Jane Junn

Participation in Liberal Democracy: The Political Assimilation of Immigrants and Ethnic Minorities in the United States

This article compares patterns of participatory behavior in politics among immigrants and ethnic minorities in the United States. Differences in rates of participation in a range of political activities from system-directed acts, such as voting and contacting officials, to more direct forms of participation, such as protesting, are analyzed for Whites, African Americans, Latinos, and Asian Americans, as well as by generation of immigration within groups. The extent to which standard socioeconomic status models of participatory behavior explain variation in political activity across ethnic and racial groups is assessed. In so doing, the article challenges the normative interpretation of the results from these standard models that more participation among minorities and new entrants to the United States is desirable.

Asian American Identity: Shared Racial Status and Political Context

Amidst rising levels of ethnic diversity in the United States, scholars struggle to understand how group consciousness functions among other non-black minority groups such as Asian Americans and Latinos. Most of the literature in this area focuses on the relationship between identity and immigration incorporation or the debate between national origin and panethnicity. We argue that the Asian American community offers an important case study to understand how social context and ones perceived racial position influence an individuals sense of group attachment. Thus, the Asian American case presents new insight beyond the black politics model into how racial identification influences individual political attitudes and behavior. We present findings from a unique embedded survey experiment conducted in 2004 that reveals a surprising degree of malleability in Asian American racial group attachment. This is a striking contrast to the findings demonstrated by blacks whose racial identification is relatively more stable over various contexts. We seek to explain these findings by advocating for a more explicit consideration of the structural incentives and costs of adopting racial and ethnic identities by highlighting the significance of U.S. immigration policy and its role in creating group-based stereotypes and racial tropes.

Identities in Context: Politicized Racial Group Consciousness Among Asian American and Latino Youth

This article examines the role of context on the mobilization of politicized racial group consciousness among Asian American and Latino youth. We investigate group membership by analyzing face-to-face interview data with Latino and Asian American youth in New York and California on their responses to questions about the meaning of their race and ethnicity to politics. Next, we use survey data from a nationally representative sample of Asian American and Latino youth taken during the 2004 election. We also analyze the extent to which the contextual circumstances of systematic exposure to an experimental frame prompting racial and ethnic group pride influence racial group consciousness. The data help to illuminate the extent to which racial and ethnic identities of Asian American and Latino youth are manifest in their unique political contexts.

FROM COOLIE TO MODEL MINORITY

I examine how and why the social construction of Asian Americans has changed from coolie to model minority over the last century. I examine the role of the U.S. government in creating policies that systematically select particular types of entrants to the United States. Federal immigration policy privileges high-skilled workers, and a disproportionately large number of Asian immigrants are granted the status of lawful permanent resident by the federal government on the basis of employment preferences. U.S. immigration policy thus creates a selection bias, favoring Asian immigrants with high levels of formal education and social standing. I also consider the consequences of this selection bias for the construction of racial tropes and Asian American identity, and argue that the normative content of the dominant tropes of racial identity is critical in establishing the incentives and costs of identifying with racial and ethnic groups. Immigration policy, and the selection biases it may engender, is an important factor in how those tropes are constructed and experienced. Racial identity should, and does, vary as a function of the unique histories of migration, labor market demands, and shared experiences for people classified by race.

The Trump majority: white womanhood and the making of female voters in the U.S.

ABSTRACT The estimated 52% of white female voters who supported Donald Trump for President of the United States in 2016 animates this dialogue on the politics of groups and identities. The Trump majority among white women exists in contrast to strong support of Democratic Party candidate Hillary Clinton among women of color as well as minority men. While many observers were surprised at the high proportion of white female Trump voters, this pattern of electoral behavior supporting Republican Party candidates is a consistent phenomenon since the 1950s in U.S. Presidential elections. The pattern is both clear and easily visible, and provides an important clue to better understand the dynamics of race and gender in electoral politics. I argue for political scientists to pursue intersectional analytical perspectives by situating voting behavior within the context of a polity beyond the black-white binary of race and ethnicity. I suggest analysts consider the positionality of white women as second in sex to men, but first in race to minorities, and the invocation of white womanhood in political rhetoric and practice as a potential explanation of the Trump majority.

Deracializing Obama: White Voters and the 2004 Illinois U.S. Senate Race

Using the unique circumstances of the 2004 Illinois U.S. Senate election, we report findings from survey data from a probability sample of White voters conducted in Illinois during the course of the 2004 election. In an experimental manipulation embedded in the survey, we tested four distinctive framings of Barack Obama by systematically altering the degree and content of his racialization as a Black man, and observing the effect of these treatments on evaluations of Obama. We hypothesize that more strongly racialized framings that highlight Obama’s identity and connection with African Americans would push White voters toward more unfavorable evaluations of the candidate in comparison with deracialized framings. In addition, we argue that party identification has an important moderating influence on the relationship between the racialized treatment and respondents’ evaluations of Obama.

Silent citizenship among Asian Americans and Latinos: opting out or left out?

In his classic study, Who Governs?, Robert Dahl interpreted the patterns of political assimilation of ‘white ethnic’ immigrants and their children during the mid-twentieth century as a hopeful sign of the potential of democratic pluralism in the USA. While acknowledging that immigrant groups faced discrimination and structural barriers that might lead them to be silent, Dahl predicted that social mobility and assimilation would eventually erase these deficits in political participation among immigrants. Building from Dahls analysis, we investigate the extent to which pluralism in the USA can and does work the same way for immigrants who are also racial minorities. We highlight factors that can lead these groups to become silent citizens, including lack of legal status, lower levels of political mobilization by institutions, and discrimination as structural impediments to minority participation. Our findings suggest that both resources as well as structural impediments structure the political behavior of Asian Americans and Latinos, determining whether they are vocal citizens or silent citizens.

Making Room for Women of Color: Race and Gender Categories in the 2008 U.S. Presidential Election

Race and gender have never been more visible on the national political stage than during the 2008 U.S. presidential election, particularly during the months when Democratic Party rivals Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama battled in the partys state nomination caucuses and primaries. Clinton stood in for gender, representing all women, while Obama took his place in the category of race, standing in for all people of color. The success of these candidates and the addition of Sarah Palin as vice presidential nominee on the Republican ticket was a source of pride for many women and minority Americans. The “default” category for presidential candidates—the white male—had finally been displaced from the top of the ticket on the Democratic side and from the second in command for the Republicans.

The Human Face of Big Data

Sandy Smolan, director; Rick Smolan, executive producer Premieres February 24, 2016, on PBS; check local listings Combining beautifully animated data visualizations with commentary from scientists, futurists, tech creators, and other experts, this 1-hour documentary highlights how researchers are using big data to tackle everything from malaria outbreaks and traffic jams to poverty and recidivism.

The savvy citizen

A new logic-based strategy promises to help civic educators improve the publics understanding of politics In Uninformed, political scientist Arthur Lupia urges civic educators to assess the competencies of specific audiences, then offer logic and evidence that are likely to motivate the group to learn more about political issues. At the heart of his recommendations is the idea that educators should make material relevant to people in order to increase their motivation to learn.