The Space between Us: Social Geography and Politics

“We expect this measure to proxy individual-level daily exposure to, though not meaningful intergroup contact with Asian Americans, which we expect to be correlated with greater concern (Allport 1954; Enos 2017).”

“While testing this is beyond the scope of this article, this is especially likely to be the case if there are systematic differences in the communicative environment necessary to foment, prime, and channel place resentment.”

“Status threat stemming from local racial demographic change can provoke institutional backlash against the democratic inclusion of Black and Latino Americans or of recent immigrants (e.g., Bobo and Hutchings 1996; Enos 2017).”

“Residential and occupational segregation, intergroup anxiety, or the small size of some minority groups can pose social, economic, and psychological barriers to meaningful intergroup contact (Enos 2017; Joyce and Harwood 2014; Ortiz and Harwood 2007).”

“They are channels in which ‘people formulate their preferences not just as individuals, but also as part of a broader social community, rooted in a particular geographic locale and set of cultural practices and everyday experiences and interactions’ (Enos, 2017).”

“Segregation alsomagnifies the polarization and out-group ostracization that characterizes modern politics (Enos 2017).”

“Using individual voters avoids problems of aggregation, such as the modi fi able areal unit problem and problems of scale (e.g., Enos 2017), that are common to this type of analysis.”

“American institutions further reify those divisions and elections act as the leading venues for individuals to express those differences (Enos 2017; Green, Palmquist, and Schickler 2004; Hopkins 2017; Rodden 2019).”

“Finally, our work joins a growing body of research emphasizing the role of geography in politics (Enos 2017; Jusko 2017).”

“If migration attitudes are generally driven by the experience of local residents with migrants (Enos, 2017), then we can expect citizens located in areas with little immigration to be most negatively affected.”

“Recent research highlights that territorial identities and sentiments of local belonging can be powerful in shaping political behavior (Cramer, 2016; Enos, 2017; Fitzgerald, 2018).”

“Furthermore, there is some evidence that even shallow contacts, such as momentary contact in a public place, can improve intergroup relations (Enos 2017).”

“In the US, using field experiments and small-scale interactions, Enos (2017) identifies the interaction between size of community, distance between ethnic populations and levels of segregation in the effect on intercommunal relations and perceptions of the other.”

“Someevidencesuggeststhatexposuretodif-ferentgroupsviacompetitionoverscarceresources (Dancygier2010;Quillian1995),rapidlychanging populationdemographics(Hopkins2010;Kaufmann 2017),orindenseandsegregatedenvironments(Enos 2017)maypromoteasenseofthreatandnegative attitudes.”

“Social geography has an effect on local politics and participation in elections (Enos, 2017; Gimpel et al., 2004; Tam Cho et al., 2006), and research from New Orleans indicates that COVID-19 is clustered at the neighborhood level (Van Holm et al., 2020).”

“First, demographic diversification is likely to expose White people to large, concentrated populations of racial outgroups, while often providing few opportunities for meaningful intergroup contact (Enos, 2017).”

“These trends thus promote a “cycle of segregation” (Krysan & Crowder, 2017) that persists despite increasing levels of racial diversity at the national level (Enos, 2017).”

“Still, work finds that exposure to different groups via resource competition (Esses et al. 2002), changing population demographics (Evans and Ivaldi 2021), and in segregated environments (Enos 2017) may engender prejudice.”

“…to argue definitively for either viewpoint because even though many sociological and psychological studies have pointed to the relevance of context (Enos 2017; Plaut, Markus, and Lachman 2002; Rentfrow, Jokela, and Lamb 2015; Krug and Kulhavy 1973) and a great number of geographical studies have…”

“Because increases in immigration are seen as adding to the growth of the non-White population and threaten Whites’ majority status, Whites are likely to respond more negatively when they perceive that immigration is increasing rather than stable (Enos, 2017).”

“1 As Enos (2017) stated, “ Context — or, more precisely, social geography — can directly affect our behavior and is therefore tremen-dously important ” (78).”

“…expected to grow with increasing minority group size and visibility, the presence of large ethnic minority groups in the local environment is often presumed to instigate feelings of ethnic threat and, as a result, increase PRRP support (e.g. Rink et al., 2009; Enos, 2017; Savelkoul et al., 2017).”

“Yet other scholars identify instances where context and geography generate variation in group behavior (Enos 2017; Gay 2001; Gimpel et al. 2020; Hopkins 2010).”

“Place and context are prominent motivations in studies of voting behavior and candidate evaluations, given the electoral system’s reliance on borders for conducting campaigns and demarcating constituencies (Enos 2017).”

“7 This is consistent with a literature in psychology that links psychological attachments to geographic attachments (Enos 2017).”

“Within these works, many White Americans report a sense of threat to their economic (Craig and Richeson 2014), cultural (Enos 2017; Parker and Barreto 2014), and political (Jardina 2019) dominance, indicating a potential for White group interest politics catalyzed by fear or resentment of a “new…”

“Finally, the consistently small or null effect of media consumption on out-groups that typically form strong political coalitions (that is, religion and ethnicity) aligns with theories that I outlined above suggesting that any effects from increased exposure to these out-groups are conditional on partisan ideologies (…”

“First, proximity allows for personal, direct contact that under certain conditions reduces prejudice through familiarity, likeability, and trust (Allport 1954; Axelrod 1984; Enos 2017; Lee 2001; March and Simon 1993; Mirwaldt 2010; Pettigrew and Tropp 2006).”

