This work examines a seemingly counter-intuitive phenomenon observed in many Western democracies, whereby parts of the immigrant population oppose new waves of immigration. I propose a mechanism based on group status distribution that, complementarily to other considerations, can help to explain these preferences. I hypothesize that relative status deprivation, that is, the degree to which a given national/ethnic group is ranked low in the ethnic status hierarchy of the host country, has a negative impact on the attitudes of its members towards even lower-ranked groups.
In an experiment run with a sample of participants with an immigration background residing in Germany (N=1,159), I manipulate participants’ status perceptions by providing them with either a positive or a negative evaluation of their national/ethnic in-group, as evaluated by a separate group of native-majority (German) participants. The results show that exposing participants to a negative (rather than positive) evaluation of their in-group leads them to express more negative views of the refugees and to significantly decrease their willingness to donate to an organization supporting refugees while not altering their generosity in a general setting unrelated to immigration. I examine several possible channels and provide evidence that suggests that the treatment effect works through manipulating participants' perceived norms surrounding prejudice expression towards low-status groups.
Finally, the results show that treatment affects not only the privately held attitudes but also participants' willingness to publicly express them, as participants holding critical views of the refugees disclose them more readily when under the observation of the native-majority participants if they received a negative (rather than positive) evaluation of their in-group.