Mobilizing 'Minutemen': Predicting Public Support for Anti-Immigration Activism in the United States

Advances in social movement research conceptualize micromobilization as⎯at least⎯a two-step sequential process in which willingness to participate must first be generated and then translated into actual participation. However, such research often ignores a more fundamental first step in this process: the generation of movement support. I address this gap by drawing on a nationally representative sample of adults in the United States⎯who either sympathized with or opposed anti-immigration activism⎯ to identify individual attributes differentiating anti-immigration movement supporters and non-supporters. Perceptions of economic threat, waning confidence in political leadership, and prejudicial cultural beliefs about Latinos represent attributes differentiating movement supporters from non-supporters. Power devaluation theory is used as an overarching framework to meaningfully interpret these results. More generally, I argue that grievances play an important, yet under theorized role in jumpstarting conservative micromobilization and that principles from power devaluation theory can also help us understand the differentiation of movement support, irrespective of a social movement's political orientation.