Divergent opposition to sub-Saharan African and Arab migrants in Morocco’s Casablanca Region: prejudice from the pocketbook?

ABSTRACT

Since the early 2010s, the global migrant crisis has led to the mass inflow of foreign migrants, refugees, and other displaced persons into numerous countries. Whereas some native citizens have welcomed these migrants, a large number have expressed opposition. Most theories explaining why citizens express opposition to migrants emerged from evidence collected in developed, European countries. Yet, developing, non-Western countries especially in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) have borne the brunt of today’s migrant crisis. This study uses an original survey of 1500 citizens conducted in Morocco’s Casablanca-Settat region to explore how effectively traditional theories explain opposition to migrants amongst citizens of the MENA. Like those in many North African countries, Morocco’s migrants hail mostly from Arab countries (e.g. Syria, Iraq) or sub-Saharan African countries (e.g. Nigeria, Congo). We find the expected citizen opposition to migrants, but also that this opposition is more intense with respect to migrants from sub-Saharan Africa. While recent studies of Europe emphasize how cultural differences drive opposition to migrants, our results indicate that material issues—concerns about migrants’ negative effects on the economy and internal security—tend to motivate such attitudes in Morocco. Concerns about cultural conflicts and other immaterial differences play a smaller, secondary role.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

¹ The authors thank Mark Tessler, Jocelyn Mitchell, Lindsay Benstead, Tarek Masoud, the anonymous reviews, and participants of APSA 2018, MESA 2018, Harvard’s Middle East Initiative workshop, and the University of Tennessee’s faculty research workshop for feedback. We also thank Dr. Mhammed Abderebbi for survey assistance, and the University of Tennessee, the Howard H. Baker Jr. Center for Public Policy, and Harvard University’s Middle East Initiative for supporting this study and related follow-on projects. Authors’ names listed alphabetically; equal authorship credit.

² OECD, International Migration Outlook 2017 (Paris: OECD Publishing, 2017).

³ Kenneth F. Scheve and Matthew J. Salughter, Globalization and the Perceptions of American Workers (Washington, DC: Institute for International Economics, 2001); Anna Maria Mayda, ‘Who is against Immigration? A Cross-Country Investigation of Individual Attitudes toward Immigrants’, Review of Economics and Statistics 88, no.3 (2006): 510–30; Kevin H. O’Rourke and Richard Sinnott, ‘The Determinants of Individual Attitudes towards Immigration’, European Journal of Political Economy 22, no.4 (2006): 838–61.

⁴ Jens Hainmueller and Michael J. Hiscox, ‘Attitudes toward Highly Skilled and Low-skilled Immigration: Evidence from a Survey Experiment’, American Political Science Review 104, no.1 (2010): 61–84; Claire L. Adida, David D. Latin, and Marie-Anne Valfort, ‘“One Muslim is Enough!” Evidence from a Field Experiment in France’, Annals of Economics and Statistics 121/122 (2016): 121–60.

⁵ See, for example: David Card, Christian Dustmann, and Ian Preston, ‘Immigration, Wages, and Compositional Amenities’, Journal of the European Economic Association 10, no.1 (2012): 78–119.

⁶ See, for example: Christian Dustmann and Ian P. Preston, ‘Racial and Economic Factors in Attitudes to Immigration’, The B.E. Journal of Economic Analysis and Policy 7, no.1 (2007): 1–39; Jens Hainmueller and Dominik Hangartner, ‘Who Gets a Swiss Passport? A Natural Experiment on Immigrant Discrimination’, American Political Science Review 107, no.1 (2013): 1–29.

⁷ British Broadcasting Service, ‘Migrant Crisis’, 2016 (http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-34131911); Omer Karasapan, ‘Who are the Five Million Refugees and Immigrants in Egypt?’ Brookings: Future Development, 2016 (https://www.brookings.edu/blog/future-development/2016/10/04/who-are-the-5-million-refugees-and-immigrants-in-egypt/); Human Rights Watch, ‘Unwelcome Guests: Iran’s Violation of Afghan Refugee and Migrant Rights’ 2013 (https://www.hrw.org/report/2013/11/20/unwelcome-guests/irans-violation-afghan-refugee-and-migrant-rights).

