Russel Sage Foundation

The September issue of Perspectives on Politics includes a review of Deborah Schildkraut's book, Americanism in the Twenty-First Century: Public Opinion in the Age of Immigration. With support from the Russell Sage Foundation, Schildkraut conducted a nationally representative survey to provide insights about the relationships among national identity, immigrant resentment, ethnic identity, and policy preferences. In his review, Gary Freeman (University of Texas at Austin) calls the work an impressive achievement:

Schildkraut builds her analysis on an original random digit-dial national survey of 2,800 residents funded by the Russell Sage Foundation and carried out in 2004. She is admirably conscious of the shortcomings of most of the surveys monitoring opinion on immigration. Her survey instrument is designed to exploit the opportunities available in extant survey data—hence, she draws many items from a range of earlier polls. Moving beyond existing data, however, her survey oversamples Asians, Latinos, and blacks and inserts many questions designed to provide a fuller picture of the attitudes of different groups toward national identity, membership, and citizenship. In short, this is the most comprehensive survey of attitudes toward immigrants, national identity, and citizenship yet undertaken.

Read the full review (subscription required). Schildkraut summarized her research for the Russell Sage Foundation in an essay, which can be read here.