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Why Do Immigrants Participate in Politics Less Than Native-Born Citizens? A Formative Years Explanation

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 July 2019

Ruoxi Li Open the ORCID record for Ruoxi Li [Opens in a new window]  and
Bradley M. Jones
Ruoxi Li*
Affiliation:
Department of Political Science, California State University San Marcos, San Marcos, CA92096
Bradley M. Jones
Affiliation:
Independent scholar
*
Address correspondence and reprint requests to: R. Li, Department of Political Science, California State University San Marcos, San Marcos, CA, 92096. E-mail: rli@csusm.edu
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Abstract

One of the long-standing puzzles in the political behavior literature is about immigrants' low level of political participation: after achieving comparable and sometimes even higher levels of socioeconomic status relative to the native-born citizens, why do immigrants still participate less in politics? We argue that the different formative years experiences associated with immigrants who moved to the United States at an older age is the key that explains the participation gap between immigrants and the native-born population. Using the 1994–2016 Current Population Survey and their Voting and Civic Engagement Supplements as data sources, we develop a hierarchical model that simultaneously accounts for region-, country-, and individual-level variables. The results are striking. We show that immigrants who move to the United States at a young age participate in politics at a rate that is indistinguishable from the native-born population; those who migrated at an older age participate less. The fact that over 60% of the immigrant population moved to the United States as adults is a main factor that contributes to the political participation gap between immigrants and the native-born population.

Keywords

Political participationimmigrantsformative yearsage at immigration
Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of Race, Ethnicity, and Politics , Volume 5 , Issue 1 , March 2020 , pp. 62 - 91
Copyright
Copyright © The Race, Ethnicity, and Politics Section of the American Political Science Association 2019

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