Rejecting Coethnicity: The Politics of Migrant Exclusion by Minoritized Citizens: Pre-Analysis Plan for the Kenya Survey Study

How do minoritized citizens react to migrants from similar cultural, language, and ethnic backgrounds? Immigration scholarship predicts that due to coethnic ties, citizen groups would feel solidarity and extend hospitality to coethnic migrants. However, my project questions this assumption, by highlighting the variation in how coethnic citizens receive migrants, particularly in Global South contexts where the majority of migrants live. I theorize that hosting policies and political rhetoric around migrants (i.e. inclusive or exclusionary) will shape how host community citizens receive them, particularly those who share cultural and ethnic ties. When political structures and institutions make shared connections feel dangerous, then host citizens will be more likely to distance themselves from the migrants by identifying more strongly with their national (as opposed to ethnic) identity and supporting anti-migrant policies. This study will use a survey experiment conducted in host communities around Dadaab and Kakuma refugee camps in Kenya, a case which confines its refugees to camps and portrays them as security threats.