⁸ Hein de Haas, ‘Irregular Migration from West Africa to the Maghreb and the European Union: An Overview of Recent Trends’, International Organization for Migration (2008): 9; Hein de Haas, ‘The Myth of Invasion: The Inconvenient Realities of African Migration to Europe,’ Third World Quarterly 29, no. 7 (2008): 1305–22.

⁹ See: Justin Huggler, ‘Up to 6.6m migrants waiting to Cross to Europe from Africa: Report’, Telegraph, May 23, 2017, 1.

¹⁰ Huggler, Ibid. 2017. In 2015, Morocco’s government counted 45,000 new migrants, see: Migration Policy Center, ‘Migration Profile: Morocco’, European University Institute-Migration Policy Center (2015): 9.

¹¹ Paul Puschmann, Casablanca: A Demographic Miracle on Moroccan Soil? (Leuven: Acco Academic Press, 2011), 22–23.

¹² Christian Welzel and Ronald Inglehart, Modernization, Cultural Change, and Democracy: The Human Development Sequence (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005); Ronald Inglehart and Pippen Norris, ‘The True Clash of Civilizations’, Foreign Policy 135 (2003): 62–70.

¹³ Tessler and Benstead outline obstacles to MENA-based survey research, including restrictiveness of authoritarian regimes and low technical capacity. See: Mark Tessler, Public Opinion in the Middle East: Survey Research and the Political Orientations of Ordinary Citizens (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2011); Lindsay J. Benstead, ‘Survey Research in the Arab World’, in The Oxford Handbook of Polling and Survey Methods, eds. Lonna Rae Atkeson and R. Michael Alvarez (2017).

¹⁴ Very few polls have been conducted on citizen attitudes in the MENA about migrants; exceptions include Turkish attitudes toward Syrian refugees. See: Ozgür Ünlühisarcıklı and Ceylan Canbilek, ‘Turkish Perceptions Survey’, The German Marshal Fund of the United States (2015): 12; Egor Lazarev and Kunall Sharma, ‘Brother or Burden: An Experiment on Reducing Prejudice towards Syrian Refugees in Turkey’, Political Science Research and Methods 5, no. 2 (2015): 201–19; Mona Christophersen, Jing Liu, Catherine Moe, Thorleifsson and Age A. Tiltnes, ‘Lebanese Attitudes towards Syrian Refugees and the Syrian Crisis’, Fafo Research Foundation Paper (2013).

¹⁵ Though the empirical findings on the relationship between income level, earning dispersion, and the skill level of migrants are mixed, migrants tend to have lower skill levels. See: Jorgen Hansen and Magnus Lofstrom, ‘Immigrant Assimilation and Welfare Participation: Do Immigrants Assimilate into or out of Welfare?’ The Journal of Human Resources 38, no.1 (1999): 74–98; Tito Boeri, Gordon H. Hanson, and Barry McCormick, Immigration Policy and the Welfare System: A Report for the Fondazione Rodolfo Debendetti (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002); Timothy J. Hatton and Jeffrey G. Williamson, Global Migration and the World Economy: Two Centuries of Policy and Performance (Cambridge, Massachusetts: The MIT Press, 2005).

¹⁶ George J. Borjas, ‘The Economics of Immigration’, Journal of Economic Literature 32, no. 4 (1994): 1667–717.

¹⁷ John P. De New and Klaus F. Zimmermann, ‘Native Wage Impacts of Foreign Labor: A Random Effects Panel Analysis’, Journal of Population Economics 7, no.2 (1994): 177–92; James P. Smith and Barry Edmonston (eds.), The New Americans: Economic, Demographic, and Fiscal Effects of Immigration (Washington, DC: National Academies Press, 1997); David Card, ‘Immigrant Inflows, Native Outflows, and the Local Labor Market Impacts of Higher Immigration’, Journal of Labor Economics 19, no. 1 (2001): 22–64.

¹⁸ Borjas, Ibid. 1994; Mayda, Ibid. 2006; Scheve & Salughter, Ibid. 2001; O’Rourke & Sinnott, Ibid. 2006.

¹⁹ Neil Malhotra, Yotam Margalit, and Cecilia Hyunjung Mo, ‘Economic Explanations for Opposition to Immigration: Distinguishing between Prevalence and Conditional Impact’, American Journal of Political Science 57, no. 2 (2013): 391–410.

