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This book explores how Asian Americans learn about American politics and develop partisan attitudes. Asian Americans are the fastest-growing immigrant group in the US, and are thus the focus of intense interest by both major parties. To explain the historical Asian American support for the Democratic Party and recent shifts in that trend, Tanika Raychaudhuri proposes a theory of "social transmission." She argues that Asian Americans primarily learn about American politics from peers in local contexts--so, many vote for Democrats because they settle in liberal metropolitan areas where they interact with liberal peer groups. Grounded in a range of quantitative and qualitative evidence, including in-depth interviews, national surveys of Asian Americans, and original survey experiments, Raychaudhuri's analysis presents important implications for understanding political behavior in immigrant communities and the future of American electoral politics.
About the author
Tanika Raychaudhuri is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Political Science at Rice University. She received her PhD from the Department of Politics at Princeton University. She focuses her teaching and research on questions at the intersection of immigration, race, and political behavior in American politics. One strand of her work explores the civic engagement of immigrant constituencies in an era of increasing racial diversity. In other research, she considers questions about race, public opinion, and public policy. Her research has been published in peer-reviewed journals and featured in news media.
