Abstract
This chapter illuminates a paradox in the contemporary political mobilization of new Americans. On the one hand, as in the past, organizations such as labor unions are taking an increasingly active role in the successful mobilization of foreign-born residents in formal :ampaign politics (see, e.g., Wong, 2001). As a result, many immigrants are becoming “active citizens” and making their voices heard in electoral politics. Immigrant participation in electoral politics is not i new phenomenon, per se: political parties and (more infamously) Dolitical machines are well known to have employed various tactics to get immigrants to the ballot box in, for instance, Chicago, New York, ind Boston during the last “great wave” of immigration (Allswang, 1986; Erie, 1988; Sterne, 2001). While some claim that the era of machine politics and union political mobilization is over and that the contemporary “dearth of mobilization in immigrant ethnic communities has been well documented” (DeSipio, 2001: 90), this chapter demonstrates that a number of progressive labor unions are again coming to terms with both the growing immigrant workforce and the need to organize these new workers.
The vast majority of us here are not documented,, but once you’re here, you’re part of the community, you’re working, you pay taxes, so you should, have the ability to voice opinions, to put your candidates in …”
—Blanca, undocumented resident of Los Angeles and “Get Out the Vote” drive volunteer1
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
References
AFL-CIO Executive Council. 2000. Statement on Immigration. New Orleans, LA. www.afl-cio.org.
Allswang, John M. 1986. Bosses, Machines, and Urban Voters. 2nd ed. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.
Avila, Joaquin. 2003. Political Apartheid in California: Consequences of Excluding a Growing Noncitizen Population. Latino Policy & Issues Brief, No. 9. Los Angeles: UCLA Chicano Studies Research Center.
Bailey, E. 1998. Labor Upset Prop. 226 by Focusing on Backers: Aggressive Telephone and Door-to-Door Push, Media Blitz Helped Undercut Support for Initiative. Los Angeles Times, Monday, June 8, A1.
Bass, Loretta E., and Lynne M. Casper. 1999. Are There Differences in Registration and Voting Behavior between Naturalized and Native-Born Americans? US Bureau of the Census Population Division Working Papers, Number 28. Washington, DC. www.census.gov/population/www/documentation/twps0028/twps0028.html.
Bauböck, Rainer, ed. 1994. From Aliens to Citizens: Redefining the Status of Immigrants in Europe. Brookfield, MA: Avebury.
——. 1998. The Crossing and Blurring of Boundaries in International Migration. Challenges for Social and Political Theory. In Blurred Boundaries: Migration, Ethnicity, Citizenship, ed. Rainer Baubock and John Rundell, 17–52. Vienna: Ashgate.
Bean, Frank D., Jennifer Van Hook, and Karen Woodrow-Lafield. 2002. Estimates of Numbers of Unauthorized Migrants Residing in the United States: The Total, Mexican, and Non-Mexican Central American Unauthorized Populations in Mid-2002. Pew Hispanic Center, Washington DC.
Block, A. G. 2002. The Legacy of Proposition 187 Cuts Two Ways: Democrats Can’t Count on the Fear Tactic Forever. Los Angeles Times, Sunday, April 7, M2.
Bosniak, Linda. 1988. Exclusion and Membership: The Dual Identity of the Undocumented Worker Under the United States Law. Wisconsin Law Review 955: 998–1006, 1019–1135.
——. 1994. Membership, Equality, and the Difference that Alienage Makes. New York University Law Review 69: 1047–1091.
——. 2000. Universal Citizenship and the Problem of Alienage. Northwestern University Law Review 94: 963–982.
Brozovich, Elise. 2002. Prospects for Democratic Change: Non-Citizen Suffrage in America. Hamline Journal of Public Law and Policy 23:403–453.
Brubaker, William Rogers. 1989a. Membership without Citizenship: The Economic and Social Bights of Noncitizens. In Immigration and, the Politics of Citizenship in Europe and North America, ed. William Rogers Brubaker, 145–162. New York: German Marshall Fund of the United States and the University Press of America.