²⁰ de Haas, Ibid. 2008, 1308.

²¹ Alan S. Gerber, Gregory A. Huber, Daniel R. Biggers, and David J. Hendry, ‘Self-Interest, Beliefs, and Policy Opinions: Understanding How Economic Beliefs Affect Immigration Policy Preferences’, Political Research Quarterly 70, no. 1 (2017): 155–71.

²² Kyung Joon Han, ‘Saving Public Pension: Labor Migration Effects on Pension Systems in European Countries’, Social Science Journal 50, no. 2 (2013): 152–61.

²³ Hansen & Lofstrom, Ibid. 1999; Boeri, Hanson, & McCormick, Ibid. 2002.

²⁴ Whereas Weber & Straubhaar (1996), Lee & Miller (2000), and Storesletten (2000) conclude that migrants are net contributors to the welfare systems, Ekberg (1999), Auerbach & Oreopoulos (2000), Storesletten (2003), and Schou (2006) find they are net burdens. Also, Fix & Passel (1994) and Smith & Edmonston (1997) conclude that the migration effect on the welfare system is inconclusive. Coleman and Rowthorn’s (2004) survey research on the fiscal effects of migration concludes that the fiscal effects are not larger than ±1 percent of GDP. See: René Weber and Thomas Straubhaar, ‘Immigration and the Public Transfer System: Some Empirical Evidence for Switzerland’, Weltwirtschaftliches Archiv 132, no. 2 (1996): 330–55; Ronald Lee and Timothy Miller, ‘Immigration, Social Security, and Broader Fiscal Impacts’, American Economic Review 90, no. 2 (2000): 350–4; Kjetil Storesletten, ‘Sustaining Fiscal Policy through Immigration’, Journal of Political Economy 108, no. 2 (2000): 300–23; Jan Ekberg, ‘Immigration and the Public Sector: Income Effects for the Native Population in Sweden’, Journal of Population Economics 12, no. 3 (1999): 278–97; Alan J. Auerbach and Philip Oreopoulos, ‘The Fiscal Effects of U.S. Immigration: A Generational-Accounting Perspective’, in Tax Policy and the Economy 14 ed. James M. Poterba (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2000); Kjetil Storesletten, ‘Fiscal Implications of Immigration: A Net Present Value Calculation’, Scandinavian Journal of Economics 105, no. 3 (2003): 487–506; Poul Schou, ‘Immigration, Integration and Fiscal Sustainability’, Journal of Population Economics 19, no. 4 (2006): 671–89; Michael E. Fix and Jeffrey S. Passel, Immigration and Immigrants: Setting the Record Straight (Washington, DC: Urban Institute, 1994); Smith & Edmonston, Ibid. 1997; David Coleman and Robert Rowthorn, ‘The Economic Effects of Immigration into the United Kingdom’, Population and Development Review 30, no. 4 (2004): 579–624.

²⁵ Kate Baldwin and John D. Huber, ‘Economic versus Cultural Differences: Forms of Ethnic Diversity and Public Goods Provision’, American Political Science Review 104, no. 4 (2010): 644–62.

²⁶ For example, Dustmann & Preston (2007) test how respondents’ concern on labor market and the welfare system as well as their cultural attitudes shape their attitudes toward migrants and find that people’s cultural and racial bias and their concern on the welfare system have more substantial effects. Hanson, Scheve, & Slaughter (2007) also find that citizens hold negative attitudes toward migrants, especially where migrants are eligible for welfare benefits. See: Gordon H. Hanson, Kenneth Scheve, and Matthew Slaughter, ‘Public Finance and Individual Preferences over Globalization Strategies’, Economics and Politics 19, no. 1 (2007): 1–33; Giovanni Facchini, and Anna Maria Mayda, ‘Does the Welfare State Affect Individual Attitudes toward Immigrants? Evidence across Countries’, Review of Economics and Statistics 91, no. 2 (2009): 295–314.

²⁷ African Research Bulletin, ‘Morocco: Social Welfare Budget’, African Research Bulletin 44, no. 11 (2008): 17629C-17630B.

²⁸ World Bank, World Development Indicators. The Moroccan government spent 5.3 percent on education and 5.4 percent in health care in 2008.

