The formation of attitudes toward immigration in Colombia

What explains elevated hostility toward immigrants? We identify two concerns that affect support for immigration: labor market competition and social proximity between immigrants and natives. Relying on a conjoint experiment embedded in an original face-to-face survey, we explore these dynamics in one of the largest migratory flows of the last decade: the Venezuelan exodus to Colombia. We find that respondents primarily reject lower-skill migrants. While ethnic proximity does not mitigate xenophobic attitudes in our context, familial ties and personal contact do. These findings confirm the relevance of pocketbook considerations in guiding attitudes toward foreigners but challenge the common assumption of positive in-group bias among co-ethnics. Moreover, we affirm the relevance of individual and familial proximity as key contributing factors to attenuating xenophobia in response to immigration in the Global South.