Introducing an international relations perspective into the literature on anti-immigrant attitudes, the authors hypothesize that immigrants from rival countries will be shunned and immigrants from allied countries preferred, especially by respondents who identify more strongly with the nation. 

The authors fielded a forced-choice conjoint experiment in 22 countries, whereby respondents chose between applicants for permanent resident status with randomized attributes. The authors identified rival and allied countries of origin for each surveyed country, with one such pair sharing a similar racial and cultural make-up as the majority of respondents, and one pair being more dissimilar. 

The authors find that discrimination against immigrants from rival states is so pronounced that it results in a net preference for racially and culturally dissimilar immigrants. Since the authors fielded the surveys amidst the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the authors are able to leverage exogenous changes in the intensity of one rivalry, providing further evidence for the proposed mechanism.