²⁹ Jack Citrin, Donald P. Green, Christopher Muste, and Cara Wong, ‘Public Opinion toward Immigration Reform: The Role of Economic Motivations’, Journal of Politics 59, no. 3 (1997): 858–81.

³⁰ Martin Baldwin-Edwards, ‘The Emerging European Immigration Regime: Some Reflections on Implications for Southern Europe’, Journal of Common Market Studies 35, no. 4 (1997): 497–519; Kyung Joon Han, ‘Political Use of Asylum Policies: The Effects of Partisanship and Election Timing on Government Policies Regarding Asylum Seekers’ Welfare Benefits’, Comparative European Politics 11, no. 4 (2013): 383–405.

³¹ Jens Rydgren, ‘Immigration Sceptics, Xenophobes or Racists? Radical Right-wing Voting in Six West European Countries’, European Journal of Political Research 47, no. 5 (2008): 737–65.

³² Thomas J. Espenshade and Charles A. Calhoun, ‘An Analysis of Public Opinion toward Undocumented Immigration’, Population Research and Policy Review 12, no. 3 (1993): 189–224; Joel S. Fetzer, Public Attitudes toward Immigration in the United States, France, and Germany (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000).

³³ Mattei Dogan, ‘The Decline of Nationalisms within Western Europe’, Comparative Politics 26, no. 3 (1994): 281–305; Joan Nagel, ‘Masculinity and Nationalism: Gender and Sexuality in the Making Nations’, Ethnic and Racial Studies 21, no. 2 (1998): 242–69; Marcel Coenders and Peer Scheepers, ‘The Effect of Education on Nationalism and Ethnic Exclusionism: An International Comparison’, Political Psychology 24, no. 2 (2003): 313–43; Kyung Joon Han, ‘Income Inequality, International Migration, and National Pride: A Test of Social Identification Theory’, International Journal of Public Opinion Research 25, no. 4 (2013): 502–21; Charles R. Chandler and Yung-mei Tsai, ‘Social Factors Influencing Immigration Attitudes: An Analysis of Data from the General Social Survey’, Social Science Journal 38, no. 2 (2001): 177–88.

³⁴ Hainmueller & Hiscox, Ibid. 2010.

³⁵ Burns & Gimpel (2000) and Dustmann & Preston (2007) also find that though economic concerns statistically significantly formulate negative attitudes toward migrants, the substantive sizes of their effects are smaller than those of the effects of factors on cultural concern. See: Peter Burns and James G. Gimpel, ‘Economic Insecurity, Prejudicial Stereotypes, and Public Opinion on Immigration Policy’, Political Science Quarterly 115, no. 2 (2000): 201–25.

³⁶ About 12 percent of Moroccans self-identify as mono-lingual Tamazigh speakers (Amazigh or Berber ethnicity). Most Moroccans have mixed Arab and Amazigh ancestry, speak Arabic, and follow Arab cultural traditions.

³⁷ Manal Jamal, ‘The “Other Arab” & Gulf Citizens: Mutual Accommodation of Palestinians in the UAE in Historical Context’, in Arab Migrant Communities in the GCC ed. Zahra Babar (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017).

³⁸ Pan-Arabism and Pan-Africanism are ethnic ideologies supporting unity of Arab and African peoples, respectively.

³⁹ Clifford R. Shaw and Henry McKay, Juvenile Delinquency and Urban Area (Chicago. Illinois: University of Chicago Press, 1942).

⁴⁰ Graham C. Ousey and Charis E. Kubrin, ‘Exploring the Connection between Immigration and Violent Crime Rats in U.S. Cities, 1980–2000’, Social Problems 56, no. 3 (2009): 447–73.

⁴¹ Tim Wadsworth, ‘Is Immigration Responsible for the Crime Drop? An Assessment of the Influence of Immigration on Changes in Violent Crime between 1990 and 2000’, Social Science Quarterly 91, no. 2 (2010): 531–53.

⁴² Milo Bianchi, Paolo Buonanno, and Paolo Pinotti, ‘Do Immigrants Cause Crime?’ Journal of the European Economic Association 10, no. 6 (2012): 1318–47.