——, ed. 1989b. Immigration and the Politics of Citizenship in Europe and North America. New York: German Marshall Fund of the United States and the University Press of America.
Castles, Stephen, and Alistair Davidson. 2000. Citizenship and Migration: Globalization and the Politics of Belonging. New York: Routledge.
Castles, Stephen, and Godula Kosack. 1973. Immigrant Workers and Class Structure in Western Europe. London: Oxford University Press.
Davis, Mike. 2000. Magical Urbanism: Latinos Reinvent the US City. London: Verso.
De la Garza, Rodolfo O., Martha Menchaca, and Louis DeSipio. 1994. Barrio Ballots: Latino Politics in the 1990 Elections. Boulder, CO: Westview Press.
De la Isla, José. 2003. The Rise of Hispanic Political Power. Los Angeles: Archer Books.
Delgado, Héctor L. 1993. New Immigrants, Old Unions: Organizing Undocumented Workers in Los Angeles. Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press.
——. 2000. Immigrant Nation: Organizing America’s Newest Workers. New Labor Forum, Fall/Winter: 29–39.
DeSipio, Louis. 1996. Counting on the Latino Vote: Latinos as a New Electorate. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press.
DeSipio, Louis. 2001. Building America, One Person at a Time: Naturalization and Political Behavior of the Naturalized in Contemporary American Politics. In E Pluribus Unum? Contemporary and Historical Perspectives on Immigrant Political Incorporation, ed. Gary Gerstle and John Mollenkopf, 67–106. New York: Russell Sage Foundation.
Erie, Steven P. 1988. Rainbow’s End: Irish-Americans and the Dilemmas of Urban Machine Politics, 1840–1985. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Escobar, Cristina. 2004. Dual Citizenship and Political Participation: Migrants in the Interplay of United States and Colombian Politics. Latino Studies 2: 45–69.
Fix, Michael E., Jeffrey S. Passel, and Kenneth Sucher. 2003. Trends in Naturalization, Brief No. 3. Washington, DC: Urban Institute.
Flores, William V. 1997. Citizens vs. Citizenry: Undocumented Immigrants and Latino Cultural Citizenship. In Latino Cultural Citizenship: Claiming Identity, Space, and Rights, ed. William V. Flores and Rina Benmayor, 255–277. Boston: Beacon Press.
Flores, William V. 2003. New Citizens, New Bights: Undocumented Immigrants and Latino Cultural Citizenship. Latin American Perspectives 30: 87–100.
Flores, William V., and Bina Benmayor, ed. 1997. Latino Cultural Citizenship: Claiming Identity, Space, and Rights. Boston, MA: Beacon Press.
Garcia, John A. 2003. Latino Politics in America: Community, Culture, and Interests. New York: Rowman and Littlefield.
Gerstle, Gary, and John Mollenkopf, ed. 2001. E Pluribus Unum? Contemporary and Historical Perspectives on Immigrant Political Incorporation. New York: Russell Sage Foundation.
Gibbs, Jewelle Taylor, and Teiahsha Bankhead. 2001. Preserving Privilege: California Politics, Propositions, and People of Color. Westport, CT: Praeger.
Gold, Matea. 2001. Wooing Latinos Tough for the GOP. Los Angeles Times, Monday, December 31, B7.
Hammar, Tomas. 1990. Democracy and the Nation-State: Aliens, Denizens, and Citizens in a World of International Migration. Brookfield, MA: Avebury.
Harper-Ho, Virginia. 2000. Noncitizen Voting Rights: The History, the Law and Current Prospects for Change. Law and Inequality Journal 18: 271–322.
Hayduk, Ronald. 2004. Democracy for All: Restoring Immigrant Voting Rights in the US. New Political Science 26: 499–523.
Immigration and Naturalization Service. 2003. Estimates of the Unauthorized Immigrant Population Residing in the United States: 1990 to 2000. Washington, DC: Office of Policy and Planning.