“Many studies in this field demonstrate deep political divisions between Black, White, and Latino neighborhoods, which are both fueled by and reinforce racial segregation (Bobo and Hutchings 1996; Enos 2017; Katznelson 1981; Mollenkopf 1992; Oliver 2010; Stone 1989; Sugrue 2005; Trounstine 2018).”

“These groups shape our perceptions (Enos 2017; Hartmann et al. 2011; Operario and Fiske 2001), and those perceptions drive our choices.”

“For instance, what role does the type and frequency of contact between natives and immigrants (e.g. in the neighborhood, at the workplace, in schools or in the public space—see for instance Enos 2017) play in the development of tolerance (or ethnic animus)?”

“ately accrued by people in the majority social group (Enos, 2017) and that being in the”

“…segregation and its changing patterns; people and households make their residential location decisions at a variety of spatial scales and also experience segregation’s impact at several scales, with consequences for the nature of any neighborhood effects (van Ham and Manley 2012; Enos 2017).”

“This result (a) con fi rms theories on the importance of place-speci fi c cultures on individual beliefs and behaviors 35,38 and (b) suggests that the local context is especially important for those individuals not already characterized by a pronounced green ideology, which likely is the majority of…”

“As the ‘space between us’ (Enos 2017) continues to grow, there is a growing spatial ethno-cultural polarization, resentment towards ethnic diversity, and eventually, support for right-wing populist parties.”

“For one, the character of discrimination has been found to vary across regions [82].”

“Political partisans increasingly dislike each other (Lelkes, 2016), sort themselves into distinct communities both online (Colleoni et al., 2014; Huber & Malhotra, 2017) and in terms of physical residential areas (Enos, 2017), and avoid each other’s viewpoints (Frimer et al., 2017).”

“The racial effects of time and social distance were indeed apparently amplified by a Republican candidate campaign that deployed the Latino immigrant threat narrative at its inception (Abrajano and Hajnal 2015; Enos 2017).”

“Seminal work by Key (1949) and Blalock (1956, 1957) on the southern US identified a positive association between the localarea proportion of African Americans and the prevalence of racially conservative attitudes among whites (see also Enos, 2017; Glaser, 1994).”

“…makes an identity category mentally accessible, individuals use intergroup comparisons to minimize the perceived differences between those affiliated with the ingroup, while maximizing the perceived space between the ingroup and an outgroup (Turner et al ., 1987; see also Enos, 2017).”

“…of whites to large or growing racial and ethnic minority populations can heighten hostility toward out-groups and influence political actions (enos 2017; Key 1949). this phenomenon has been observed in various settings (green, Strolovitch, and Wong 1998; taylor 1998) and among immigrant…”

“…to (partially, ostensibly) address some questions of inferential validity, allowing scholars interested in urban phenomena to provide the kinds of evidence and speak the ascendant technical language preferred by the discipline’s leading methodologists (e.g., Enos, 2017; Nuamah & Ogorzalek, 2021).”

“For minority group members, the consequences of such experiences could result in discrimination, racism, and race-based exclusion (Crystal et al., 2008; Enos, 2017; Gurin et al., 2015; Ruck et al., 2011).”

“Our view is complementary to that of Ryan D. Enos (2017) who distinguishes between the perceptual level of how groups perceive and rank each other in space and status, and the experiential level of how groups interpret the contact they do have with one another within that larger context.”

“In this sense, a white identity is a reactive identity, tied to growing diversity and declining majority status (Abascal 2020; Craig and Richeson 2014; Enos 2017).”

“Although Enos (2017) found a positive correlation between increase in Hispanic share (2000–2014) and GOP support at the county level in the 2016 election in the United States, this relationship was not supported at the voting precinct level (Hill, Hopkins, and Huber 2019).”

“Enos (2017) shows that subtle racial cues from non-whites may threaten majoritarian group status and animate racial conservatism in whites.”

“Contrary to existing theories that emphasize shared identities or affective ties (see, for instance, Enos 2017; Lieberman 2003; Robinson 2020; Singh 2015), I demonstrate that intergroup exter-nalities can produce incentives for cooperation.”

“Place identities can impact individuals’ attitudes and even shape their political behaviour (Enos, 2017).”

“A person’s political preferences are a function not only of their own traits, but also the traits and predispositions of individuals in their proximity (Huckfeldt et al., 1993; Enos, 2017).”

“That is, social contact between the groups can reduce the prejudice across different groups, “when a group becomes large enough and interpersonal contact becomes frequent enough” (Enos, 2017, p. 49).”

“work, however, has begun to interrogate the role of place in shaping intergroup relations [1,2].”

“…anti-homeless measures, it is important to control for neighborhood demographics since social geography can powerfully influence political behavior (Enos 2017) and may bias perceptions of neighborhood blight or disorganization (Sampson 2012).7 Finally, I utilize data on 311 service requests to…”

“The local population distribution thus has a significant role in shaping electoral preferences, as everyday interactions in the community shape how we think, what we support, and how we vote (Enos, 2017).”

“We believe that contextual diversity is a key factor so long as it can account for contact frequency; as Enos (2017) says context is the container that hosts intergroup interactions.”

“The racial composition of one ’ s neighborhood is a powerful determinant of how individuals perceive the space around them (Wong 2010), influencing residential sorting, neighborhood trust, exclusionary attitudes, and group conflict (Enos 2017; Massey and Denton 1993).”