Research

Diasporic Nationalism During the Era of Globalization: A Cross-National Examination of the Chinese Diaspora  (Job Market Paper)

Why do some individuals remain (even more) committed to their national identity amid globalization? The existing literature has thus far accounted for this paradox by examining nativist nationalism among the racial majority working class as a form of backlash against globalization-induced demographic and economic shifts in western countries. By contrast, this article provides a novel and complementary explanation for this puzzle by investigating “diasporic nationalism” among recent immigrant cohorts towards their origin country. The paper constructs a comprehensive definition and measure of diasporic nationalism, validated by a text analysis of the existing qualitative literature scattered across different disciplines. It argues that the impetus for this variant of nationalism arises from grievances over the adverse racial dynamics that accompany destination country settlement—a phenomenon that paradoxically occurs more often among better integrated diasporas. It further posits that, contrary to conventional wisdom linking nationalism to conflict and intolerance, diasporic nationalists tend to favor internationalism and conciliatory relations between origin and destination countries. The article generally finds evidence in favor of these hypotheses with a “hard” test of the Chinese diaspora in Australia and the United States, which involves a cross-national and multi-year combination of a survey experiment, novel observational data, and meta-analysis. The results bear implications for our understanding of the relationship between nationalism and conflict, the consequences of international migration, and the microfoundations of Chinese foreign relations.

Draft coming soon.

Does White Identity Stop at the Water’s Edge? White Solidarity and Racialized Perceptions of Foreign Adversaries in the United States 

Under review & funded by Time-sharing Experiments for the Social Sciences (TESS)

What is the effect of racial in-group identity on the policy preferences of white Americans? Although a robust strand of literature has investigated this relationship in the context of domestic politics, little is known about how white solidarity shapes foreign policy attitudes. This article provides the first exploration into whether white racial consciousness “stops at the water’s edge”—namely, whether racial solidarity affects how white Americans process information about white versus non-white foreign adversaries and formulate threat evaluations of them. Leveraging recent applications of political psychology in racial politics, it delineates competing theoretical expectations about the role of white identity in the formation of foreign threat perception. With evidence from a pre-registered survey experiment on a nationally representative sample of white Americans that randomized the racial categorization of a hypothetical foreign adversary, this study finds that higher levels of white identity significantly moderate threat perceptions of foreign adversaries, reducing perceived threat from white countries while increasing perceived threat from non-white countries, even after accounting for the effects of out-group racial resentment. These findings elucidate the microfoundational determinants of interstate conflict. They also contribute to cross-subfield efforts in Political Science to study the transnational effects of in-group identity politics.

Latest draft here.