Fluid Borders: Latino Power, Identity, and Politics in Los Angeles

Fluid Borders: Latino Power, Identity, and Politics in Los Angeles

2005 | 293 | ISBN: 0520243692 | PDF | 1 Mb

0520243684This provocative study of the Latino political experience offers a nuanced, in-depth, and often surprising perspective on the factors affecting the political engagement of a segment of the population that is now the nation's largest minority. Drawing from one hundred in-depth interviews, Lisa Garcia Bedolla compares the political attitudes and behavior of Latinos in two communities: working-class East Los Angeles and middle-class Montebello. Asking how collective identity and social context have affected political socialization, political attitudes and practices, and levels of political participation among the foreign born and native born, she offers new findings that are often at odds with the conventional wisdom emphasizing the role socioeconomic status plays in political involvement. ...