SES-102333Ramiro MartinezFlorida International UniversitySES-1023317Eric StewartFlorida State UniversityThere has been increased interest in understanding the determinants of public sentiment toward Latinos in the United States. While there has been much public discourse about harsher punitive measures to prevent immigrants from crossing the border into the United States, little is known about the social context that generates support for anti-Latino sentiment. To better understand these processes, the investigators will analyze data from a recent national survey on attitudes towards immigrants and Latinos. The investigators will link the survey data to county-level crime, social, and economic data, as well as political and demographic data. The researchers will study whether punitive sentiment toward Latinos is the result of individual and macro level-influences. In particular, the plan is to examine census-based measures, such as size of the Latino population, immigration rates, unemployment rates, and other factors such as negative perceptions of Latinos are significantly to see if these are related to public support for punitive-Latino sentiment. They research will also investigate whether or not Latino population growth leads to anti-Latino hate crime victimization and/or immigrant restriction policies across counties in the United States.Broader ImpactsResearch findings will be of interest to students and researchers across multiple disciplines, as well as immigration and criminal justice policymakers in local, state, and federal government agencies. The results will be disseminated at the annual meetings of the American Society of Criminology and the American Sociological Association. Additionally, the study will produce a new aggregated data archive on immigration, Latino threat, and the impacts on U.S. society which will be made available for data analysis through Interuniversity Consortium for Political and Social Research (ICPSR).This proposal emanates from the Racial Democracy, Crime, and Justice Network (RDCJN), an NSF-supported research network for encouraging collaboration on the study of race, crime, and justice and increasing racial and ethnic diversity in academia among faculty of color. Both PIs are original members of the RDCJN and are active in the Network. In line with the collaborative and nurturing goals of the RDCJN, the proposed project will provide an important original research experience for graduate students at two research institutions by incorporating them into the research process and exposing them to members of the Network and the PIs' institutions. The collaborative activity will also broaden the participation of underrepresented groups and enhance the infrastructure for research partnerships at the PIs home institutions. The lead PI is at a Hispanic Serving Research Institution and the co-PI is at a flagship state school well regarded for the large number of African American students that graduate from its programs each year. In addition, the PIs will incorporate findings from this research study into both graduate and undergraduate courses and make the data available to others teaching related courses. This study will allow the investigators to integrate research and education by training students at two institutions and providing them with original research and teaching experiences, thereby broadening their graduate education and making them more marketable to future employers and contributing to their future research agendas.
