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In research on questions of inclusion/exclusion in the civic and political spheres, scholars have either focused on Latino population10 or on Asian populations, although some have made comparisons across or within these broad categories. According to data from the Pew Research Center, 29 million Latinos were eligible to vote in 2016—constituting 12 percent of all eligible voters.11 However, consistently since 1996 fewer Latinos vote than are eligible to vote—in the 2016 presidential election slightly less than 50 percent voted. In 2018, a higher turnout midterm election for all populations by comparison with midterms of the recent past, voter participation for Latinos rose to 40.4 percent in comparison with 57.5 percent for Whites and 51.4 percent for Blacks. For Latinos this represented an increase of 6.8 million, almost double the number of Latino voters in the 2014 midterms. Further, Latino voters made up 11 percent of all voters across the country, a proportion that corresponded quite closely to their share of the U.S. eligible voter population (U.S. citizens who are eighteen years of age and older).12

The cumulated research on Latinos over the past few decades confirms that this population is both less likely to naturalize by comparison with immigrants of Asian and European backgrounds and also less likely to vote than native-born citizens.13 As Michael Jones-Correa has observed, in studies of the political participation of Latinos, emphasis has been placed on a series of individual characteristics—such as age, education, income, marital status, and linguistic competence.14 Not unexpectedly, researchers generally find that higher levels of education and income and greater English-language abilities are strongly correlated with naturalization, as is length of stay in the country.15 However, Jones-Correa equally identifies some contextual factors that create barriers to naturalization and participation—such as the cost and requirements for naturalization and the complex rules for registration and voting that could affect immigrants in disproportionate ways in comparison with native-born populations. Additionally, discrimination and anti-immigrant legislation can suppress participation (individuals are fearful of drawing attention to their families, some of whom might be undocumented) or they can occasionally galvanize and mobilize it,16 while opportunities for dual nationality (primarily provided by sending countries) can encourage naturalization and by extension participation.

In a personal communication, Roberto Suro also emphasized the role of geography—that Latinos, both immigrants and their descendants, may feel that they only have an impact (i.e., their vote counts) in states where they are a critical mass (California, Texas, New York, Florida), but as the Pew Research Center points out, these are often non-battleground states and hence the impact on presidential elections may be less important.17 Alternatively, certain state environments are more politically charged than others and therefore may mobilize communities to become engaged.18 In a study drawing on data from a three-state survey (California, Texas, Florida) conducted by the Tomas Rivera Policy Institute in 1997 (following the 1996 national election), Adrian Pantoja and coauthors compared the turnout of naturalized and native-born Latino citizens.19 Their results demonstrated the impact of wedge issues targeting Latino immigrants on political participation. Further, the analysis shows that newly naturalized Latinos turned out to vote at higher rates than other Latino citizens of California, as well as Latinos in Florida or Texas—they are, as the title of the article suggests, “citizens by choice and voters by necessity.”

More recent Pew Research Center data confirm these assessments of more than two decades ago,20 demonstrating that in 2016, among Hispanics as well as Asians, the voter turnout of naturalized citizens was higher than that of the U.S. born, although overall—i.e., across all populations—the U.S. born were more likely to vote.21 See Table 1.22

Table 1. Voter Turnout of Naturalized and Native-Born Citizens, 2016

Source: Pew Research Center, , 2017.

This difference between the naturalized and the native born held during the 2018 midterms, reflecting some important trends that might be useful to political parties who want to engage these populations further (see Table 2).

Table 2. Voter Turnout of Naturalized and Native-Born Citizens, 2018

Source: Jens Krogstad, Luis Noe-Bustamante, and Antonio Flores, “,” Pew Research Center, 2019.

According to an article published in The Los Angeles Times,23 many of the undocumented children of immigrants (known as Dreamers) worked hard in 2018 to turn out the vote in the Latino communities around Los Angeles.24 The article quotes a study conducted by Latino Decisions, a political research firm, indicating that Latino voter turnout was the key factor in flipping six GOP-held congressional seats in California. However, research by Lisa García Bedolla and Melissa Michelson shows that while “Get Out the Vote” initiatives result in higher turnout among U.S.-born Latinos, it has no measurable effect on Latino naturalized citizens.25 Curiously, they found the opposite to be true among Asian Americans.

Among other contextual factors impacting voter participation are state regulations that impose registration cutoffs before the election or that drop voters from the rolls for not voting, both of which foster less impetus to naturalize and vote. Interestingly, S. Karthick Ramakrishnan and Thomas Epenshade found that having ballots in Spanish does not necessarily ensure higher voting among first-generation Latinos, and that proximity to co-ethnics has weak effects on voting participation (with the exception of three or more generations of Asian Americans).26 They also found that prior political experience with repressive regimes (in a country of origin) has no consistent effect on voting participation, although others have argued to the contrary, noting that country of origin can have an impact on citizenship acquisition and voter turnout.27 For some immigrant populations (those who came as refugees or who are political asylees), exercising a political voice or even stating that they are politically involved still raises fears because of previous homeland experiences.28