Jones-Correa, Michael. 1998. Between Two Nations: The Political Predicament of Latinos in New York City. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.
——. 2001. Institutional and Contextual Factors in Immigrant Naturalization and Voting. Citizenship Studies 5: 41–56.
Joppke, Christian, and Ewa Morawska, (ed.). 2003. Toward Assimilation and Citizenship: Immigrants in Liberal Nation-States. New York: Palgrave.
Keyssar, Alexander. 2000. The Right to Vote: The Contested History of Democracy in the United States. New York: Basic Books.
Kofrnan, Eleonore. 1995. Citizenship for Some but Not for Others: Spaces of Citizenship in Contemporary Europe. Political Geography 14: 121–137.
——. 2002. Contemporary European Migrations, Civic Stratification and Citizenship. Political Geography 21: 1035–1054.
Layton-Henry, Zig, ed. 1990. The Political Rights of Migrant Workers in Western Europe. London: Sage.
Lowell, B. Lindsay, and Roberto Suro. 2002. How Many Undocumented: The Numbers Behind the U.S.-Mexico Migration Talks. Washington DC: Pew Hispanic Center.
Massey, Douglas S., Jorge Durand, and Nolan J. Malone. 2003. Beyond Smoke and Mirrors: Mexican Immigration in an Era of Economic Integration. New York: Russell Sage Foundation.
Meyerson, Harold. 2001a. L.A. Story. The American Prospect, July 2–16.
——. 2001b. Hope and Fear: A Week in the Mayor’s Race, with Just Two More to Go. LA Weekly, May 25–31.
——. 2003. The Godfather: Miguel Contreras and the New Los Angeles. LA Weekly, May 30-June 5.
Milkman, Ruth. 2000a. Immigrant Organizing and the New Labor Movement in Los Angeles. Critical Sociology 26: 59–81.
——, ed. 2000b. Organizing Immigrants: The Challenge for Unions in Contemporary California. Ithaca, NY: ILR Press/Cornell University Press.
Milkman, Ruth, and Kent Wong. 2000. Voices from the Front Lines: Organizing Immigrant Workers in Los Angeles. Los Angeles: UCLA Center for Labor Research and Education.
Milkman, Ruth, Kent Wong, and Joseph Schwartz. 2001. Organizing Immigrant Workers: Los Angeles and the Future of the U.S. Labor Movement. Democratic Left, Fall/Winter: 7–9, 14.
Nevins, Joseph. 2002. Operation Gatekeeper: The Rise of the “Illegal Alien” and the Making of the US-Mexico Boundary. New York: Routledge.
Nissen, Bruce, and Guillermo Grenier. 2001. Union Responses to Mass Immigration: The Case of Miami, USA. Antipode 33: 567–592.
Oboler, Suzanne. 1995. Ethnic Labels, Latino Lives: Identity and the Politics of (Re)Presentation in the United States. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Pulido, Laura. 2001. Personal communication with author.
——. 2002. Race, Class, and Political Activism: Black, Chicana/o, and Japanese-American Leftists in Southern California, 1968–1978. Antipode 34: 762–788.
Rainey, J., and G. Krikorian. 2001. “The Mayor’s Race: Hahn Won on His Appeal to Moderates, Conservatives.” Los Angeles Times, Thursday, June 7, A1.
Ramakrishnan, S. Karthick, and Espenshade Thomas J. 2001. Immigrant Incorporation and Political Participation in the United States. International Migration Review 35: 870–910.
Raskin, Jamin B. 1993a. Legal Aliens, Local Citizens: The Historical, Constitutional and Theoretical Meanings of Alien Suffrage. University of Pennsylvania Law Review 141: 1391–1470.
——. 1993b. Time to Give Aliens the Vote (Again); Green-Card Power. The Nation 256: 433–436.
