Becoming New Yorkers: Ethnographies of the New Second Generation

CHAPTER 8: ETHNIC AND POSTETHNIC POLITICS IN NEW YORK CITY: THE DOMINICAN SECOND GENERATION

CHAPTER 8 ETHNIC AND POSTETHNIC POLITICS IN NEW YORK CITY: THE DOMINICAN SECOND GENERATION* Nicole P. Marwell Studies of the political incorporation of immigrants often have employed the concept of “generation” to understand how newcomer groups establish a voice in American politics. Such works include studies of the political behavior of “old” immigrants (Treudly 1949; Wirth 1941; Wolfinger 1965), African Americans (Browning, Marshall, and Tabb 1984; Keiser 1997; Pinderhughes 1997), and “new” immigrants (Filipcevic 2000; Kasinitz 1992; Pessar and Graham 2002; Warren 1997). The general thrust of all these studies is that second and later generations of immigrants (or, in the case of African Americans, the descendants of southern migrants to the North) will be more familiar with political institutions, more interested in politics, and more likely to express their political inclinations through activism and voting. This process, it is then argued, eventually gives rise to the classic indicators of political incorporation (Browning, Marshall, and Tabb 1984): attainment of elective office, greater representation in public agencies, a role in the governing coalition, and increased attention to group needs. This chapter argues for a more nuanced understanding of how the “new second generation” is experiencing political incorporation. Even for immigrants of the same national origin, there is no uniform process by which the new second generation achieves political incorporation. Instead, while past patterns of ethnic politics contribute to the ways in which immigrant groups, or parts of groups, travel toward political involvement, other important factors shape modes of immigrant political participation as well. These variable 227 * All names of individuals and organizations reported throughout the chapter are pseudonyms, except as noted. In the case of quotations, pseudonyms are listed in brackets. factors also may produce uneven outcomes within and across groups. In particular , local demographics and the neighborhood political context have strong mediating influences on the political behavior and prospects of new immigrant groups, whether migrants or their U.S.-born children.1 The concept of immigrant generation per se appears far less salient in explaining the experiences of the new second generation than factors such as these, a finding echoed in a number of other chapters in this volume (for example, Butter- field, Malkin, and Trillo). This conclusion is underscored in an examination of the contrasting modes of political behavior found in two New York City neighborhoods with high concentrations of Dominicans, both first- and second-generation. BACKGROUND Ira Katznelson’s (1981) classic study of urban politics argues that political participation in the United States has been shaped by the growing spatial separation between home and work. People concentrate their political activities on issues arising where they live—not where they work—because political representation has a residential territorial base. Katznelson maintains that this separation leads to the predominance of community politics—a narrower politics of identity—over workplace politics—a broader politics of class. Individuals participate in politics largely to make immediate changes in the places where they live: for instance, improving the local park, stopping construction of a nearby homeless shelter, or getting better response times from the police. As a result, he argues, political activity in the United States has failed to create a significant, progressive movement that could achieve broadbased economic and social change. To the extent that immigrants both old and new are residentially concentrated , Katznelson’s “city trenches” increasingly are identified not only as particular places within a city’s geography but also as tied to specific racial or national-origin groups. An immigrant group gains classical political incorporation —especially the first key step of elective office—when its members come to constitute a sizable plurality or majority of voters in a specific geographic area. In the theory of ethnic politics (see, for example, Wolfinger 1965), the first principle seems to be that members of any ethnic group prefer to elect “one of our own.” The 1965 Voting Rights Act’s emphasis on demarcating “protected groups” has reinforced this ethnic essentialism. Under the act’s requirement that districts be drawn so that minority voters have an equal chance to “elect the candidate of their choice,” “majority-minority” districts have been created to institutionalize the (perhaps correct) “one of our own” assumption.2 228 Becoming New Yorkers But political mobilization in any given neighborhood depends significantly not only on its mix of ethnic groups but also on its local history of political organization...