My home, my rules: Costa Rican attitudes toward immigrants and immigration

Abstract

Of all the countries in Central America, Costa Rica is generally regarded as having the most stable and democratic government. In 1949, the Costa Rican Constitution abolished the army, gave women the right to vote, and provided several social, economic, and educational guarantees for all its citizens. The country has one of the highest literacy rates in the region and a relatively established educational system from the primary and secondary grades through university (Pérez, 2004), as well as one of the most effectively universalized healthcare systems in Latin America (Saenz, Bermudez & Acosta, 2010). Because of this, Costa Rica characterizes itself as a country of immigration, with close to 15% of its population born abroad, mostly coming from Nicaragua (INEC & CCP, 2013). Costa Rica is also an important destination for refugees and asylum seekers. Currently, the country has 12,749 refugees, coming mostly from Colombia. In this way, Costa Rica hosts the second-largest concentration of Colombian refugees in Latin America, after Ecuador (ACNUR, 2016). In this context, the current chapter examines Costa Rican attitudes towards immigrants and immigration. Specifically, we focus on participants’ expectations of how immigrants should acculturate. Informed by Berry´s (2008) acculturation model and theories from intergroup-relations literature, this chapter describes a series of studies among Costa Rican adolescents (N = 150, 53% females), university students (N = 337, 49% females) and adult community members (N = 278, 51% females), in which attitudes towards immigrants´ acculturation are linked with psychosocial variables such as subtle and blatant prejudice (Pettigrew & Mertens, 1995), intergroup contact (Allport, 1951, Pettigrew, 1986), intergroup anxiety (Stephan, Díaz-Loving & Duran, 2000) and intergroup emotions (Mackie, Smith & Ray, 2008). First, we describe the development of an emic measure of acculturation attitudes (Escala de Expectativas de Aculturacion) to capture three different acculturation expectations: integration, assimilation and separation. Second, we test the relative contribution of the aforementioned psychosocial variables to the prediction of each type of acculturation expectation. Finally, we test the moderating role the type of immigrant group (Nicaraguans vs. Colombians) has on the relationship between intergroup variables and acculturation attitudes. In line with previous studies, our results show that the receiving-society members’ expectations of how immigrants should acculturate are deeply shaped by intergroup phenomena such as subtle and blatant prejudice, intergroup anxiety, negative emotions and lack of intergroup contact, determining the extent to which migrants are received favorably or unfavorably (Schwartz, Unger, Zamboanga, & Szapocznik, 2010). On the other hand, data showed that assimilation and separation expectations share several predictors, suggesting novel meanings of the assimilation construct (Zick, Wagner, Van Dick, & Petzel, 2001). Finally, our data is consistent with previous research showing that the receiving-society members have different reactions towards immigration depending on the specific groups they have in mind when considering how to live together in society (Berry, 2006; Rohman, Piontkowski, & van Randenborgh, 2008).