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Attempts by new immigrant ethnic groups to gain entry into a political establishment dominated by earlier ethnic groups has been a central story in the politics of New York and many other large old American cities. Established groups have viewed these attempts as threatening to destabilize prevailing electoral arrangements and even jeopardizing their hold on elected offices and the benefits that flow from them. For their part, many newcomers thought that unresponsive incumbents deserved to be challenged, though some newcomers certainly sought upward mobility within the existing framework (Shefter 1994, chapter 6). These interactions between older and newer ethnic groups could be conflictual and extended, but they typically ended up by providing newcomers with a voice in the political system, though often after they gave up some of their ideals. In the process, “immigrant groups” and “racial groups” became “ethnic voting blocks” (Morawska 2001b; Browning, Marshall, and Tabb 2003). A rising group sometimes made political headway by threatening to defect from a dominant electoral coalition that wished to harness its votes. More often, a gradual generational succession allowed younger cohorts from the new group to win office alongside an older generation from the earlier ethnic groups, gradually displacing them over the long haul—though Irish politicians still hold office in New York City. To overly simplify the complex process of ethnic succession in New York City politics, the Irish and Germans began to overtake the WASP dominance of Democratic politics in the second half of the nineteenth century, the Jews and Italians then challenged Irish dominance from the 1930s through the 1950s, and blacks and Puerto Ricans finally did the same to white ethnics beginning in the late 1950s. While newly naturalized first-generation immigrants provided some votes for these electoral challenges, new immigrant ethnicities only bePolitics among Young Adults in New York The Immigrant Second Generation John Mollenkopf, Jennifer Holdaway, Philip Kasinitz, and Mary Waters 176 John Mollenkopf, Jennifer Holdaway, Philip Kasinitz, and Mary Waters came firmly politically established after enough of their children—the second generation—emerged into adulthood and became a substantial part of a new electoral majority that evolved to accommodate them. The mobilization of a new ethnic identity in urban politics must often await the arrival of the second generation because the first generation is still oriented toward the home country and struggling to find their place in the new one. (As of 2004, half of New York’s immigrant adults—1.4 million people—remain noncitizens.) The New Deal electoral coalition emerged in the 1930s, partly on the basis of first- and second-generation immigrant voters, as did Fiorello LaGuardia’s victories in New York City. In exchange for the electoral support they needed to retain office, older political elites allowed members of the new immigrant ethnic groups to achieve some influence. Younger immigrant groups threw themselves into these efforts not only because some could achieve political upward mobility, but also because the older elites developed platforms that spoke to the general needs of immigrant ethnic groups. In this light, David Dinkins’s election as New York’s first African American mayor in 1989 was part of a longrunning story (Mollenkopf 2003). This process continues to today. While party organizations and party identification are not what they used to be in New York or anywhere else, the Democratic Party remains an effective gatekeeper to elected office in the city (Mayhew 1986). As such, it continues to shape the political incorporation of new immigrant groups. As one of the nation ’s two largest destinations for new immigrants, New York stands at the forefront of the dramatic demographic changes being wrought by decades of international migration. Like other immigrant gateway cities such as Los Angeles, Miami, and even Chicago, New York is on the threshold of a new epoch of ethnic succession (Logan and Mollenkopf 2003). The era of the civil rights activism and minority empowerment that characterized such cities between 1950 and 1990 is giving way to an era defined by the attempts of new immigrant ethnic groups to break into political establishments now populated not just by white ethnics, but by native-stock African American and Hispanic politicians. New York is particularly interesting, because it has received immigrants from the Caribbean and Europe as well as Latin America and Asia. As a result, political incumbents of every race are seeing their native-stock component of their ethnic constituencies shrink, while the immigrant stock share...

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