Perceptions of Racialized Opportunities and Hispanics’ Political Attitudes

Abstract

In an attempt to understand Hispanics’ political incorporation as the United States becomes a “majority-minority” nation, I explore some of the social-psychological processes that shape Hispanics’ political attitudes. Specifically, I draw on the segmented-assimilation literature’s notion of “modes of incorporation” to argue that immigrants develop perceptions of racialized opportunities (PROPs) as they confront America’s segmented opportunity structure. Because of the durability of these racialized mobility trajectories, I propose that PROPs play an important part in the formation of Hispanics’ political attitudes. I test the PROPs mechanism using the 2006 Latino National Survey with a sample of 8,634 Hispanic respondents. Ordinal logistic regression models, estimating Hispanics’ support for school vouchers and government intervention in health care, indicate that PROPs are related to Hispanics’ political attitudes, especially in regard to support for school vouchers. Moreover, this social-psychological mechanism informs the political attitudes of both U.S.-born and foreign-born Hispanics.