratory flows of the last decade: the Venezuelan exodus to Colombia. We find that respondents primarily reject lower-skill migrants. While ethnic proximity does not mitigate xenophobic attitudes in our context, familial ties and personal contact do. These findings confirm the relevance of pocketbook considerations in guiding attitudes toward foreigners but challenge the common assumption of positive in-group bias among co-ethnics. Moreover, we affirm the relevance of individual and familial proximity as key contributing factors to attenuating xenophobia in response to immigration in the Global South.

¿Qué es lo que explica los elevados niveles de hostilidad hacia los inmigrantes? Identificamos dos de las inquietudes que influyen sobre el grado de apoyo a la inmigración: la competencia en el mercado laboral y la proximidad social entre inmigrantes y nativos. Exploramos estas dinámicas, apoyándonos en un experimento conjunto integrado en una encuesta presencial original, en uno de los flujos migratorios más grandes de la última década: el éxodo venezolano hacia Colombia. Concluimos que los encuestados rechazan principalmente a los migrantes menos calificados. Si bien, en este contexto, la proximidad étnica no mitiga las actitudes xenófobas, sí lo hacen tanto los lazos familiares como el contacto personal. Estas conclusiones confirman la relevancia que tienen las consideraciones económicas para orientar las actitudes hacia los extranjeros, pero desafían la suposición común de que existe un sesgo positivo dentro del grupo entre personas pertenecientes a la misma etnia. Además, afirmamos la relevancia de la proximidad individual y familiar como factores clave que contribuyen a atenuar la xenofobia en respuesta a la inmigración en el Sur Global.

Comment expliquer l’augmentation de l’hostilité à l’encontre des immigrants? Nous identifions deux préoccupations qui ont une incidence sur le soutien à l’immigration: la concurrence sur le marché du travail et la proximité sociale entre les immigrants et les autochtones. En nous fondant sur une expérience conjointe ancrée dans un sondage inédit en présentiel, nous analysons ces dynamiques au sein de l’un des plus gros flux migratoires de la dernière décennie: l’exode vénézuélien vers la Colombie. Les personnes sondées rejettent principalement les migrants les moins qualifiés. Bien que la proximité ethnique n’atténue pas les attitudes xénophobes dans notre contexte, les liens familiaux et les contacts personnels, eux, le font. Ces conclusions confirment la pertinence des considérations de portefeuille quand il s’agit d’orienter les attitudes à l’égard des étrangers, mais remettent en question l’hypothèse courante d’un biais positif à l’intérieur du groupe chez les membres de la même ethnie. En outre, nous affirmons la pertinence des proximités personnelle et familiale en tant que facteurs clés qui contribuent à l’atténuation de la xénophobie découlant de l’immigration dans les pays du Sud.

Keywords:

• Colombia
• conjoint experiment
• ethnicity
• immigration
• labor-market competition
• proximity
• Venezuela
• xenophobia

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 Notable exceptions correspond to the literature exploring Syria migration in Jordan and Lebanon (Alrababa’h et al. 2021; Corstange 2019).

2 The pre-refugee crisis number of Venezuelans in Colombia hovered around 37,000 (International Organization for Migration 2019).

3 Personal interview, Bogotá, January 2019.

4 Our University’s Institutional Review Board approved this study. The design and core estimation strategies were pre-registered in EGAP.

5 In fact, as millions of Colombians fled decades of political and criminal violence, oil-rich Venezuela provided them a haven.

6 Using a conjoint experiment in a survey of Colombians and Venezuelans in the cities of Cúcuta and Cali, Holland, Peters, and Zhou (2021) finds that native respondents, particularly right-leaning ones, were more likely to prefer right-leaning immigrants compared to leftist ones.

7 The survey was conducted in Spanish. The English translation of the dependent variables’ wording is our own.

8 Our pre-registered power calculations show that with an alpha level of 0.05, and our sample size of 1510, we could capture an effect of 0.06. See Supplementary Appendix G for more details about statistical power.

9 The corresponding regression Table is in Supplementary Appendix D.

10 Personal interview, Medellín, January 2020.

11 To measure socioeconomic status, we used an ordinal scale of 6 values, typically used in survey research, based on the respondent’s assets, which applies to households in urban places. We classified respondents with values 1, 2, and 3 as low-income (58%), 4, 5, and 6 as high-income (5%), while the rest are considered rural.

12 Holland, Peters, and Zhou (2021) shows that Venezuelan immigrants to Colombia tended to be centrist or lean right; they were fleeing Maduro.

13 Note that the interaction coefficient in Table E7, column 3 is not statistically significant at conventional levels, although it is quite substantive in magnitude.