For many families, arguing around the dinner table is almost as much a Thanksgiving tradition as turkey.
Family members who assemble will try to make conversation, usually turning to current events or the issues of the day. Opinions will differ — often widely — and voices may be raised, all while bystanders try to make themselves heard asking if someone will please pass the gravy.
Victoria Nash ’21, a third-year student at Suffolk University Law School, remembers this very well. “At Thanksgiving, no topic was off limits,” she recalled, noticing that positions on hot-button issues often broke down along generational lines.
It’s a common occurrence, especially when participants in an argument pass a certain point in age difference, but Nash, Jeffrey Dixon, professor of sociology at Holy Cross, and Andrew S. Fullerton, professor of sociology at Oklahoma State University, wanted to find out why.
By the numbers
Having previously researched generational differences of opinion in regards to government spending on programs, Dixon and Fullerton were invited in February 2019 to contribute a chapter to a new book examining generational changes in the U.S. political landscape.
Nash, then a sociology major and student of Dixon’s, had expressed interest in the roots of generational divides and was brought aboard the project in her then-sophomore year.
A specific topic — preferably something contentious — was needed to anchor the study, an issue on which the pair could compare the opinions of Americans of different age groups. Nash suggested immigration, Dixon said, noting it seemed a logical follow-up to his previous work that focused on race, ethnicity and prejudice.
“I wanted to see if the world I saw matched statistical sociological data,” she said. Hard data would relay how widespread particular views regarding immigration may be among her generation and how they compared with others’.
“Immigration was such a dividing issue in many conversations around campus and off,” she said. “I wanted to see if the world is as divided as the media shows.”
The result of the project is a chapter “Generational Divides, Changing Times, or Aging? Examining Immigration Opinion in the U.S., 2004-2018, in the book "Generational Politics in the United States: From the Silents to Gen Z and Beyond," published in June 2024.
Dixon, Fullerton and Nash’s research primarily made use of existing data — but that had to be gathered and distilled into a usable form. Nash took this on during a summer research session, thanks to funding from the College’s Greisch Family Summer Research Fellowship.
“It was very interesting because I was used to natural science research in the lab, but this was very different wandering around the library,” Nash said, admitting the process had its fair share of frustration. After studying generational attitudes for eight hours a day, every day, “there would be moments where I’m, like, 'I spent four and a half weeks on that and all I have is these couple of pages!'”
The experience served to prepare her for the College’s New York Semester, where her skills were put to good use for a project about public housing: “My summer research boosted my confidence on how to efficiently research any topic,” she said.
The millennial nuance
Data used by Dixon, Fullerton and Nash ended in 2018, which naturally led to a focus on millennials — with a dash of early Gen-Z— and how they differed from previous generations regarding immigration, Dixon said.
“One really big takeaway is that millennials were less likely to oppose immigration than older demographics at [the] most basic level,” he said.
However, he noted that a lack of opposition does not necessarily equal support: “When looking at the effects of something, it’s not always symmetrical, i.e., support goes up as opposition goes down.”
After factoring in other data points such as ethnic diversity, education and economic factors, “we couldn’t for sure say that millennials were more supportive of immigration.”
To clarify — not actively opposing something is not the same as actively supporting it, Dixon said. While millennials overall may not be in favor of harsh anti-immigration policy or share the same prejudices or economic fears of earlier generations, they may still be ambivalent toward the idea of immigration.
