Legal Exclusion, Civic Exclusion: How Legal Status Stratifies Latino Immigrants’ Civic Engagement

Abstract

Unlike many other sociopolitical activities in the United States, civic engagement is not restricted by legal status and is often the initial and primary form of political action available to immigrants. Few studies, however, have disaggregated the impact of legal status on immigrants’ civic participation, despite civic engagement’s significance for immigrant incorporation and despite growing evidence of the stratifying effects of legal categories. Using Wave 1 of the Los Angeles Family and Neighborhood Survey, I nuance theories of legal status stratification by showing where legal status matters for Latino immigrants’ civic engagement and where it does not. Undocumented immigrants, I show, are significantly less likely to participate in general civic organizations, such as community and ethnic organizations, relative to documented immigrants. Likewise, undocumented mothers with undocumented children are less likely to volunteer in schools or participate in parent-teacher associations, compared to both documented mothers and undocumented mothers with documented children. By contrast, legal status does not stratify membership in religious institutions. Moreover, I theorize that undocumented immigrants’ lower levels of general civic engagement are partially mediated by access to US education, a significant site for immigrants’ civic development. This article informs understandings of legal status stratification and immigrant social incorporation.