⁴³ Tjitske Akkerman, ‘Comparing Radical Right Parties in Government: Immigration and Integration Policies in Nine Countries (1996–2010)’, West European Politics 35, no. 3 (2012): 511–29.

⁴⁴ Joscha Legewie, ‘Terrorist Events and Attitudes toward Immigrants: A Natural Experiment’, American Journal of Sociology 118, no. 5 (2013): 1199–245.

⁴⁵ Mayda, Ibid. 2006; Jennifer Fitzgerald, K. Amber Curtis, and Catherine L. Corliss, ‘Anxious Publics: Worries about Crime and Immigration’, Comparative Political Studies 45, no. 4 (2012): 477–506.

⁴⁶ Tsion Tadesse Abebe, ‘Algeria and Morocco’s Migrant Politics Can Prevent Violent Extremism’, Institute for Security Studies-Policy Brief 112 (2018): 4–5.

⁴⁷ Mustapha al-‘Adalai, the domestic security chief of Morocco’s Oriental region, issued a 2017 report recording the crimes that African migrants most commonly commit, including: loitering (26.7 percent), alcohol smuggling (15 percent), migrant trafficking (15 percent), fighting (10.8), prostitution (8.3 percent), and drug trafficking (7.5 percent) (al-‘Adalai 2017). It is difficult to know if such trends generalize to other regions, and how they compare with other demographic groups. See: Mustapha al-‘Adalai, ‘Al-hijrah al-douliyyah wa al-jarimah: haalat al-muhajirien al-sahra biljihah al-sharqiyyah lilmaghreb’ (Hassan II University, Casablanca, 2017).

⁴⁸ Hein De Haas, ‘Morocco: Setting the Stage for Becoming a Migration Transition Country’, Migration Policy Institute (2014).

⁴⁹ Kelsey Norman, ‘Inclusion, exclusion or indifference? Redefining migrant and refugee host state engagement options in Mediterranean “transit” countries’, Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies 45, no. 1 (2018): 1.

⁵⁰ Myriam Cherti and Michael Collyer, “Immigration and Pensée d’Etat: Moroccan migration Policy Changes as Transformation of ‘Geopolitical Culture’, Journal of North African Studies 20, no. 4 (2015): 590.

⁵¹ Kelsey Norman, ‘Between Europe and Africa: Morocco as a Country of Immigration’, The Journal of the Middle East and Africa 7, no. 4 (2016): 422.

⁵² Keygnaert et al., ‘Sexual Violence and sub-Saharan migrants in Morocco’, Globalization and Health 10 (2014): 8.

⁵³ Lucia Benavides, ‘Spain Now Sees More Migrant Arrivals than Any Other European Country’, National Public Radio: Morning Addition (2018).

⁵⁴ Matt Buehler and Kyung Joon Han, ‘Who Endorse Amnesty? An Original Survey from Morocco’s Casablanca Region Assessing Citizen Support for Regularizing Clandestine Migrants’, Review of Middle East Studies 52, no. 2 (2019): 288.

⁵⁵ Dorte Thorse, ‘Is Europe Really the Dream? Contingent Paths Among Sub-Saharan Migrants in Morocco’, Africa: The Journal of the International African Institute 87, no. 2 (2017): 343–61.

⁵⁶ Because smaller numbers in responses denote more negative views (1: Allow none; 2: Allow a few; 3: Allow some; 4: Allow many), this dependent variable of a respondent is coded as one if the value of her response for African migrants is smaller than that for Arab migrants.

⁵⁷ Results do not change significantly when ordered probit or probit models are used.

⁵⁸ This set of independent variables on the desired characteristics of migrants is not used to test the determinants of attitudes toward the number of migrants in general because people’s preferences on these demographic characteristics of migrants are related with their preferred ‘types’ of migrants (e.g., Arab or African migrants) rather than their preferred ‘numbers’ of migrants in general. See: Ashley S. Timmer and Jeffrey G. Williams, ‘Immigration Policy Prior to the 1930s: Labor Markets, Policy Interactions, and Globalization Backlash’, Population and Development Review 24, no. 4 (1998): 739–71.

