How do policies influence behavior? Current research on the effect of Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (or DACA) is centered on economic and health outcomes. However, as DACA provides greater membership in American society, it is also important to examine its impact on political incorporation. I argue that although DACA has positively and significantly changed the lives of many young undocumented immigrants, it has also become another means of drawing a boundary of marginality based on arbitrary and subjective standards. In-depth interviews and an original survey show that while DACA provides greater access to its recipients, it also decreases recipients’ propensity for civic engagement due to heightened social exclusion. Also, regardless of DACA status, young undocumented immigrants are more likely to be engaged in safer political activities. This dissertation has broad implications for the study of minority civic engagement, as it provides a better understanding of how undocumented immigrants, who do not have access to formal modes of political participation, become politically incorporated.

Does living near members of another social group breed tolerance or hostility? This is a long-standing question in political science, with evidence pointing in multiple directions. While experiments confirm that intergroup contact can promote positive attitudes, observational studies show that real-world conditions often fail to produce positive outcomes.In this dissertation, I examine factors that determine how outgroup context shapes group attitudes. I analyze survey responses describing individuals’ interactions with and opinions about various social groups. By combining these responses with census data about the demographic contexts in which respondents live, I can determine how contextual factors shape different components of outgroup attitudes. Through this analysis, I find that living near members of an outgroup is associated both with an increased probability of interacting with outgroup members, and with an increased perception of group threat. These in turn shapes outgroup stereotypes: contact challenges negative stereotypes, while threat reinforces them. Finally, these stereotypes inform an overall positive or negative outgroup attitude. This leaves the question of whether the positive effects of contact or the negative effects of threat will dominate. I find that engaging in frequent contact with outgroup members can overcome the negative effects of threat. Contextual factors determine when contact will be common and promote tolerance, and when it will be uncommon and allow threat to produce hostility. Previous studies have highlighted the role of segregation in reducing opportunities for contact, but I introduce another factor: language. Living near English-speaking outgroup members provides English monolinguals with more opportunities for contact, leading to more positive attitudes, while living near non-English-speaking outgroup populations reinforces negative stereotypes, leading to more negative attitudes. These contextual effects of language are not limited to outgroup attitudes. I find that English-monolingual ingroup members similarly exhibit less ingroup identification and more negative ingroup attitudes when living in contexts where many ingroup members do not speak English.

Scholars studying religion and politics have largely focused on how participatory religious behaviors--such as frequent church attendance--are important for political participation. This has been established not just for traditionally white, Christian populations, but for Black Americans and Latinos. Religious institutions have historically served as a central support system for Asian American immigrants. Asian Americans, however, practice a diversity of faiths, including non-Judeo-Christian faiths where frequent worship attendance is not a condition for high religiosity and instead, devotional behaviors are also important religious practices\textemdash which then may also provide a path to political participation. However, there are few studies examining the extent to which the religion-to-politics pathway extends to non-Christian religious traditions. This dissertation seeks to examine how external and internal religious behaviors serve as a resource for political participation among Asian Americans and across religious traditions for Asian American Buddhists, Christians, and Hindus. Across four sets of surveys, I find that external religious behaviors are consistently associated with non-voting political participation across religions, and may provide resources such as a salient political identity for political participation. This latter resource, however, is particularly important for places of worship that are primarily composed of Asian American immigrants, further centering the institutional importance of places of worship for immigrants in the U.S. I also find that internal religiosity is a predictor of civic engagement among Hindu Asian Americans and suggest that the role of internal and external religiosity may be conditioned by the socioeconomic status of immigrants. My findings have implications for the role that religion plays not just for resource acquisition but on the role of religious and ethnic identity across generations. This project contributes to our understanding of religion and politics, and the institutions beyond traditional actors like political parties that play an important role in Asian Americans political behavior.

How do racial microaggressions and stereotypes impact Asian American identity and behavior? While studies in political science have shown a link between discrimination, group attachment, and group behavior, less is known about more subtle exclusion (i.e. peer to peer) and its effects on identity and behavior. This dissertation examines how experiences with racial microaggressions, and stereotypes contribute to group identity. I argue that experiences with racial microaggressions are commonplace in the day to day lives of Asian Americans and influence identity attachment and behavior. This project investigates what types of experiences with racial microaggressions that Asian Americans have, and the degree to which these experiences contribute or do not contribute to Asian American politics. I contend that experiences of racial microaggressions—although related to discrimination—affect individual’s racial attachment different from that of experiences with discrimination. My results indicate that for Asian Americans, experiences with racial microaggressions and stereotypes along the model minority and forever foreigner are frequent and are a racializing event that increase the salience of their racial group identity. My findings indicate the need to consider other ways in which bias is perpetuated and experienced, especially in survey methodology.