Adrian D. Pantoja

Citizens by Choice, Voters by Necessity: Patterns in Political Mobilization by Naturalized Latinos

In this article, we compare the 1996 turnout among cohorts of naturalized and native-born Latino citizens, looking for between-group differences endogenous to recent anti-immigrant rhetoric and events in California. We argue that immigrants naturalizing in a politically charged environment represent a self-selected subsample of all voters, identifying individuals who feel strohgly about the political issues at hand, and who seek enfranchisement as an act of political expression. We suggest that newly naturalized citizens living in California made exactly these choices, which differentiate them from native-born citizens, longer-term naturalized citizens, and Latinos in other states. Using the Tomas Rivera Policy Institutes 1997 three-state survey of citizen attitudes, validated using original registrars-of-voters data, we estimate multivariate logit models of individual turnout of Latino citizens in each state for the 1996 national election. The data support our hypotheses. Newly naturalized Latinos in California behave differently from other Latino citizens of California, and the patterns of difference are not replicated in either Florida or Texas. Turnout was higher among those who naturalized in the politically hostile climate of California in the early 1990s. Our results suggest important political effects of wedge-issue politics that target Latino immigrants.

Does Ethnicity Matter? Descriptive Representation in Legislatures and Political Alienation Among Latinos*

This article uses a political empowerment approach to explore the effect that descriptive representation in legislatures has on levels of political alienation among Latinos. Copyright (c) 2003 by the Southwestern Social Science Association.

Fear and Loathing in California: Contextual Threat and Political Sophistication Among Latino Voters

Environments having candidates or policies deemed threatening to an individual or group have previously been found to trigger feelings of anxiety that in turn motivate people to closely monitor political affairs. Racially charged ballot propositions, and the strong feelings they evoked, made California in the mid-1990s just such an environment for Latino citizens—resulting, we believe, in higher levels of political information. Using the Tomás Rivera Policy Institutes 1997 postelection survey of Hispanic citizens, we compare levels of political knowledge between naturalized and native-born Latino citizens in California and similarly situated Latino citizens in Texas. We find that, as a result of these highly publicized and controversial initiatives, Latino immigrants in California (a) are more likely than native-born Latinos and Latinos outside California to perceive racial issues as most important, and (b) manifest higher levels of political information than their fellow native-born Latinos and Latino citizens outside of California, controlling for other well-recognized predictors of political information levels.

Political Knowledge and Issue Voting Among the Latino Electorate

How informed is a Latino vote? Though recent scholarship has improved our understanding of Latino political participation, partisanship, and policy preferences, relatively little is known about how Hispanics make electoral decisions. In this effort, we evaluate the role policy issues, candidate affect, and symbolism play in the electoral choices of Latino voters. In particular, we are interested in how these factors affect the vote across voters with varying levels of political information. Using the 2000 Tomás Rivera Policy Institute pre-election poll, we explore the degree to which Latino voters relied on issue-positions to judge the two major party candidates and compare the effect of such considerations with symbolic and candidate-specific appeals. We find that policy issues played an important role in shaping voting preferences, but only among politically knowledgeable voters, while among uninformed voters, symbolism and long-standing partisan preferences matter most. We conclude by discussing the implications of these findings for political representation and Latino politics.

Beyond Black and White: General Support for Race-Conscious Policies Among African Americans, Latinos, Asian Americans and Whites

The study of racial attitudes in the U.S. has largely focused on white attitudes toward African Americans and policies designed to assist African Americans. We go beyond this black-white dichotomy by comparing African American, Latino, Asian American, and white attitudes toward opportunity-enhancing and outcome-directed policies. Data from the Multi-City Study of Urban Inequality, 1992-1994 are used to test the effects class and ethnic/racial identities play in shaping respondent’s policy preferences. Because both of these programs are designed to apply equally to African Americans, Latinos, and Asian Americans, we model general support for these policies. In other words respondents who supported each program for all three groups were coded as favoring the particular policy. Our coding method more accurately captures the real world application of these programs. We find that even when we control for class status, measures of racial prejudice, as well as a host of other factors, ethnic and racial differences persist. African Americans strongly support both policies, while whites were the least supportive. Latinos and Asian Americans in varying degrees took intermediate positions on these issues. The research considers the reasons for the persistence of ethnic and racial differences on race-conscious policies and suggests future avenues for research.

