This article examines how self-transcending human values affect perceptions of immigrant threat. Results show that benevolence and universalism tend to affect perceived immigrant threat in opposite directions. A part of individuals’ anti-immigrant bias does not stem from strictly self-interested motivations, as often proposed, but by a sense of loyalty to the interests of our immediate contacts.

This article examines the connections between participants in the illicit drug trade and members of state security forces to understand how they impact everyday understandings of the law. The authors used ethnographic fieldwork in a poor, high-crime district in Argentina and information gathered for a court case involving a drug trafficking group active in the same area as the basis for their research.