Dr. Alina E. Dolea
Associate Professor in Strategic Communication and Public Diplomacy at Bournemouth University and 2022-24 USC CPD Research Fellow. Her research is situated at the intersection of public diplomacy, migration, media and communication studies, with a focus on discourse and emotions. She has published in International Communication Gazette, Nations and Nationalism, Public Relations Review, among others.
Email: edolea@bournemouth.ac.uk
Twitter: @Dolea_Alina
U.S. Election 2024
25. Seeing past the herd: Polls and the 2024 election (Dr Benjamin Toff)
26. On polls and social media (Dr Dorian Hunter Davis)
27. How did gender matter in 2024? (Prof Regina Lawrence)
28. The keys to the White House: Why Allan Lichtman is wrong this time (Tom Fisher)
29. Beyond the rural vote: Economic anxiety and the 2024 presidential election (Dr Amanda Weinstein, Dr Adam Dewbury)
30. Black and independent voters: Which way forward? (Prof Omar Ali)
31. Latino voters in the 2024 election (Dr Arthur D. Soto-Vásquez)
32. Kamala’s key to the polls: The Asian American connection (Nadya Hayasi)
33. The vulnerability of naturalized immigrants and the hero who “will fix” America (Dr Alina E. Dolea)
34. Did Gen Z shape the election? No, because Gen Z doesn’t exist (Dr Michael Bossetta)
35. Cartographic perspectives of the 2024 U.S. election (Prof Benjamin Hennig)
The 2024 U.S. Election campaign was dominated by anti-immigration, misogynistic and racist rhetoric: Donald Trump has used fear and dehumanizing language to depict immigrants, claiming they are eating pets, attacking villages, poisoning the blood of the country. He especially targeted illegal immigrants, labelling them murderers, rapists and ultimately animals, thus striping them of their humanity. Trump’s America has been described as an occupied country, a country under siege and threatened because there are a lot of bad genes among migrants in the U.S. He promised to stop what he called a criminal invasion with the largest deportation program in the American history.
Yet, there were first- and second-generation Hispanic Americans, Asian Americans, even Black Americans and several other ethnic groups of naturalized Americans who voted for Donald Trump. Why did (some) naturalized immigrants vote for Trump?
I argue it was the combination of several inter-related factors including: the heterogeneity of these often-marginalized communities, the inflation and the cost-of-living crisis and the trauma of their immigration and their emotional costs of immigration. They all played into the psychology of these communities at individual and group level, making them vulnerable and susceptible to the firm claims of a self-constructed hero coming to their rescue.
Ethnic minority and diaspora groups are not monolithic and fragmented. Yet, they are often being essentialized and homogenized along their race, ethnicity and/ or home nation-states in media and public discourse. For example, the references to the Asian Americans, the Latino Americans, the Black Americans or to the Indian Americans and the Venezuelan Americans obscure the heterogenous, diverse, and intersectional make-up of these groups. As I showed in my recent study, avoiding methodological nationalism reveals the multiple belongings and identities that are always in the making and constantly negotiated: within any one ethnic minority and diaspora group there are a variety of socio-demographic, ethnic, class, gender, religious, and ideological subgroups; traditional and conservative views, progressive and liberal views, moderate, as well as radical and extremist views coexist and clash regularly. The cultural divides and debates in the homeland as well as the global culture wars are often reproduced within these transnational communities living in America. Donald Trump appealed to voters across all these subgroups: Latino, Asian and Black voters are more conservative, often religious, and their views aligned better with his radical take on abortion and sexual minority rights; the men (Latino, Black, other minority) were swayed by his rhetoric on masculinity and manhood as they were seen and heard; some others were nostalgic considering America’s best days are in the past.
“Old” vs “new” immigrants and the competition over less resources. The “old immigrants” – meanwhile naturalized Americans – might not like or endorse Donald Trump’s labelling and racist depictions of “new immigrants”, but they agree with his approach to limit immigration: the condition of the nation’s economy is already not so good and poor and the new comers will only add pressure to the government welfare. Furthermore, the naturalized immigrants identify themselves as belonging to an established American group, thus Othering the newcomers, even if they share the same Latino, Asian, Black, other ethnic roots: the sameness and difference between “us” already naturalized in America and “them” the newcomers are amplified by the longing to belong. While the post-pandemic inflation has worsened the standard of living across the U.S., the working-class ethnic minority groups were particularly hit. They remember they simply lived better during Trump’s first term and his pledge to tax relief, cutting prices, hiking tariffs and strengthening the economy was addressing their immediate concerns.
Anger, fear and the saviour who can fix America. The “old” immigrants carry with them the invisible luggage of loss and trauma of migration: immigrants often feel they somehow had no choice but to immigrate in their search for a better life and more opportunities; thus, they left behind the family and friends, the ancestors’ burial grounds, the familiar language and smells and have followed a lengthy and legal process to naturalize, often with great personal sacrifices. The assimilation and adaptation is often doubled by rage and guilt towards homeland and those left behind. The illegal immigrants and the undocumented are seen as a problem and are delegitimized because they don’t follow the legal process, but also as dangerous as they keep coming into America and threaten a certain sense of security: the physical border becomes a psychological border, and the newcomers are the Others who damage their acquired psychological border and identity. That is why there is no empathy for the newcomers. Ultimately, someone needs to stop this deluge and protect them; Donald Trump has promised he will fix it.