Michael Jones-Correa

Different paths: gender immigration and political participation.

Building on arguments made by Grasmuck and Pessar (1991), Hardy-Fanta (1993), and Hondagneu-Sotelo (1994), among others, this article makes the case for a gendered understanding of immigrant political socialization. Looking at recent Latin American immigrants to New York City, the article argues that immigrant Latino men are more likely to favor continuity in patterns of socialization and organization, and immigrant Latinas are more likely to favor change. This finding helps bridge theoretical and empirical literatures in immigration studies, applying the logic of gender-differentiated decisionmaking to the area of immigrant political socialization and behavior.

Institutional and Contextual Factors in Immigrant Naturalization and Voting

(2001). Institutional and Contextual Factors in Immigrant Naturalization and Voting. Citizenship Studies: Vol. 5, No. 1, pp. 41-56.

Latino Immigration and Citizenship

Immigration figures prominently in Latino politics in both historical and contemporary terms. It underlies the formation and development of a longstanding Latino presence in the United States. Indeed, the very heritage of the Latino people is rooted in the history of conquest and settlement in the Americas. In more recent times, immigration has fueled the growth of the Latino population in the United States; over 40% of U.S. Latinos are first-

Su Casa Es Nuestra Casa: Latino Politics Research and the Development of American Political Science

Since the 1970s, Latino politics research has evolved, alternately responding to real-world political events and demographic changes, embracing new and emerging trends in the broader discipline, and offering new insights of its own that contribute to the development of political science. In so doing, there have emerged both an intellectual foundation and a growing body of empirical results, each of which challenges long-held theories and findings in the discipline more broadly. Thus, Latino politics research is central in refining and broadening our understanding of American politics. Immigration, social marginality, and their uncertain status as a racial or ethnic minority make this population unique and raise important obstacles in applying existing interpretations and orthodoxies from the disciplines other traditions to this emerging and rapidly growing segment of American society. The major contributions of this line of inquiry are identified in five key areas: pluralism, group identity and mobilization, political participation, institutions and representation, and assimilation. We conclude with some thoughts regarding how the evolution of American society and its Latino population will pose important questions for future generations of political scientists.

The Logic of Institutional Interdependency: The Case of Day Laborer Policy in Suburbia

This article challenges public choice and regime theory interpretations of constraints on local politics, developing instead the institutional logic behind coalitions of local institutional actors designing redistributive policies addressing immigrant newcomers in increasingly diverse suburban jurisdictions. Employing qualitative data from a data set consisting of over 100 in-depth interviews among state and local elected and appointed officials, and community-based leaders in the Washington, D.C., metropolitan area, the authors find that elected officials, bureaucrats, and nonprofits partner to gain additional leverage to overcome suburban NIMBY problems such as those associated with day labor workers.These partnerships develop for at least three reasons: (1) they give community-based organizations (CBOs) access to resources available in the public sector; (2) for public agencies, these alliances lower the transaction costs associated with overcoming language and cultural barriers between newcomers and existing residents; and (3) these partnerships allow local bureaucrats to minimize outlays of their scarce resources to deal with the problems associated with the demographic shifts taking place in suburbia by essentially outsourcing much of the effort to nonprofit organizations while still allowing local bureaucrats and the elected officials who control their budgets to take credit for the programs these organizations initiate, maintain, and staff.

Theorising migration policy in multilevel states: the multilevel governance perspective

At first glance, the concept of multilevel governance (MLG) seems to point to a quite obvious reality: all states are structured along multiple layers of government, and public policy, regardless o...

Whose Politics? Reflections on Clarence Stone’s Regime Politics

Stone’s retrospective article holds to the view of his earlier work that a city’s fundamental capacity to confront existential challenges is made possible only by the engagement of elite actors with the resources for sustained politics. In this article, we set out to illustrate ways in which actors marginal to regime politics—neighborhood organizations, nonprofits, labor movements, and immigrant groups—can offer examples of sustained politics that provide alternate agendas for city politics by looking at three different policy arenas in three different cities: housing in New York, labor rights in Los Angeles, and education in Detroit.

Political Effects of Having Undocumented Parents

The current US undocumented population is large and settled. As a result, millions of US-born citizens are growing up with undocumented parents or siblings. In this paper, we use original survey data to study the politics of the US-citizen offspring of undocumented migrants. We test theories of parental political socialization, which imply that having undocumented parents may have chilling effects on political engagement. We also test theories of social activism, which predict that the offspring of the undocumented may be motivated to make use of their rights as US citizens by protesting on behalf of their parents. We find no evidence of lower political engagement among those with undocumented parents. Instead, we find that the offspring of the undocumented are more likely to protest on immigration issues, and more optimistic that popular protest can induce political change. We use an instrumental variables design to test whether these differences warrant a causal interpretation, and find tentative evidence that having undocumented parents does indeed have mobilizing political effects.

How Contact Experiences Shape Welcoming: Perspectives from U.S.-Born and Immigrant Groups:

This research examines how intergroup contact experiences—including both their frequency and their qualities (friendly, discriminatory)—predict indicators of welcoming among U.S.-born and immigrant groups. Analyzing a new survey of U.S.-born groups (whites and blacks) and immigrant groups (Mexicans and Indians) from the Atlanta and Philadelphia metropolitan areas (total N = 2,006), we examine welcoming as a key dimension of social integration. Along with reporting their contact experiences, survey respondents indicated the extent to which they are inclined to welcome and feel welcomed by each of the other groups. Results consistently demonstrated that greater contact frequency predicted greater tendencies to welcome and feel welcomed by each of the other groups. These effects persisted even when demographic characteristics, perceived discrimination, and exposure are included as predictors in the models. Findings also suggested that racial and nativity hierarchies shape how perceived discrimination predicts welcoming others and feeling welcomed by others.

A Demographic Profile of Latinos in the United States

Despite this tremendous growth and presence, Lati nos are often underserved or unable to access healthcare services. This, in large part, is a result of the concentrati on of Lati nos in job sectors that are low wage, high risk, and do not provide benefi ts, as well as a result of other factors, such as low socioeconomic status, language, and culture. Because Lati nos are the second largest group in the U.S., their health and well being is crucial to the current and future well being of the enti re U.S. populati on from a public health perspecti ve.