Immigration

Mobilizing Political Identity: Ethnic Consciousness and Immigrant Political Participation

Project Date:

November 2004

Award Amount:

$28,240

Summary

At the heart of the civil rights movement, shared racial identity generally implied a shared political viewpoint, as blacks overwhelmingly supported the Democratic Party. In the 1990s immigration-reform proposals unified Latinos and Asians in California as well. Yet recent elections indicate that both political parties see minority groups as increasingly up for grabs. Does ethnic and racial identity still have political consequences for contemporary democratic politics in the United States?

To assess why, how, and when race and ethnicity matter for political participation, Jane Junn will interview 30 immigrant and second-generation Asian, Latino, and multiracial respondents in each of three metropolitan areas: Chicago, Raleigh-Durham, and Minnesota’s Twin Cities. The structured interviews will ask about organizational involvement, opportunity for political participation, and the extent to which organized groups have courted the respondents’ participation. Respondents will also be asked to identify when race and ethnicity matter in their decisions to become politically involved. Junn hypothesizes that social context and the political issues at hand will affect the degree to which group consciousness is mobilized and turned into political action. The interviews will help her to develop standardized questions on ethnic political awareness appropriate for these groups, as well as a set of experimental protocols to systematically assess respondents’ racial and ethnic consciousness with regard to political matters.

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