Reich, Robert. 2003. Back jacket quotation. In The State of California Labor (2003), ed. Ruth Milkman, Christopher Erickson, Michael Reich, and Margaret Weir. Los Angeles: University of California Institute for Labor and Employment.
Rocco, Raymond. 1999. The Formation of Latino Citizenship in Southeast Los Angeles. Citizenship Studies 3: 253–266.
——. 2004. Transforming Citizenship: Membership, Strategies of Containment, and the Public Sphere in Latino Communities. Latino Studies 2: 4–25.
Rosaldo, Renato, and William V. Flores. 1993. Identity, Conflict, and Evolving Latino Communities: Cultural Citizenship in San Jose, California. Research Report No.G5–90–5. Washington, DC: National Institute for Dispute Resolution.
Rosberg, Gerald M. 1977. Aliens and Equal Protection: Why Not the Right to Vote? Michigan Law Review 75: 1092–1136.
Rubio-Marin, Ruth. 2000. Immigration as a Democratic Challenge: Citizenship and Inclusion in Germany and the United States. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Sassen, Saskia. 1996. Whose City Is It? Globalization and the Formation of New Claims. Public Culture 8: 205–223.
Savage, Lydia A. 1998. Geographies of Organizing: Justice for Janitors in Los Angeles. In Organizing the Landscape: Geographical Perspectives on Labor Unionism, ed. Andrew Herod, 225–252. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Schmidt, Ronald, Edwina Barvosa-Carter, and Rodolfo D. Torres. 2000. Latina/o Identities: Social Diversity and U.S. Politics. PS: Political Science and Politics 33: 563–567.
Shklar, Judith N. 1991. American Citizenship: The Quest for Inclusion. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Sterne, Evelyn Savidge. 2001. Beyond the Boss: Immigration and American Political Culture from 1880 to 1940. In E Pluribus Unum? Contemporary and Historical Perspectives on Immigrant Political Incorporation, ed. Gary Gerstle and John Mollenkopf, 33–66. New York: Russell Sage Foundation.
US Census Bureau. 1996. Table 1. Characteristics of the Voting-Age Population Reported Having Registered or Voted: November 1994. Washington, DC.
——. 2002a. Table 2. Reported Voting and Registration, by Race, Hispanic Origin, Sex, and Age, for the United States: November 2000. Washington, DC.
——. 2002b. Table 4a. Reported Voting and Registration of the Total Voting-Age Population, by Sex, Race, and Hispanic Origin, for States: November 2000. Washington, DC.
Varsanyi, Monica W. 2001. Undocumented Immigrants and the Challenge to Formal Citizenship in Los Angeles. Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the Association of American Geographers, New York, February.
——. 2004. Stretching the Boundaries of Citizenship in the City: Undocumented Migrants and Political Mobilization in Los Angeles. PhD dissertation, UCLA.
Walzer, Michael. 1983. Spheres of Justice: A Defense of Pluralism and Equality. New York: Basic Books.
Williamson, Chilton. 1960. American Suffrage from Property to Democracy1760–1860. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Wong, Janelle Staci. 2001. The New Dynamics of Immigrants’ Political Incorporation: A Multi-Method Study of Political Participation and Mobilization among Asian and Latino Immigrants in the United States. PhD dissertation, Yale University.
Yáñez-Chávez, Anibal, ed. 1996. Latino Politics in California. San Diego: Center for US-Mexican Studies and University of California, San Diego.
Editor information
Copyright information
© 2006 Suzanne Oboler
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Varsanyi, M.W. (2006). “Getting out the Vote” in Los Angeles: The Mobilization of Undocumented Migrants in Electoral Politics. In: Oboler, S. (eds) Latinos and Citizenship: The Dilemma of Belonging. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230601451_9
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230601451_9
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, New York
Print ISBN: 978-1-4039-6740-4
Online ISBN: 978-0-230-60145-1
eBook Packages: Palgrave Political & Intern. Studies CollectionPolitical Science and International Studies (R0)