Placing Immigrant Incorporation: Identity, Trust, and Civic Engagement in Little Havana

Abstract

Findings reveal that overall Latin American immigrants and their American-born offspring appear to be becoming American with regard to their ethnic and racial identities vi quickly, evidenced through the salience and active employment of panethnic labels, while at the same time they are actively reshaping the identificational structure. The Latino population, however, is not monolithic and is cleaved by diversity within the group, including country of origin and socioeconomic status. These same factors impede group cohesion in terms of trust and its correlate, community. Nevertheless, the historically dominant ancestry group in Little Havana -Cubans -has been able to reach notable levels of trust and build and conserve a more solid sense of community than non-Cuban residents. With respect to civic engagement, neighborhood residents generally participate at rates lower than the overall US population and ethnic subpopulations. This is not the case for political engagement, however, where self-reported voting registration and turnout in Little Havana surpasses that of most benchmarked populations. The empirical evidence presented in this dissertation on the case of Latinos in Little Havana challenges the ways that identity, trust, and civic engagement are conceptualized and theorized, especially among immigrants to the US.

Exploring Transnational Economic, Social, and Political Participation of Mexican Immigrants in Oregon

“…Civic engagement is usually conceived as the participation of citizens in different activities such as "voting, signing petitions, participating in protests, attending religious services, playing on a sports team, contacting public officials, and volunteering, among others" (Gioioso, 2010). Different scholars have developed various frameworks to group these activities.…”