Cultural Awareness, Interactions, and Perception of Immigrants Among the U.S. General Public

Background and Purpose

Immigrants often face social, cultural, and economic challenges when integrating into a new country, and negative perceptions towards them can exacerbate these difficulties. By understanding how people perceive immigrants, social workers may identify potential barriers to integration and identify ways to enhance social cohesion and cultural diversity in society. The current study aims to gain a better understanding of the general public's perceptions of immigrants and examines how cultural awareness and interactions with immigrants are associated with (positive vs negative) perceptions of immigrants among the U.S. general public.

Methods

We collected a nonprobability sample of 815 U.S. residents through an online survey. To measure public perception of immigrants, we developed eight survey items on a 5-point Likert scale: Four items to measure the degree to which immigrants are perceived as a burden or threat to society (negative) and four items to measure the degree to which immigrants are perceived as a benefit to the society (positive). The survey also included basic sociodemographic questions and a scale to measure cultural awareness, adapted from Tartakovsk and Walsh’s (2016) study. In addition, questions were included about how many immigrants they knew and how much they interacted with them. Descriptive statistics and structural equation modeling were employed to examine how cultural awareness and interaction with immigrants are associated with the positive or negative perception of immigrants.

Results

We found the respondents’ overall perception of immigrants was neither positive nor negative. However, the U.S. residents with a higher level of cultural awareness were significantly more likely to report they had a positive perception and overall positive feeling toward immigrants. Interestingly, those who reported a higher level of interaction with immigrants showed higher scores in positive perception items, but also in negative perception items. This finding implies that public experiences with immigrants are mixed or complex. On the one hand, positive interactions with immigrants (e.g., developing friendships or working closely with immigrants who enriched their lives and broadened their perspectives) might be associated with positive perceptions. On the other hand, negative interactions (e.g., feeling threatened by immigrants taking jobs or being frustrated with language barriers and cultural differences) might be associated with negative perceptions.

Conclusion and Implications

Although our findings are not generalizable, the positive association between cultural awareness and the perception of immigrants among the general public highlights the importance of promoting cultural understanding and activities that may be useful for improving the public perception of immigrants. The results also suggest that the quality, as well as the quantity of the interaction with immigrants, matter for the people’s perception toward immigrants, although more research is needed to understand the complex relationship.