While most scholars have been examining barriers to participation, there is a small body of scholarship that looks at what might foster engagement—hence the interest alluded to above with ballots in multiple languages. Other variables have also been explored. For example, Gilbert Mireles has found that immigrant farmworkers in Washington State who own their own homes display higher rates of both social and political participation than do those who rent.29 Homeownership, he argues, “serves to anchor recent immigrants to their host communities and facilitates the integration of these individuals into those communities.”30 Additionally, knowledge of mobilizing factors provides a better understanding of how to enhance greater political participation. Adrian Pantoja and colleagues, focusing on the lessons learned from the 2006 marches, highlight the role of technology, social networks, Spanish language media, families, churches, unions, and advocacy groups.31 They suggest that protest or “non-traditional” politics should be considered as “key dimensions of how politically marginalized groups can participate in the political arena, and such politics are a central resource for these groups.” The open question is whether such activities turn into votes—the outcomes of some races in 2018 suggest that they can, but that mobilizing the vote around particular issues, using all the mechanisms that are available, including Spanish language media, is equally important.

In recent years, studies of Asian immigration and of Asian American voter participation have expanded significantly, indicating that scholars have recognized that this is one of the fastest growing segments of the electorate and a segment that is very highly educated with high incomes.32 Pei-te Lien and Janelle Wong are two of the most prolific scholars writing about the political participation of Asian Americans.33 Their research demonstrates that the rate of naturalization for Asian immigrants is higher than for most other groups (Cubans are an exception) and that Asian voter turnout has been higher in comparison to that of Latinos, similar to that of non-Hispanic Whites in midterm elections, and lower than that of non-Hispanic Whites in presidential election years.34 In general, the voter turnout among Asian Americans in 2016 was 49 percent compared with 64 percent for non-Hispanic Whites and 66 percent for African Americans.

However, as the 2018 Asian American Voter Survey indicates,35 on average the number of Asian American registered voters has increased by 850,000 every four years since 2000, and the voter turnout rate in the 2018 midterm election increased to approximately 40 percent of all eligible Asian American voters—almost a 13 percent increase from the 2014 midterms.36 One news report has described this as a “coming of age” for this population37—a population that comprises 6 percent of the total U.S. population (15 percent in California) according to the U.S. Census, and a population that estimates indicate will comprise a little over 5 percent of the 2020 electorate.38 Like Latinos, Asian Americans were mobilized by the highly charged anti-immigrant tone of 2018. Adam Nagourney and Robert Gebeloff reported on the impact of immigrants in flipping four Republican congressional seats in Orange County, California.39 A young Vietnamese woman is quoted as saying, “There are so many of us here and that is what is contributing to these changes.” The Vietnamese population was galvanized by the Trump administration’s attempt to deport Vietnam War refugees. Not only are these districts more diverse, they also have become better educated and have higher household incomes. Voter turnout increased and many second-generation Asians, unlike their parents, tended to vote Democratic in relation to critical issues of immigration, education, and health care.

There are, of course, important variations within the “Asian” category, with Vietnamese and Koreans demonstrating lower rates of registration and voting than, for example, Japanese Americans, who have the highest rate. Further, Vietnamese and Chinese individuals tend to identify more with the Republican Party than do other Asian groups. Jun Xu, drawing on Current Population Survey (CPS) data between 1994 and 2000, explores some of the “intra-Asian” differences, finding, for example, that socioeconomic explanations do not help in understanding differences in participation of Whites and Asians.40 Xu also found that the positive effect of education on voting is more limited for Asian Americans than for Whites. He focuses on registration issues as a powerful hurdle and explanation for different patterns of participation between Asian Americans and Whites. “In general, immigrants are much less likely to register and thereby to vote than native-born individuals do.”41 Others, seeing a great deal of potential in this population, link low voter turnout not only to language barriers (which makes navigating the election process challenging) but also to the fact that politicians make little effort at outreach to Asian groups.42 This was one of the important suggestions made by some of the participants in the two Asian-origin population focus groups that were conducted in connection with the preparation of this research paper: that candidates should come to speak to them on their own turf, under the auspices of the ethnic community organizations in which they feel comfortable.

Pei-te Lien and colleagues also note some differences in how Asian populations engage with the political process, being more likely to contact the media and other officials or to focus on solving community problems than to donate to campaigns—again with variations within the broad “Asian” category.43 While the variables that explain rates of participation for other groups (for example, socioeconomic factors, language skills, length of stay in the United States, etc.) are also important to consider in relation to Asians, those who study Asian Americans also point to contextual factors such as ethnic group concentration; thus, there is greater voter turnout in states with higher numbers of elected officials from ethnic groups (Hawaii, California).44 Jane Junn and colleagues note that for the Asian American electorate, the ethnic language media is an important source of information, although as mentioned above, they are contacted less by political parties than by other groups.45 These researchers also found that participation in home country politics does not deter involvement in politics in the United States, and that those who were involved in homeland politics are slightly more likely to vote than those who are not.

The impact of these transnational connections is also taken up by the authors who contributed to Christian Collet and Pei-te Lien’s edited volume on Asian American politics.46 The volume offers a very useful overview of the changing patterns of political participation by this population since the 1980s. While I have more to say below about the significance of transnational social fields to the civic and political engagement of immigrants, it is important to emphasize here that, as the twenty-first century unfolds, we are witnessing increased political engagement for both Asian and Latino populations in the United States (of naturalized citizens as well as their American-born children who are progressively becoming eligible to vote).