My research includes issues of race, immigration, political participation, public opinion, and democracy. The methods I use include survey analysis, experiments, network analysis, text analysis, and interviews. Short descriptions of several of my ongoing projects are below. For a full listing of my work, please see my CV.
Creative Citizenship: The Impacts of Racialized Incorporation on Political Participation (Book Project)
How does the process of incorporation impact the political participation of immigrants of different races? I develop the theory of differential encouragement, which argues that immigrants of color are less likely to receive encouragement to participate in formal, electoral politics compared to white immigrants, resulting in lower rates of political participation in these ways. Despite being active in their communities in other, non-political ways, immigrants of color are less likely to have their voice heard through formal political channels. First, I test whether existing, common theories of immigrant incorporation and political participation can account for relative trends in immigrants’ political participation and establish the extent and nature of the political participation gap. Using the United States Current Population Survey Supplements (CPS) as well as the Cooperative Election Study (CES), I find that immigrants of color participate less in formal, electoral types of politics than their white immigrant counterparts, even when accounting for average differences in levels of resources and in later generations. Next, I develop my theory of differential encouragement using semi-structured interviews with over 50 individuals. These interviews reveal that immigrants of color often see politics differently compared to white immigrants and the ways their networks encourage them can be different, although some immigrants of color in networks which strongly encourage political participation are highly participatory. I test the theory of differential encouragement using a series of survey experiments fielded on Cint and Qualtrics. These survey experiments provide preliminary evidence in favor of the differential encouragement theory and a framework for how it can be used to encouragement the political participation of immigrants of color. To understand the potential political power of immigrants and people of color in the United States, it is critical to examine when, how, and why they participate in politics.
“Between a Norm and a Hard Place: Turnout Misreporting at the Intersection of Race and Immigrant Generation”
Who is actually turning out to vote in a racially diverse nation of immigrants? Individuals of all racial groups I analyze and all immigrant generations overreport at high rates, misreporting rates differ significantly by racial identity and immigrant generation, and factors associated with misreporting turnout vary across racial group and generation. I draw on the Cooperative
Election Study (CES) from 2010-2022 which allows me to examine the intersection of race and immigration as well as the context of midterm elections and presidential elections. To
better assess the quality of representative democracy in the United States, it is necessary to disaggregate who is participating and who says they are participating.
“For the Love of Democracy: Testing Support for Democracy Among Americans of Color”
Questions of democratic backsliding in the United States have brought questions of American public support for democracy to the forefront. However, current investigations often highlight the views of White Americans. Since race can significantly influence an individual’s experience with American democratic governance, a full understanding of American support for democracy requires a closer examination of the views of people of color. I ask: how does perceived racial electoral power influence views of democracy for people of color? And I propose an original coracial candidate vignette survey experiment to examine support for democracy overall as well as support for majoritarian aspects and minority-protecting aspects of democracy among Asian Americans, Latinx Americans, and African Americans.
“Strained Solidarity: The Impacts of Anti-Asian Racism on Coalitional Attitudes” (with Sonya Chen)
Asian Americans can be an uncertain partner in multiracial coalitions because they occupy a fraught position in the racial hierarchy: valorized relative to Black Americans and simultaneously civically ostracized (Kim 1999). Using the case of Asian Americans, we ask: Under what conditions does perceiving discrimination against your group make you more likely to see yourself as connected with other minority groups and join coalitional efforts? How does the American racial hierarchy shape the constraints and possibilities for multiracial coalitions? We use the 2016 National Asian American Study (NAAS) and the 2016 Collaborative Multiracial Post-Election Survey (CMPS), nationally representative surveys with oversamples of Asian Americans, and an original survey experiment. In the observational data, we find that among Asian Americans, directly experiencing discrimination is associated with participating in politics and holding attitudes which would support interracial coalitions. However, the observational data provides limited insight into whether there is a causal relationship between discrimination and political participation and coalitional behavior. Thus, using a survey experiment, we examine whether the heightened attention towards anti-Asian discrimination which has occurred during the COVID-19 pandemic leads Asian Americans to be more likely to form coalitions with other marginalized racial groups. We find that after reminders about anti-Asian racism, Asian Americans who identify as Republicans are more likely to support other marginalized groups. We also find that being reminded of discrimination prompts first-generation Asian Americans to show increased interest in anti-affirmative action efforts, while second-generation Asian Americans show more interest in the Black Lives Matter movement. These findings suggest that discrimination can activate Asian American political participation and facilitate interracial coalitional politics. However, the intersections of race, partisanship, and immigrant generation do shape whether Asian Americans are connecting COVID-related discrimination to in-group concerns or allyship with outgroups.
“Vulnerability as Identity Component: Reconceptualizing Vulnerability to Conduct Civically Engaged Research” (with Frank Reichert and Rosa Krewson)
Civically engaged research offers significant potential to co-produce knowledge with systematically marginalized communities. However, the greater engagement with community
partners as part of civically engaged research requires scholars to more deeply consider what vulnerability means in civically engaged research in an effort to minimize potential harm to
community partners. We offer the vulnerability as identity facet (VIF) framework as a way to more deeply engage with the concept of vulnerability. In the VIF framework, we argue that
vulnerability should be considered as a variable in its own right which varies by context and which requires reflexivity on the part of the scholar when evaluating risk with community
partners. We demonstrate the utility of this view of vulnerability by applying the VIF framework to civically engaged research in natural disaster situations and in authoritarian contexts. In these examples, the VIF framework prompts additional methodological considerations and we lay out ways to enact this view of vulnerability.