Arizona’s Anti-immigration Legislation and Latino Political Participation: An Examination of the Latino Response

Over the past twenty years, the state of Arizona has increasingly become a key location for the debate surrounding immigration and border policy in the United States. Its geographical position within the Southwest North American Region (SWNAR) of the United States and shared physical border with México has forged an extensive history of complicated interconnectedness for the Latino community residing in this borderland (Vélez-Ibáñez, 2017). This dissertation examines Arizona’s anti-immigration legislation, focusing on the years between 2000 and 2018, and how, or if, this legislation affected the political participation of Latinos in the state. This research argues that Latinos, both citizen and undocumented, have galvanized across citizenship lines in response to the anti-immigration legislation aimed at criminalizing Latinos, marginalizing their families, and hindering their access to education, public services, and employment opportunities (Philbin & Ayón, 2016). Using theoretical foundations of political mobilization, this work explores the use of anti-immigration legislation as a mobilizing factor for Latino political participation. Further, the findings suggest that the traditional definition of political participation is not sufficient for the wide-ranging activities of the Latino community. This work, therefore, re-contextualizes the term political participation and establishes Latino political participation by incorporating the concept of “funds of knowledge” to account for Latino political practices that have previously been ignored by the traditional definition. For this study, a series of observations of trends in Latino voting and registration and a descriptive historical analysis of Latino political practices led to the creation of questions for the qualitative interview process. Interviews were conducted with fifteen key Latino informants, and their testimonios provide an explanation for the noted trends in Latino political participation during the election years, highlight the political mobilization that incorporated both the undocumented Latinos and Latino citizens, and provide clarification for a recontextualization of Latino political participation.