From Coverage to Action: The Immigration Debate and Its Effects on Participation

The past decade has witnessed a proliferation of media stories about immigration as a result of increases in authorized and unauthorized immigration to the United States. Scholars know little about how this coverage influences political participation across different groups in society. This study employs an experimental design to test the effects of different media frames on immigration in spurring political participation among recent immigrant-rooted communities and non-immigrant-rooted communities. The authors find strong mobilizing effects among Latinos, particularly for frames that highlight social costs and national security concerns, and weak to no effects on Asians, African Americans, and whites.

A Second Look: Is There a Latina/o Gender Gap?

SUMMARY This research builds upon and updates Montoyas 1996 study of the Latina/o gender gap through the use of the 1999 Harvard Kennedy School/Kaiser Family Foundation/Washington Post Latino Survey. Not only do we find a gender gap across six questions related to the use of force, social compassion, and womens social roles, we also find that the size and significance of the gap varies across Mexican, Puerto Rican, and Cuban origin respondents. Our findings challenge past research that found limited evidence of a gender gap in public opinion among Latinos and Latinas nationally, and suggest that more research is needed in order to understand how gendered experiences help to frame public opinion within different racial/ethnic groups in the United States.

Christian America? Understanding the Link between Churches, Attitudes, and “Being American” among Latino Immigrants

In recent decades, Evangelical churches in the U.S. have expanded their outreach to Latino immigrants, seeking to incorporate these new Americans into their churches. We examine the implications of this movement by examining the impact of Evangelical and Catholic Church participation on Latino immigrant’s conceptions of what it means to be ‘fully American.’ Relying on the 2006 Latino National Survey, we find that church attendance significantly impacts immigrants’ attitudes towards American identity. Specifically, the results indicate that membership in Evangelical and Protestant churches increases the extent to which Latino immigrants believe Christianity to be a critical part of being American, while Catholic church membership has little effect. We conclude by discussing the implications of our findings.

Patriotism and language loyalties: comparing Latino and Anglo attitudes toward English-Only legislation

Abstract This study examines the role patriotism plays in structuring Anglo and Latino attitudes towards making English the official language of the United States. We rely on pooled data from the 1997 and 1998 Los Angeles County Social Survey and use logistic regression to examine the impact of patriotism and other determinants on support for English-Only policies. The results indicate that Latinos and Anglos hold distinctly different views on English-Only policies, with significant numbers of Anglos supporting these policies, and Latinos largely opposing them. Patriotism, as well as other socio-demographic variables, differentially structure Latino and Anglos attitudes towards linguistic policies. Specifically, patriotism significantly increases Anglo support for English-Only policies, but exerts little impact on Latino attitudes in this regard.

Political Orientations and Latino Immigrant Incorporation

Latino immigrant incorporation into the American political structure is vital for the political future of the Latino community in the United States, a group marked by considerable numbers of noncitizens as well as relatively low voter turnout among citizens. To gain a more significant political voice for the American Latino population, immigrants must become politically incorporated through naturalization and political activism. The term political incorporation has been used by scholars to refer to many things, including naturalization, formal participation in politics, group representation in elected office and policy outcomes, as well as participation in nonelectoral activities and organizations (Barreto & Muñoz, 2003; DeSipio, 1996a; Jones-Correa, 1998; Ramakrishnan & Espenshade, 2001). Although political incorporation might include a number of activities, in this chapter we measure immigrant incorporation into the American political system through two basic behavioral indicators: naturalization and nonelectoral political participation. The acquisition of U.S. citizenship is a critical first step toward the political incorporation of immigrants, as it confers upon them the right to vote and hold elective office. For politically underrepresented groups like Latinos, the presence of a large segment of noncitizens is particularly troubling, significantly limiting their electoral strength. The 2000 U.S. Census reports that out of 23 million adult Latinos, only 13.2 million, or 57%, are U.S. citizens. In other words, close to half of the voting-age Latino population is ineligible to vote because they are noncitizens. Having a large noncitizen population in itself is not significant if naturalization is undertaken rather quickly. Yet, naturalization rates among Latinos, with the exception of Cuban Americans,