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Liberal democracies are expected to provide residents with both negative rights, such as limitations against the abuse of police powers, and some range of positive (social) rights, such as access to social benefits. These rights are commonly deemed to apply equally, without respect to individuals' ascriptive backgrounds. Existing research, often in the US context and focused on social programs, shows both support for abstract rights and group-specific prejudices. We interrogate whether similar patterns exist in Canada and innovate by directly examining negative and positive rights in the same study. Using a series of novel survey experiments, we demonstrate the degree to which categorical inequalities based on race and legal status affect public support for rights provision in Canada. Both rights are more recognized for citizens relative to out-of-status migrants, and legal status at times interacts with racialized minority status. Rights appear far from universal in the minds of Canadians. Résumé: On s'attend des démocraties libérales qu'elles accordent aux résidents et résidentes à la fois des droits négatifs, tels que des limitations contre l'abus des pouvoirs de la police, ainsi qu'une gamme de droits (sociaux) positifs, tels que l'accès aux prestations sociales. Ces droits sont généralement considérés comme s'appliquant de manière égalitaire, sans égard aux antécédents des individus. Les recherches existantes, souvent menées dans le contexte états-unien et axées sur les programmes sociaux, soutiennent à la fois les droits abstraits et les préjugés spécifiques à un groupe. Nous nous demandons si des tendances similaires existent au Canada et innovons en examinant directement les droits négatifs et positifs au sein de la même étude. À l'aide d'une série d'expériences d'enquête originales, nous démontrons dans quelle mesure les inégalités catégoriques fondées sur la race et le statut juridique affectent le soutien du public à l'égard de la protection des droits au Canada. Les deux droits sont plus reconnus pour les personnes citoyennes que pour celles migrantes sans statut, et le statut juridique interagit parfois avec le statut de minorité racialisée. Les droits semblent loin d'être universels dans l'esprit des Canadiennes et Canadiens. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Liberal nationalists argue that identification with the nation promotes feelings of mutual obligation, including support for redistribution. Existing attempts to test this hypothesis have focused on whether the higher sense of national identity among the majority increases support redistribution. We argue for a twofold shift in focus. First, beyond the majority's own national identity, we need to explore their perceptions of whether minorities share this identity. Second, we need to shift from one-dimensional ideals of 'identity' to more complex ideas of attachment and commitment. Do members of the majority view minorities as committed to the nation and willing to make sacrifices for it? Drawing on a custom-designed online survey in Canada, we show that three salient out-groups (Aboriginal peoples, French-speaking Canadians and immigrants) are seen by majority respondents as less committed to Canada, and that this is a powerful predictor of support for general and inclusive redistribution. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Previous research has shown that the public tends to see some groups as less deserving of social rights. Our focus in this article is whether they are also seen as less entitled to engage in political claims-making. Recent theorists of inclusive nationalism argue that whether minorities are seen as having the right to codetermine the future may depend on whether the majority believes minorities are morally committed to the nation. Drawing on a unique survey experiment, we test this intuition by analyzing how majority perceptions of a minority's commitment to the larger society influence support for claims-making by immigrants and national minorities. We show that immigrants, French-speaking Quebeckers, and Indigenous peoples are judged more harshly about their right to make claims and that this is in part explained by the majority's views that these groups are not, in fact, committed members of the larger political community. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Employing a comparative experimental design drawing on over 18,000 interviews across eleven countries on four continents, this article revisits the discussion about the economic and cultural drivers of attitudes towards immigrants in advanced democracies. Experiments manipulate the occupational status, skin tone and national origin of immigrants in short vignettes. The results are most consistent with a Sociotropic Economic Threat thesis: In all countries, higher-skilled immigrants are preferred to their lower-skilled counterparts at all levels of native socio-economic status (SES). There is little support for the Labor Market Competition hypothesis, since respondents are not more opposed to immigrants in their own SES stratum. While skin tone itself has little effect in any country, immigrants from Muslim-majority countries do elicit significantly lower levels of support, and racial animus remains a powerful force. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article builds on the insights of the contact hypothesis and political socialization literatures to go beyond recent findings that racial and ethnic diversity have overwhelmingly negative effects on social capital, particularly generalized trust. Using the Canadian General Social Survey (2003), our results show that despite a negative relationship among adults, younger Canadians with racial and ethnic diversity in their social networks show higher levels of generalized trust. The results seem to confirm that youth socialization experiences with rising diversity and the normalization of diversity in a multicultural environment contribute to beneficial (instead of detrimental) effects of diverse social networks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Past research suggests that citizens' attitudes toward immigration are driven by perceptions of immigrants' (a) economic status and (b) ethnicity. In this study, we use an online survey conducted with a representative sample of Canadians to test to what extent economic and cultural cues influence support for individual immigrants. In particular, by drawing on a parallel US survey, we explore whether Canadians' relatively unique (positive) attitudes toward immigration make them more immune to economic and cultural threat manipulations than their American counterparts. The analysis is based on an experimental design embedded in a series of immigrant vignettes that vary the ethnoracial background and social status of an individual applying for immigration. We examine overall support for immigration, as well as the extent to which both ethnic and economic status cues affect support for individual immigrants. We also explore variance within Canada, specifically, in Quebec versus the rest of the country. Results offer new and unique information on the structure of attitudes on diversity and immigration in Canada. Most importantly, they suggest the relative importance of economic cues in support for immigration in both countries. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]