Immigrant political incorporation: comparing success in the United States and Western Europe

Abstract

Despite reasons to expect otherwise, immigrant political incorporation occurs more rapidly in the United States than in many Western European states. We provide evidence to support that contentious statement and reasons to explain it.

Four features distinguish the United States in this context. First, both in terms of state formation and population growth, it was predicated on immigration, voluntary and otherwise, whereas European states came into being and grew mainly through consolidation of and natural increase among resident populations. That history shapes public attitudes toward immigration policy and immigrants. Second, unlike European states, the United States has a long history of domestic racial subordination and a recent history of efforts to overcome it, and this provides a template for incorporating new immigrant groups. Third, social welfare and school systems differ in ways that slightly facilitate incorporation for immigrants to the United States. Finally, the American electoral system is more open to insurgent candidacies, less dominated by party control, and more rewarding of geographically concentrated electoral groups, thus making election of newcomers easier. In combination, these features make immigrant political incorporation relatively successful in the United States.

Keywords:

• Immigrants
• politics
• electoral representation
• anti-immigrant sentiment
• assimilation
• political incorporation

Notes

1. Countries may also be internally inconsistent across arenas of possible incorporation (Freeman 2004; Kurthen and Heisler 2009).

2. That is not quite true, since a third of the residents of Luxembourg and twelve per cent of the residents of Belgium are foreign-born. In both cases, however, many ‘immigrants’ are short-term migrants from nearby European states who are employees of the EU or other European institutions. They are not immigrants as the term is conventionally used.

3. Germany: Organisation For Economic Co-Operation And Development (2006b, p. 176); Switzerland and France: (http://stats.oecd.org/WBOS/index.aspx); US: US Department of Homeland Security (2007 ;2009); see also Bergeron and Batalova (2008).

4. A higher proportion of American second generation immigrants (thirty-two per cent) than of immigrants (twenty-seven per cent) or of third or later generation Americans (twenty-eight per cent) have a bachelor's or higher degree (http://www.census.gov/population/www/socdemo/foreign/ppl-176.html#gen, table 5.5).

5. http://www.census.gov/population/www/socdemo/foreign/ppl-176.html#gen, table 5.7.