Immigration has been a prominent political issue for decades, but particularly so with rising national populism. To understand current anti-immigration opinion, we turn to the concept of relative deprivation, which, we argue, is fundamentally about entitlement and is at the heart of popular backlash against immigration. Examining the United Kingdom context, we predicted that immigration attitudes would be contingent on immigrant group status, with immigrants from low-status or poorer countries (Poland, India) more likely to be perceived as encroaching on the majority group’s entitlements than those from high-status or richer countries (Germany, Australia). We further proposed moral devaluation (dehumanization and distrust) as a novel mechanism (over and above prejudice) underlying the conditional effects of relative deprivation on support for formal (anti-immigration policies) and informal (hate crime) means of immigrant exclusion. A pilot study (n = 245) and cross-sectional survey (n = 490) results supported our main prediction that status matters: participants felt more deprived relative to low- than high-status immigrants, and this predicted stronger support for anti-immigration policies both directly and through higher distrust (but not dehumanization). This research highlights the need to unpack the generic ‘immigrant’ category and study anti-immigration sentiment in terms of group status and moral devaluation.

中文翻译：

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移民的地位、相对剥夺和道德贬值

几十年来，移民一直是一个突出的政治问题，尤其是随着民族民粹主义的兴起。为了理解当前的反移民观点，我们转向相对剥夺的概念，我们认为，这从根本上是关于权利的，并且是普遍反对移民的核心。考察英国的情况，我们预测移民态度将取决于移民群体的地位，来自地位低下或较贫穷国家（波兰、印度）的移民比来自高地位的移民更有可能被视为侵犯多数群体的权利。地位或较富裕的国家（德国、澳大利亚）。我们进一步提出道德贬值（去人性化和不信任）作为一种新的机制（超越偏见），这是相对剥夺对支持正式（反移民政策）和非正式（仇恨犯罪）移民排斥手段的条件影响的基础。试点研究（n  = 245) 和横断面调查 ( n  = 490) 的结果支持我们的主要预测，即地位很重要：与地位低的移民相比，参与者感到被剥夺的更多，这预示着对反移民政策的直接和更强烈的支持通过更高的不信任（但不是非人化）。这项研究强调需要解开一般的“移民”类别，并从群体地位和道德贬低的角度研究反移民情绪。