Political Learning in Immigrant Families: Challenging Parental Socialization Models.

Today, 55 million people, or nearly 1 out of every 5 Americans, are immigrants or the children of immigrants (Portes and Rumbaut 2001). Thus, immigrants and their children are becoming increasingly important in terms of their political potential in the United States (Greenhouse 2000). The focus of this project is on political learning within immigrant families. Much research in political science focuses on the role of parental socialization to explain political learning. However, very little research has examined how children may influence their parents' political learning. Because the children of immigrants living in the United States may have more experience and exposure to United States politics than their parents, immigrant children may be a critical source of political information about the United States within immigrant families. In addition, parents in immigrant families may be socializing their children to politics within a transnational context. To the extent that immigrant parents talk to their children about politics in their country of origin, or the political concerns of their ethnic communities in the United States, they may be orienting their children towards politics as well. This study will provide a means to examine important questions about how political learning takes place in immigrant families and how these learning processes are related to immigrants' political incorporation in the United States. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]