The Importance of Demographic and Social Contexts in Determining Political Outcomes

This chapter discusses political incorporation as a contextual, racialized process. The characteristics of a local community that seem apolitical—such as the age of its housing stock—can directly impact participation in ethnically heterogeneous organizations. The ethnically integrated social spaces of a newly built subdivision can provide an unlikely social context for the formation of native-born/immigrant political organizations and alliances. Immigrants matched on characteristics such as gender, age, nation of origin, and educational level can have dramatically different experiences with political incorporation depending on the local social context in which they are embedded.