Peer-Reviewed Papers
Chen, Chuang. "How Immigrants and Racial Segregation Affect Immigration Attitudes and Voting for Trump." Political Behavior (Accepted).
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Chavarría-Mora, Elías, Chuang Chen, Valentina González-Rostani and Scott Morgenstern. 2024. “How Germane Are Moral and Economic Policies to Ideology? Evidence From Latin American Legislators.” Legislative Studies Quarterly 00(0): 1–15. https://doi.org/10.1111/lsq.12476.​
Conference Presentations
APSA 2024; MPSA 2023, 2024; the 26th Annual Latin American Social and Public Policy Conference (2024); SEMINARIO PELA-USAL 2023; 1st Beijing Foreign Studies University & Sichuan University American Studies Graduate Forum 2018.
Dissertation Project: Populism With(out) Immigrants
My dissertation analyzes the relationship between immigration and populism in the U.S., Latin America, and Western Europe.
(Please do not cite or circulate)
Chapter 1:
Do immigrant presence and racial segregation affect different individuals' attitudes toward immigration? There is a controversy in previous literature about whether more immigrants lead to more or less anti-immigration attitudes. I argue that the disagreement is because they ignore the degree to which the immigrants (and other minorities) are segregated. In the U.S. context, I hypothesize that for conservatives, higher immigrant/racial segregation is related to more pro-immigration attitudes because a lack of intergroup communication functions as a "shield" against more salient group membership and substantial prejudice against the outgroups. With data covering five presidential elections in 2008-2024 from the U.S. Census, American Community Survey, and Cooperative Election Study, I use Bayesian multilevel linear regressions with immigration attitudes as DV. Most results support the hypothesis. This paper contributes to immigration politics by comparing the different effects of immigrant presence and racial segregation interacting with ideology and providing a modified version of the threat theory in explaining the divergent effects of racial segregation on liberals' and conservatives' immigration attitudes.
Chapter 2:
The second chapter asks: What does it mean when respondents claim to have no ideology? What motivates them to enter and exit ideology? In Chile, where the response rate for the ideology question is very low, reasons for this phenomenon, as well as its changes, have seldom been explored. This study hypothesizes that the attitude on the immigration issue, which has not been politically salient until recent presidential elections, could drive voters to enter/exit ideology. Specifically, a strongly negative attitude toward immigrants could drive those who used to be rightists to exit ideology in the new election, while the same attitude could drive those who used to claim to have no ideology to have an ideology in the new election. With panel data from Estudio Longitudinal Social de Chile (2016-2023), I run Bayesian multinomial analysis with comuna-level random effects. This study contributes to research on immigration attitude and ideology in Latin America by analyzing the group of respondents who have often been left out in previous studies.
Chapter 3:
The third chapter shifts focus to Europe and asks: Does the integration of immigrants ease prejudice against them? While the short-term increase in immigrants may trigger anti-immigration attitudes among non-immigrants, many scholars argue that the contact between immigrants and non-immigrants will moderate these attitudes across time. However, it remains unclear why the negative attitudes toward some groups of immigrants do not improve over time. I hypothesize that increasing integration of immigrants in terms of employment, schools, or residences will strengthen the negative attitudes and the support for SD among conservative non-immigrants if their own economic situation has worsened, because they perceive immigrants as economic threats. If their economic situation has improved, decreasing integration will strengthen their support for SD because immigrants are considered a burden in this case. With data from Statistics Sweden, Swedish National Agency for Education, and the SOM Institute Cumulative Dataset, I run multilevel linear regressions. Most findings support my hypotheses. This research contributes to the study of immigration politics by showing that the effects of the integration of immigrants are conditioned by the economic situation of non-immigrants.
Methodologies:
My dissertation adopts various advanced statistical methods. After matching fine-grained census data at the county level (or even lower) with individual-level surveys, I use Bayesian multilevel linear regressions and binomial/multinomial logistic regressions to analyze the data, combined with techniques of geospatial analysis. The local demographic data provides information about immigrants that has been overwhelmingly ignored by previous scholars (such as segregation), and the rigorous methods help isolate effects of strong confounders. I also use Python to scrape electoral results of France and Chile online for macro-level analysis.