Immigrants and Electoral Politics: Nonprofit Organizing in a Time of Demographic Change - Softcover

Brown, Heath

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1501704842 ISBN 13: 9781501704840

Publisher: Cornell University Press, 2016

Synopsis

In Immigrants and Electoral Politics, Heath Brown shows why nonprofit electoral participation has emerged in relationship to new threats to immigrants, on one hand, and immigrant integration into U.S. society during a time of demographic change, on the other. Immigrants across the United States tend to register and vote at low rates, thereby limiting the political power of many of their communities. In an attempt to boost electoral participation through mobilization, some nonprofits adopt multifaceted political strategies including registering new voters, holding candidate forums, and phone banking to increase immigrant voter turnout. Other nonprofits opt to barely participate at all in electoral politics, preferring to advance the immigrant community by providing exclusively social services.

Brown interviewed dozens of nonprofit leaders and surveyed hundreds of organizations. To capture the breadth of the immigrant experience, Brown selected organizations operating in traditional centers of immigration as well as new gateways for immigrants across the South: Florida, Illinois, Michigan, New Jersey, New York, and, North Carolina. The stories that emerge from his research include incredible successes in mobilizing immigrant communities, including organizations that registered sixty thousand new immigrant voters in New York. They also reveal efforts to suppress nonprofit voter mobilization in Florida and describe the organizational response to hate crimes directed at immigrants in Illinois.

About this title

About the Author

Heath Brown is Assistant Professor of Public Policy at John Jay College of Criminal Justice and the Graduate Center, City University of New York. He is the author of Pay-to-Play Politics: How Money Defines the American Democracy.

Review

"In this timely, well-written book, Brown (John Jay) demonstrates the important role that nonprofit organizations play in shaping political behavior and immigrant integration.... In an era of contentious politics about immigration policy, readers will appreciate the author's treatment of the prospects for nonprofit organizations. Immigrants and Electoral Politics contributes to the theoretical and applied understanding of the ways organizations in civil society shape how and why people vote."

(T. J. Vicino, Northeastern University Choice)

Edition details

• Publisher: Cornell University Press
• Publication date: 2016
• ISBN 10: 1501704842
• ISBN 13: 9781501704840
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 248