The ambiguities of political opportunity: political claims-making of Russian-Jewish immigrants in New York City

Abstract

How, and as what, are immigrant minorities incorporated into the political process? A set of prominent approaches focus on the political opportunity structure that immigrants encounter. Although promising in many aspects, these approaches fail to consider the internal heterogeneity of both immigrant populations and opportunity structures. This is partly a result of taking ethnic groups rather than political entrepreneurs as the unit of analysis and of not disaggregating the political context properly. I show how Russian-Jewish immigrant political entrepreneurs in New York City used very different strategies of ethnic mobilization, each emphasizing a different ethnic cleavage: one making claims in the name of Russians, the other downplaying Russianness and highlighting the Jewish identity dimension. Both strategies had good chances at success thus illustrating that political opportunity structures may encourage different claims-making strategies at the same time. Ethno-political entrepreneurs navigate complex political landscapes that are ex-ante only partially transparent.

Keywords:

• political opportunity structure
• ethnic politics
• political incorporation
• New York City
• ex-Soviet émigrés

Acknowledgements

I gratefully acknowledge support from a pre-doctoral advanced quantitative methodology training grant (#R305B080016) awarded to UCLA by the Institute of Education Sciences of the US Department of Education, and the ZEIT-Stiftung Ebelin und Gerd Bucerius. For comments on earlier versions I thank Roger Waldinger, Andreas Wimmer and John Mollenkopf. The usual disclaimer applies.

Notes

1. Surname analysis matches a data set against a list of typical surnames of an ethnic group. This method has been used to identify Asian and Hispanic populations (Abrahamse, Morrison and Bolton 1994). The distinctness of Russian surnames allows me to apply this method in my case. The reliability of surname analysis depends on factors such as residential segregation, socio-economic status and degree of intermarriage (Fiscella and Fremont 2006). As I am looking at a relatively concentrated population of mostly first-generation immigrants, the method is likely to achieve good results.

2. The need for political unity is an explicit criterion for the recognition of ethnic minority claims in the Voting Rights Act.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Thomas Soehl

THOMAS SOEHL is a PhD candidate in the Department of Sociology, UCLA.