BiblioVault - Books about Jones-Correa, Michael

Governing American Cities

Inter-Ethnic Coalitions, Competition, and Conflict

Michael Jones-Correa

Russell Sage Foundation, 2001

The new immigrants who have poured into the United States over the past thirty years are rapidly changing the political landscape of American cities. Like their predecessors at the turn of the century, recent immigrants have settled overwhelmingly in a few large urban areas, where they receive their first sustained experience with government in this country, including its role in policing, housing, health care, education, and the job market. Governing American Cities brings together the best research from both established and rising scholars to examine the changing demographics of America's cities, the experience of these new immigrants, and their impact on urban politics. Building on the experiences of such large ports of entry as Los Angeles, New York, Miami, Houston, Chicago, and Washington D.C., Governing American Cities addresses important questions about the incorporation of the newest immigrants into American political life. Are the new arrivals joining existing political coalitions or forming new ones? Where competition exists among new and old ethnic and racial groups, what are its characteristics and how can it be harnessed to meet the needs of each group? How do the answers to these questions vary across cities and regions? In one chapter, Peter Kwong uses New York's Chinatown to demonstrate how divisions within immigrant communities can cripple efforts to mobilize immigrants politically. Sociologist Guillermo Grenier uses the relationship between blacks and Latinos in Cuban-American dominated Miami to examine the nature of competition in a city largely controlled by a single ethnic group. And Matthew McKeever takes the 1997 mayoral race in Houston as an example of the importance of inter-ethnic relations in forging a successful political consensus. Other contributors compare the response of cities with different institutional set-ups; some cities have turned to the private sector to help incorporate the new arrivals, while others rely on traditional political channels. Governing American Cities crosses geographic and disciplinary borders to provide an illuminating review of the complex political negotiations taking place between new immigrants and previous residents as cities adjust to the newest ethnic succession. A solution-oriented book, the authors use concrete case studies to help formulate suggestions and strategies, and to highlight the importance of reframing urban issues away from the zero-sum battles of the past.

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Holding Fast

Resilience and Civic Engagement Among Latino Immigrants

James A. McCann

Russell Sage Foundation, 2020

The fight over immigration reform and immigrants’ rights in the U.S. has been marked by sharp swings in both public sentiment and official enforcement. In 2006, millions of Latino immigrants joined protests for immigration reform. Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, a policy granting work permits and protection from deportation to undocumented immigrants who entered the country before age 16, was enacted in 2012, despite a sharp increase in deportations during the Bush and Obama administrations. The 2016 election of Donald J. Trump prompted a surge in anti-immigrant sentiment which threatened DACA and other progressive immigration policies. In Holding Fast, political scientists James McCann and Michael Jones-Correa investigate whether and how these recent shifts have affected political attitudes and civic participation among Latino immigrants.

Holding Fast draws largely from a yearlong survey of Latino immigrants, including both citizens and noncitizens, conducted before and after the 2016 election. The survey gauges immigrants’ attitudes about the direction of the country and the emotional underpinnings of their political involvement. While survey respondents expressed pessimism about the direction of the United States following the 2016 election, there was no evidence of their withdrawal from civic life. Instead, immigrants demonstrated remarkable resilience in their political engagement, and their ties to America remained robust.

McCann and Jones-Correa examine Latino immigrants’ trust in government as well as their economic concerns and fears surrounding possible deportations of family members and friends. They find that Latino immigrants who were concerned about the likelihood of deportation were more likely to express a lack of trust in government. Concerns about personal finances were less salient. Disenchantment with the U.S. government did not differ based on citizenship status, length of stay in America, or residence in immigrant-friendly states. Foreign-born Latinos who are naturalized citizens shared similar sentiments to those with fewer political rights, and immigrants in California, for example, express views similar to those in Texas.

Addressing the potential influence immigrant voters may wield in in the coming election, the authors point to signs that the turnout rate for naturalized Latino immigrant may be higher than that for Latinos born in the United States. The authors further underscore the importance of the parties' platforms and policies, noting the still-tenuous nature of Latino immigrants’ affiliations with the Democratic Party.

Holding Fast outlines the complex political situation in which Latino immigrants find themselves today. Despite well-founded feelings of anger, fear, and skepticism, in general they maintain an abiding faith in the promise of American democracy. This book provides a comprehensive account of Latino immigrants’ political opinions and a nuanced, thoughtful outlook on the future of Latino civic participation. It will be an important contribution to scholarly work on civic engagement and immigrant integration.

