Buying Homes, but Not Buying into the Community: Determinants of Political Participation Among Immigrant Homeowners

As immigrants constitute a growing portion of homeowners in the United States, the political integration via civic participation of these citizens in their communities has become a pressing issue for both policymakers and researchers. While the study of immigrant political behavior has long documented the positive effects of homeownership on the political engagement of immigrants, research exploring the actual mechanisms between these two variables is scant. This article attempts to fill that gap by focusing on institutional factors in explaining why turnout among immigrant homeowners varies considerably across counties in California. More specifically, this study examines the effect of a county's immigrant population composition and the supply of immigrant political candidates in local elections on voter turnout. This paper theorizes that high immigrant density and low supply of minority candidates, along with language and social economic barriers, demotivates immigrant homeowners to participate in local politics. I used data from the Current Population Survey Civic Engagement Supplement 2011 and 2013 to empirically test these claims. The evidence from the analysis provide empirical support for the hypotheses.