Engaging the immigrant voice: Political participation and acculturation in the Indian American community

Despite constituting well over ten percent of the American population, many immigrant groups struggle to become integrated into the American mainstream. While assimilation is not necessarily desirable or required for any immigrant, certain barriers make acculturation inaccessible for those who seek it. With immigrants consistently registering lower levels of political participation than their mainstream counterparts, even the most socioeconomically advantaged of immigrant groups like Indian Americans locate themselves on the peripheries of the mainstream. On the basis of their lower levels of political engagement, Indian Americans and a number of other immigrant groups have remained differentiated ethnically, culturally, and racially, and therefore not fully assimilated into the American mainstream. Because political participation is a critical part of the American experience, it must be incorporated into existing models of assimilation.;Using existing literature and 25 interviews with first and second generation Indian Americans, I examined the assimilation and political participation patterns of Indian Americans to analyze how civic engagement relates to the larger immigrant assimilation experience. Measured by the social and economic criteria of traditional assimilation models, Indian Americans would be considered fully assimilated into the American mainstream. However, because the assimilation process is also highly intertwined with political participation, assimilation models must be adjusted to reflect this.;The Indian Americans I interviewed express a high level of interest and knowledge of political processes and an overall identification with American social structures. Simultaneously, many do not feel comfortable or welcome in the country's political institutions. Extrapolating these findings to other immigrant groups, I would argue that political assimilation signifies a later stage of assimilation. Though individual immigrants acculturate at varying rates and may even enter political life prior to assimilating on any other level, as a group, they are only likely to attain participatory equality many years after migration and often well into the second and third generations. This would suggest that political representatives must make a more concerted effort to hear and act on the concerns of first and second generation immigrants seeking political recourse.