title: Does Islam play a role in anti-immigrant sentiment? An experimental approach.
abstract: Are Muslim immigrants subjected to targeted opposition (i.e., Islamophobia) on their pathway to US citizenship? Using a list experiment and a representative sample of the US population, we compare explicit and implicit opposition to Muslim and Christian immigrants. We find that Muslim immigrants, relative to Christian immigrants, experience greater explicit resistance. However, when social desirability bias is taken into account via the list experiment, we find that opposition to Christian and Muslim immigrants is the same. The explanation is that respondents conceal a significant amount of opposition to Christian immigrants. Muslim immigrants, on the other hand, are afforded no such protection. We find that religiosity or denomination do not play a significant role in determining implicit or explicit opposition. We conclude that Islamophobia, which is only explicitly expressed, is best understood as reflective of social desirability bias from which Muslim immigrants do not benefit.
authors.affiliation: Department of Sociology, University of Massachusetts, Boston, United States. Electronic address: mathew.creighton@umb.edu.
authors.forename: Mathew J
authors.initials: MJ
authors.lastname: Creighton
authors.affiliation: Department of Politics, Princeton University, United States.
authors.forename: Amaney
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Jamal
mesh_terms: D002835:Christianity; D054242:Emigrants and Immigrants; D004641:Emigration and Immigration; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007514:Islam; D008297:Male; D011287:Prejudice; D012928:Social Desirability; D063508:Social Discrimination; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires; D014481:United States; D065806:Xenophobia
keywords: Immigration; Islam; Islamophobia; List experiment