⁵⁹ Neither the correlations among variables regarding perceived threats nor those among variables regarding qualification of migrants is concerning. The former correlations range from 0.3044 to 0.5994 and the latter ones range from 0.0164 to 0.6797. The variance inflation factor (VIF) from any analysis does not exceed 5. Thus, multicollinearity is not an issue.

⁶⁰ Our survey asks whether a respondent’s family’s origin is Arab, Amazigh, or Black. We make two dummy variables, the former of which indicates Arab or mixed Arab/Amazigh ancestry and the latter denotes Black. Black Moroccans arrived in the 17th century as conscripted soldiers and slaves; they generally have lower social status.

⁶¹ The religiosity variable is an average of five questions on daily Islamic religious activities adapted from the Arab Barometer. See Appendix.

⁶² Moshe Semyonov, Rebeca Raijman, and Anastasia Gorodzeisky, ‘The Rise of Anti-foreigner Sentiment in European Societies, 1988–2000’, American Sociological Review 71, no. 3 (2006): 426–49.

⁶³ Hainmueller & Hiscox, Ibid. 2010.

⁶⁴ Some find ethnic minorities hold sympathy for new migrants (See: Mayda, Ibid. 2006.), whereas others find ethnic minorities feel threatened because they compete with migrants economically (See: Lawrence W. Miller, Jerry L. Polinard, and Robert D. Wrinkle, ‘Attitudes toward Undocumented Workers: The Mexican American Perspective’, Social Science Quarterly 65, no. 2 (1984): 482–94; M V. Hood, III, Irwin L. Morris, and Kurt A. Shirkey, ‘“¡Quedate o Vente!”: Uncovering the Determinants of Hispanic Public Opinion Toward Immigration’, Political Research Quarterly 50, no. 3 (1997): 627–47.)

⁶⁵ Vassilis Saroglou, Isabelle Pichon, Laurence Trompette, Marijke Verschueren, and Rebecca Dernelle, ‘Prosocial Behavior and Religion: New Evidence Based on Projective Measures and Peer Ratings’, Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 44, no. 3 (2005): 323–48.

⁶⁶ The values of all the other right-hand-side variables are fixed at their mean levels when all the predicted probabilities are calculated.

⁶⁷ Rich people may be more concerned on the fiscal effects of migrants if the fiscal burden increases tax rates (Hanson, Scheve, & Slaughter, Ibid. 2007; Facchini & Mayda, Ibid. 2012). Poor people may be more sensitive to the fiscal effects of migrants if they consume and reduce welfare benefits (Hainmueller & Hiscox, Ibid. 2010).

⁶⁸ de Haas, Ibid. 2008.

⁶⁹ Miller, Polinard, & Wrinkle, Ibid. 1984; Hood, Morris, & Shirkey, Ibid. 1997.

⁷⁰ Burns & Gimpel, Ibid. 2000; Dustmann & Preston, Ibid. 2007; Hainmueller & Hiscox, Ibid. 2010.

⁷¹ Welzel & Inglehart, Ibid. 2005; Inglehart & Norris, Ibid. 2003.

⁷² Hanson, Scheve, & Slaughter, Ibid. 2007.

⁷³ Adam S. Harris, Michael J. Findley, Daniel L. Nielson, and Kennard L. Noyes, ‘The Economic Roots of Anti-Immigrant Prejudice in the Global South: Evidence from South Africa’, Political Research Quarterly (Forthcoming); Steven Gordon, ‘Xenophobia across the Class Divide: South African attitudes towards Foreigners, 2003–2012’, Journal of Contemporary African Studies 33, no. 4 (2015): 494–509.

⁷⁴ Lindsay J. Benstead, ‘Does Interview Religious Dress Affect Survey Response? Evidence from Morocco’, Politics and Religion 7, no. 4 (2014): 734–60; Lindsay J. Benstead, ‘Effects of Interviewer-Respondent Gender Interaction on Attitudes toward Women and Politics: Findings from Morocco’, International Journal of Public Opinion Research 26, no. 3 (2013): 369–83.

⁷⁵ Sarah Bush and Amaney Jamal, ‘Anti-Americanism, Authoritarian Politics, and Attitudes about Women’s Representation: Evidence from a Survey Experiment in Jordan’, International Studies Quarterly 59, no. 1 (2015): 34–45.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Howard H. Baker Jr. Center for Public Policy;University of Tennessee;