Gender-inequitable discrimination? A survey experiment on the gendered implications of unauthorized immigrant narratives

The existing framing and narrative studies focus on the influence of framing and narratives targeting one population as a whole but neglect how these can affect the subgroups of the target population differently. Using a survey experiment, this research investigates whether and how implicitly gendered narrative cues affect public acceptance of male or female unauthorized immigrants from Mexico and the Northern Triangle. Based on the experimental results, younger male unauthorized immigrants were less likely to be accepted by participants when public safety cues were presented and more likely to be accepted when economic contribution cues were presented. Conversely, female unauthorized immigrants were less favored by participants when economic contribution cues were presented and more favored when public safety cues were presented. These findings show how the dominant narratives contribute to the publics’ gender biases against unauthorized immigrants and reveal future direction for developing narratives and framing studies.