Economic Anxiety as a Frame for Bias? An Analysis of Anti-Undocumented Sentiment among Latinxs and Whites across Partisan Contexts

What is the relationship between economic anxiety and anti-immigrant sentiment, and might it differ across groups and political contexts? While much research on immigration attitudes has examined how economic location influences bias, less is known about how economic feelings and fears, which need not overlap with material standing, shape these attitudes. We fill this gap by linking the culture and colorblind-racism literature to immigration attitudes scholarship, drawing on two unique waves of a representative survey of California’s White and Latinx registered voters in August 2024 (under a Biden administration) and April 2025 (under Trump II). Findings reveal an administration-dependent relationship between economic anxiety and anti-undocumented sentiment for White voters. Under Biden, economic anxiety was positively associated with anti-undocumented sentiment; under Trump, the relationship wholly reversed, with economic security predicting greater bias. Latinxs, by contrast, maintained more stable associations across political administrations, with important, gendered variation. Latinos showed a consistent, modest link between economic anxiety and anti-undocumented attitudes across both periods, while Latinas showed no meaningful association under either administration. Study results suggest that, for some White respondents particularly, economic anxiety can function as a justificatory frame for anti-immigrant bias, especially in political contexts where such bias is not openly modeled as appropriate or desirable. In political contexts where anti-immigrant bias is openly legitimated, however, economic anxiety no longer serves the same justificatory function. Theoretically, this article extends colorblind racism frameworks, including insights on stigma and social desirability, into the domain of immigration attitudes.