Abstract
How did Latino immigrants understand and respond politically to the constant barrage of xenophobic rhetoric spewed throughout the 2016 election? Scholars have long known that Latino immigrants are more likely to view their home country through rose-colored glasses than native-born Latinos. But this period of intensified xenophobia coming on the heels of countless years of congressional stalemate on immigration reform prompts us to ask how Latino immigrants, the primary target of these attacks, responded to this threat. Political scientists McCann and Jones-Correa draw on the 2012 and 2016-2017 Latino Immigrant National Election Studies (LINES survey), a panel survey of Latino immigrants, to address these important questions. The LINES survey is a telephone-based survey of bilingual or Spanish-dominant respondents. Data collection occurred during the 2016-2017 included three waves the presidential election campaign period, the presidential transition, and the beginning of the Trump administration, a period when nationalistic discourse and administrative decisions challenged immigrants’ sense of belonging in the United States and trust in the U.S. government. Modeled after the American National Election Survey, the LINES survey collected data on respondents,’ “pessimism, anger, and anxiety on faith in American governing institutions, attitudes towards the United States in general and political participation” (pp. 123).
McCann and Jones-Correa begin by reviewing the political context prior to the 2016 election. In chapter 1, the authors contextualize the 2016 elections by discussing prior elections’ portrayal of immigrants, the political parties’ intended trajectories toward immigrants, and political parties’ general sentiments toward immigrants. As they show, immigration was already a highly politicized issue but the Trump 2016 election campaign ramped up xenophobic discourse. In chapter 2, the authors dive deep into how Latino immigrants perceived Trump’s election. Latino immigrants felt pessimistic about the state of the nation following the 2016 election (this sounds a little flat—can you provide more detail, or even your assessment of HOW they do this). Chapter 3 details how civic stress affected foreign-born Latinos’ understanding and faith in the American government. This chapter lays out how past literature generally points to immigrants’ use of a rose-colored lens to view their receiving country. The LINES panel survey allowed for these sentiments to be captured at the tail end of the Obama presidency and the beginning of Trump’s presidency.
Chapter 4 is a key portion of the book. Despite fomentation of inclinations to self-deport, this was a short-lived thought after the Trump election. Among the surprising findings in this study are that Latino immigrants maintained positive feelings toward the United States even as they felt less hopeful toward the federal government. That is, they distinguished between the country they now called home and the presidential administration that vilified them. Some of the most exciting findings from chapter 5 show how Latino immigrants participated in political and protest activity, even though these activities presented them with higher risks than those confronting native born Latinos. Just as noteworthy as Trump’s xenophobic election is the Latino immigrant political activity that bubbled with the women’s marches. An increasing number of Latino immigrants participated in protests, including those with fears of a relative being deported. This is an exciting development, showing that Latino immigrants are publicly reacting and pushing back against the government even though they faced fears and threats. This activism, the authors suggest, served as a gateway into other forms of political engagement such as attending community meetings, problem-solving activities, and directly contacting officials to voice their concerns. The authors frame this political engagement as a sign of Latino immigrants’ trust in the political system.
In conclusion, the authors raise the question of whether immigrants’ judgments will be heard. Afterall, as the authors point out, Latino immigrants were more likely to participate in the 2018 midterm elections than native-born Latinos. Overall, by beginning with the premise of immigrants’ complex, layered feelings, the authors are able to articulate immigrants’ nuanced and temporally changing attitudes. This research offers unique insights on Latino immigrant responses to the intensified xenophobic Trump era, but because it is framed as a study of political inclusion, it neglects to acknowledge how the expansive deportation and detention system affected Latino immigrant political participation. The book would have been stronger had the authors engaged with theories of symbolic violence, which suggests the processes through which Latino immigrants may internalize, normalize and acquiesce to federal government violence as expressed in immigration enforcement.
Overall, McCann and Jones-Correa’s book offers much for both scholars and a lay audience alike, including those without a quantitative background, to enjoy. This study makes clear that in this case, immigrants are able to articulate complex evaluations and are prompted to not only engage politically, but to seek ways to challenge the status quo. The figures are effective, visually demonstrating the authors’ claims and analysis from the LINES survey. They carefully walk the readers through to understand the complex feelings and responses of Latino immigrants from 2016 to 2017. This book will be valuable for scholars of migrations studies, Latinx studies, and political scientists.