Politicians’ trash-talk about immigration means that Latinos become less politically trusting and more ethnocentric.

Recent months have dramatically illustrated how negative rhetoric over immigration is a staple of US politics. But when politicians decry immigration, how does this affect groups which have a large number of migrants, such as Latinos? In new research which uses a national survey of Latinos, Efrén O. Pérez finds that such criticisms mean that Latinos think of themselves as ethnics much more compared to other forms of identity like class and religion, and it also decreases their levels of political trust.