Research

Dissertation Research

My dissertation examines processes of immigrant political incorporation -- the dynamic interplay through which immigrant characteristics and local context combine to shape local policy responses, which in turn shape how immigrants relate to the polity over time. Since the late 1980s, the U.S. foreign-born population has dispersed from traditional gateways like New York and Los Angeles to new destinations, which have no recent history of immigration. The dispersion of immigrants to non-traditional destinations offers scholars the opportunity to better understand how individual, contextual, and institutional mechanisms combine to shape immigrant civic and political engagement. I use new questions from the Current Population Survey to demonstrate that immigrant civic participation rates indeed differ across contexts of settlement, then employ four comparative case studies of non-traditional destination cities to identify previously overlooked mechanisms that shape civic and political incorporation.

Two chapters of my dissertation are available here:
Ethnic Concentration, Co-Ethnic Participation: Immigrant Civic Participation and Destination Context
Immigrant dispersion to non-traditional destinations offers scholars the opportunity to better understand the contextual mechanisms associated with immigrant civic and political incorporation. This chapter analyzes how immigrant civic participation varies with co-ethnic concentration for the largest immigrant ethnic group in the United States. That is, do Mexican immigrants participate more amidst greater concentrations of their own group? Previous analyses have offered different theories about the role of ethnic concentration in immigrant participation and produced conflicting findings. While some studies suggest that ethnic concentration fosters immigrant participation by reducing linguistic and cultural barriers, others argue that it hinders participation by isolating immigrants among resource-poor peers. Drawing on the insights of spatial assimilation theories, I predict that the effects of ethnic concentration on co-ethnic participation will vary with immigrant generation. Employing new questions from the September supplements to the Current Population Survey, I analyze four types of civic participation using probit models that interact first-generation immigrant status with state-level Latino concentration. In line with predictions, I find that for Mexican-Americans in the second-generation and beyond, ethnic concentration is associated with declines in civic participation. In the same analyses, however, ethnic concentration is associated with a differential boost in participation for first-generation Mexican immigrants. Future analyses remain necessary to disentangle whether ethnic concentration or factors associated with it, such as the presence of immigrant-serving institutions, play the crucial role in supporting Mexican immigrant civic participation.

The Select Few: Immigrant Intermediaries and Immigrant Political Incorporation
In new immigrant destinations, relatively few individuals possess the bilingual, bicultural skills necessary to connect immigrants with other local residents. As a result, intermediaries - co-ethnic individuals that facilitate communication between immigrants and non-immigrants - take on disproportionate influence in local networks. Though it is not unusual to have select individuals play influential roles in shaping local opinions, democratic societies generally aim to arrange institutions so that leaders are accountable to those they claim to represent. Ideally, an immigrant intermediary effectively connects immigrants and non-immigrants and is accountable to immigrants' interests. In this paper, I argue that the ways in which intermediaries emerge affect the extent to which they approximate this ideal. Careful attention to intermediary selection is warranted, since intermediaries shape the tenor of local inter-group relations, which in turn shapes on-going processes of immigrant political incorporation. Drawing on interviews and observation in four new immigrant destinations in the United States, I first describe why intermediaries are a common feature across these sites and offer examples of the roles they play. Next, I identify four categories of intermediaries, distinguished by how they emerge, whether selected by local elites, selected by immigrants, self-selected, or elected. I then explain how these methods of selection influence political incorporation by shaping local inter-group relations.

Publications and Manuscripts Under Review

"Public Deliberation: Where Are We and Where Can We Go?" in National Civic Review, Vol. 93, No. 4 (Winter 2004): 3-15. With Archon Fung.
A review of the range of public deliberation efforts that asks three large questions about these activities. First, what does intentional public deliberation aim to do? That is, what are the problems and deficits of public discussion and governance that these activities aim to address? Second, how have policy makers and practitioners constructed venues of public deliberation to achieve these goals? Third, which design choices and methods have been effective at achieving these various goals?

"See No Spanish? Implicit Cues, Personal Experience, and Attitudes toward Immigration"
Under Review, co-authored with Daniel J. Hopkins and Van C. Tran
This paper is part of a broader project using experimental techniques to elucidate the factors that shape attitudes toward immigration. We find that exposure to a single line of Spanish language text decreases support for immigration among key sub-groups of native-born Americans, including those who hear Spanish frequently in their daily lives.

Additional Projects

Citizen Participation in the Unified New Orleans Plan
Presented in November 2007 at the Association for Public Policy and Management.
In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, I evaluated how public engagement affected the legitimacy of post-disaster recovery planning. By bringing together a representative group of citizen participants and enabling meaningful discussion across lines of difference, large-scale public meetings overcame significant obstacles to raise the credibility of the Unified New Orleans Plan in the eyes of public leaders. On the whole, leaders were less clear about the role that public input played in influencing the substance of the plan. A summary of my findings presented to the Rockefeller Foundation is available here.

Declining Trust Amidst Diversity? A Natural Experiment in Lewiston, Maine
Presented in April 2008 at the Midwest Political Science Association.
Several recent studies have suggested that social trust and some forms of civic engagement decline amidst ethnic diversity. This paper examines how a sudden influx of racial diversity to a previously homogeneous white town affects long-term white residents' trust, civic engagement, and inter-racial attitudes. Given recent findings, I predict that five years after the arrival of a large Somali refugee population to Lewiston, Maine, organizational involvement, trust, and interracial accord will have declined among long-term, white residents. I also predict that these declines will be most severe in Lewiston, when compared with surrounding towns. Instead, in a carefully paired comparison, I find no definitive evidence that a sudden increase in local diversity erodes social capital. Other recent findings that have shown lower levels of social capital amidst diversity may be a product of residential sorting, longer-term processes, or threshold effects. The paper draws on two waves of a survey sponsored by the Maine Community Foundation. A detailed research report presented to the Maine Community Foundation is available here.

Social Capital Impact Assessment
An exploratory project (in collaboration with the Saguaro Seminar for Civic Engagement in America and the New Hampshire Charitable Foundation) considering how to infuse policymaking with attention to impacts on community networks.