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Latino Lives in America

Making It Home

Luis R. Fraga, John A. Garcia, Rodney E. Hero, Michael Jones-Correa, Valerie Martinez-Ebers and Gary Segura

Temple University Press, 2010

Latinos are the largest and fastest growing ethnic group in the United States, with increased levels of political mobilization and influence. In the timely and thoroughgoing Latino Lives in America, six prominent Latino scholars explore the profound implications of Latinos’ population growth and geographic dispersion for American politics and society, tracking key changes and continuities in Latinos' attitudes, behavior, and social experiences.

Utilizing a unique set of “narratives” from focus group interviews, supplemented with quantitative findings from the 2006 Latino National Survey, the authors provide a snapshot of Latino life in America. The Latinos interviewed provide their thoughts regarding their sense of belonging and group identification, assimilation and transnationalism, housing, education, civic engagement, and perceptions of discrimination, as well as their experiences in new destinations, where they are trying to realize the “Americano” dream.

Latino Lives in America uses these conversations and the survey data to offer both a micro and macro look at how Latinos are transforming various aspects of American politics, culture, and life and how their experiences in the United States are changing them and their families.

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The Other Latinos

José Luis Falconi

Harvard University Press

The Other Latinos addresses an important topic: the presence in the United States of Latin American and Caribbean immigrants from countries other than Mexico, Cuba, and Puerto Rico. Focusing on the Andes, Central America, and Brazil, the book brings together essays by a number of accomplished scholars.

Michael Jones-Correa's chapter is a lucid study of the complex issues in posing "established" and "other," and "old" and "new" in the discussion of Latino immigrant groups. Helen B. Marrow follows with general observations that bring out the many facets of race, ethnicity, and identity. Claret Vargas analyzes the poetry of Eduardo Mitre, followed by Edmundo Paz Soldán's reflections on Bolivians' "obsessive signs of identity." Nestor Rodriguez discusses the tensions between Mexican and Central American immigrants, while Arturo Arias's piece on Central Americans moves brilliantly between the literary (and the cinematic), the historical, and the material. Four Brazilian chapters complete the work.

The editors hope that this introductory work will inspire others to continue these initial inquiries so as to construct a more complete understanding of the realities of Latin American migration into the United States.

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RSF

The Russell Sage Foundation Journal of the Social Sciences: Immigrants Inside Politics/Outside Citizenship

James A. McCann

Russell Sage Foundation, 2016

In recent years, immigration has been an issue in most U.S. national elections, sparking heated debate across the political spectrum. But how do immigrants themselves make sense of and participate in U.S. politics? In this issue of RSF, editors James McCann and Michael Jones-Correa and an interdisciplinary team of leading immigration scholars examine political engagement among Latinos. The eleven articles in this issue analyze data from a survey of the Latino population during the 2012 presidential campaign and focus on the political activity of both native-born and immigrant Latinos—including the undocumented.

Several articles examine the incorporation of the foreign-born into American politics. Katharine Donato and Samantha Perez track differences in Latinos’ political ideologies by gender and find that among new immigrants, women tend to hold more conservative political views than men. However, after living in the U.S. for five years, Latinas report themselves as more liberal; after fifteen years of U.S. residence, Latino men view themselves as more conservative. Frank D. Bean and Susan K. Brown show that due to “membership exclusion”—or significant relegation to the margins of society—undocumented immigrants have less political knowledge than those with green cards or driver’s licenses, regardless of how long they have resided here. Melissa Michelson explores how politicians’ expanded outreach to Latino communities during the 2012 election season helped reverse a decades-long trend of declining trust in the government among Latinos.

Other articles compare the political behavior of Latinos to that of other ethnic groups. Jan Leighley and Jonathan Nagler find that while the demographic patterns central to predicting whites’ political engagement—such as income and education levels—do not predict Latinos’ voting turnout, increased political outreach to Latinos has led to greater turnout. Leonie Huddy, Lily Mason, and Nechama Horwitz find that, similar to African Americans, Latino immigrants who both strongly identify with a minority group (in this case, Hispanic) and perceive discrimination against that group are more likely to align themselves with the Democratic Party.

With Latinos constituting an increasing percentage of the population, understanding how and when they participate in our political system is vital for policymakers, scholars, and advocates. The analyses in this issue of RSF provide contribute to our understanding of how immigrants and their descendants navigate American democracy.

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