Racialized Immigrants: Analyzing the Persistent Participation Gap

• In Event: Immigration and Politics

Abstract

Material resources, skills which enable participation (Verba et al. 1995), English language fluency (Wong et al. 2011), and citizenship (Ramakrishnan 2005) are significant predictors of immigrants’ political participation in the United States. Yet common factors like these cannot account for the persistent gap between the participation of third generation or higher whites and Asian Americans and Latinos, who have lower levels of political engagement. I argue that immigrants and their descendants undergo distinct processes of political socialization such that the traditional factors which encourage participation, such as income and education, do not increase the participation of Asian American and Latino immigrants in the same way they do for white immigrants. This study introduces a unique process of analysis where first, I compare the participation of Asian American and Latino immigrants to white immigrants in the same generation on a wide variety of participatory outcomes. And second, for each comparison, I test factors, like income and age, which could mitigate the participation gap between the white and non-white groups. Through applying this technique to the large, nationally representative sample of the United States Census Current Population Survey Supplements, I find that, at each generation (first, second, and third generation and higher), Asians and Latinos are less likely to participate in the majority of political and community engagement activities, even when controlling for traditional determinants of participation. Not only does this gap persist, but, surprisingly, it also widens between the first and third generation for some activities, like participating in a civic or service organization. By focusing on the intersection of race and immigration, this study is uniquely able to speak to the issue of whose voices are heard and whose are silenced.

Author

• Stephanie Chan, Princeton University