It's a Family Affair

Abstract

Up to a million children and teenagers participated in the 2006 immigrant rights marches. Why do young people engage in protest politics, and how are they mobilized into such activities? A longstanding literature on political socialization suggests that young people learn from their parents, acquiring political attitudes and interests from older generations. This article argues that for immigrant families processes of political learning and mobilization also occur in the reverse: Younger family members can use English language skills and differential access to political information to inform and mobilize parents. The authors make the case for a model of bidirectional political socialization and show how intergenerational communication and interaction can increase a whole family's political engagement by pooling different information sources and networks: from schools and new technologies among teens, and from workplaces, churches, and ethnic media among parents. We build our argument on 79 in-depth interviews with Mexican-origin teens and parents living in Richmond and Oakland, California, who are U.S.-born citizens, naturalized citizens, legal permanent residents, or undocumented migrants.

Gender Equality Attitudes among Turks in Western Europe and Turkey: The Interrelated Impact of Migration and Parents' Attitudes

“…For migrant youth the extra-familial acculturation seems crucial in assimilation, as has been suggested by scholars on political socialisation as well (e.g. Bloemraad and Trost 2008;Sapiro 2004). This also suggests that enculturation is more important than acculturation (cf.…”

“…Particularly, immigrant youth face much new and divers information outside the family, at school for instance (Ali and Fokkema 2014). Consequently, socialisation in the family might weaken and be overwritten by extra-familial socialisation (also Bloemraad and Trost 2008;Sapiro 2004):…”

Inheriting the Homeland? Intergenerational Transmission of Cross-Border Ties in Migrant Families

“…2 These approaches have experienced a recent revival in explaining the civic socialization of children and young adults (Niemi and Hepburn 1995;Jennings, Stokers, and Bowers 2002) and have also been applied to the study of migrant political engagement (Bloemraad and Trost 2008) and socialization (Wong and Tseng 2008).…”

Intergenerational Family Relations, Civic Organisations, and the Political Socialisation of Second-Generation Immigrant Youth

“…Part of this body of work examines the role of civic organisations in shaping how immigrants develop social infrastructure and build political power (Ramakrishnan and Bloemraad 2008; Wong 2006). To date, however, only limited work has focused on the civic and political engagement of youth from immigrant families (Bloemraad and Trost 2008; Callahan and Muller 2013; Kasinitz et al 2008; Okamoto, Herda, and Hartzog 2013; Wong and Tseng 2008). …”