Are Young Mexican-Americans Resistant to Political Incorporation?

The growing body of scholarship on the political incorporation of Mexican-Americans overlooks a key cohort: young immigrants. The main purpose of this article is to fill this gap by exploring the question of whether Mexican-American immigrant youth are unusually resistant to political incorporation when compared to other immigrants. Using data from an exceptionally-large, nationally-representative longitudinal survey of young people, we examine several of the behavioral and attitudinal measures of political incorporation that scholars have identified as principal measures of an individual's integration into the nation's political mainstream. Specifically, we look at voting, registration, non-electoral activism, trust for government, individualism, and partisanship. While many policymakers, and some scholars, have voiced concerns about the political incorporation of young Mexican-Americans, we find that Mexicans are indistinguishable from other immigrants on almost all measures of political incorporation, despite lagging other immigrants in terms of economic and social integration. Our major finding is that, even in the absence of controlling variables, the vast majority of young Mexican immigrant youth report few suspicions of governmental institutions and processes, show high levels of support for economic individualism, and are engaged in the electoral process. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]