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Given that people can feel dislocated whether they are left behind or swept up, what separates those who see globalization negatively from those who see it positively is how they perceive changes to their country, rather than their neighborhood. Similarly, when it comes to immigration, research suggests people’s opinions are shaped by their concerns about the national cultural impacts of immigration more than their personal economic experiences. For example, when it comes to trade, scholars argue that people’s attitudes toward international trade are based less on their material self-interest than on perceptions of how the U.S. Academics have found similar relationships when examining trade attitudes or attitudes toward immigration. In academia, this is referred to as a “sociotropic” attitude.
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Stories of being left behind and swept up both lead to feelings of alienation and loss. Those who are swept up experience dislocation because of too much attention from global forces – investment and new job creation supplant traditional work, inflate real estate prices and displace some people from their homes and communities. But the group conversations also reveal a narrative of being “swept up” by globalization. Participants highlighted the ways in which the forces of globalization left them rudderless, closing industries, leading people to abandon their homes and harming them economically. The focus groups confirm that the story of being “left behind” remains common in both the U.S. Depending on the topic, a participant’s age, gender, city, employment status or other factors may have been equally relevant to their opinions and views about globalization. Similarly, while we often refer to groups of participants as “Democratic groups” or “leavers,” these descriptors are shorthand, based on the research design or moments in the focus group conversation. The findings are not statistically representative and cannot be extrapolated to wider populations. The analysis presented in this report is indicative of key narratives and frames of references that influence how people perceive and understand important issues. Particular care was taken to ensure that the viewpoints expressed in this report accurately capture the range of opinions expressed, emphasizing not just a majority opinion, but minority and dissenting opinions as well.
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Researchers analyzed the coded data, focusing on how opinions varied across the groups, which served as the primary unit of analysis.
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To analyze the data collected from these discussions, researchers reviewed the focus group transcripts and consolidated the sentiments into “data displays.” These displays summarized participants’ responses to the moderator’s questions and included coding schemes to highlight key themes and points of interest in the conversation, as well as the dynamics of the discussion. Pew Research Center undertook focus groups in the United States and United Kingdom in 2019 – prior to the outbreak of COVID-19 – to understand better the degree to which similar narratives about globalization and its impacts are evident in each country – and whether these narratives vary by geography, political affiliation or other factors in each country. But direct, systematic comparisons of the two countries have been rare. Across the Atlantic, “leave” voters outnumbered “remain” voters in a national referendum on continued European Union membership, framed by the slogan “ Take back control.” Attempts to explain the twin poll results have focused on people who felt left behind and who voted against the seemingly inexorable tide of growing economic interdependence, cultural diversity and social connectivity that define a globalized world. In the United States, voters cast ballots in a presidential election ultimately won by Donald Trump and his “ America first” vision. In 2016, both Americans and Britons participated in divisive votes shaped in part by questions of immigration and global engagement.