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Title: New Immigrants in Local Politics
Citation Type: Miscellaneous
Publication Year: 2023
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Abstract: How do ethnic and racial minorities go from underrepresented to proportionately – or perhaps even over – represented in local politics? This paper addresses this question by examining the ongoing incorporation of Latinxs and politicians in the strategic research site (SRS) of Central Falls, Rhode Island against the backdrop of the earlier incorporation of immigrants from Southern and Eastern Europe, as well as French Canada, who arrived in the “Ellis Island Era”. It employs mixed methods to demonstrate: first, that European-Americans entered politics as representatives of spatially segregated ethnic enclaves in the early 20th century; second, that in the absence of spatial segregation, Latinx politicians with distinct national origins had to await and ultimately foster the emergence of a coherent, panethnic community of voters before they could reach office; third, that the emergence of a panethnic political community was a nonlinear function of the Latinx share of the municipal population; and, fourth, that Latinx identity was in large part forged in and through public institutions, especially the public school system. In doing so, the paper helps overcome the "micro- macro divide” that has traditionally bedeviled political sociology and not only identifies but begins to address a major lacuna in the study of Latinx politics: while the literature assumes and addresses their historical underrepresentation in US politics, immigrants from Latin American and their offspring didn’t identify as members of a coherent panethnic group until recently – leaving the boundaries, and perhaps even the existence, of their underrepresentation open to question.
Url: https://www.brown.edu/academics/race-ethnicity/events/what-jonathon-acosta-thinking-about-now
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Authors: Acosta, John
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Data Collections: IPUMS USA - Ancestry Full Count Data
Topics: Migration and Immigration, Race and Ethnicity
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