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- Title
Mexican Americans and Immigration Attitudes: A Cohort Analysis of Assimilation and Group Consciousness.
- Authors
Vega, Irene I; Ortiz, Vilma
- Abstract
This study's motivating premise is that the ideological context around race, ethnicity, and nationhood shapes the immigration politics of Mexican Americans in distinct eras of U.S. history. To examine this proposition we identify two cohorts of Mexican Americans--those who came of age in the World War II era and those who grew up during and after the Civil Rights movement--and examine whether there are systematic differences in how members of these cohorts interpret immigration issues. In line with our expectations, group consciousness predicts the attitudes of the Civil Rights cohort, but not of those in the World War II cohort. Furthermore, the predictive power of generational status--a centerpiece of assimilation-based analyses of Latinos' immigration attitudes--ceases after the second generation. Together, these findings support our argument that Mexican Americans' position on the immigration debate is not simply a function of varied levels of assimilation or group attachments, but is also shaped by the national ideological context around immigration in the United States. Our work provides the most comprehensive analysis of Mexican Americans' immigration attitudes to date, filling gaps for scholars interested in the effects of assimilation, group consciousness, and temporal effects on Latino public opinion. This work also highlights the need to incorporate temporal measures into research on Latinos' complex relationship to co-ethnic immigrants.
- Subjects
MEXICAN Americans; ASSIMILATION (Sociology); UNITED States emigration &; immigration; HISPANIC Americans -- Attitudes; IDEOLOGY
- Publication
Social Problems, 2018, Vol 65, Issue 2, p137
- ISSN
0037-7791
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.1093/socpro/spw053