ABSTRACT
Organizations and political incorporation Individual immigrants seldom enter American politics on their own; instead, they do so collectively in response to mobilizations organized by activists within their own communities or external ones seeking to address wrongs or achieve various goals (Glazer and Moynihan 1970; Castles 2004). For this reason, the specific organizational forms adopted by these mobilizations play a decisive role in the process of political incorporation. While the politics of the first generations have always pivoted around homeland concerns, the realities of their new situations and the imperatives created by the settlement process gradually move them away from these concerns and into citizenship and participation in the politics of their new country (Greeley 1971; Hollifield 2004). Ethnic political organization has been the requisite first step of incorporation as immigrants and their offspring learned to become Americans by first being “ethnics” (Dahl 1961; Rosenblum 1973). By defending their local interests in ward politics they learned the ropes of the system, allowing their descendants to move up to larger and more ambitious endeavors (Portes and Rumbaut 1996: 139). On the other hand, the recent wave of transnational organizations and activism grounded on the “shrinkage of space” brought about by technological innovation appears to be leading immigrant political activism in new directions (Levitt 2001; Guarnizo et al. 2003). The actions of home country governments interested in preserving the loyalty of their expatriates contribute heavily to this trend. Dual citizenship and dual nationality programs have thus proliferated, allowing immigrants to preserve their legal standing in their home country while consolidating their economic and political position in the new (Castles 2004; Faist et al. 2004; Escobar 2007). These developments have not been uncontroversial, as at least one school of thought has strongly argued that they undermine the political integrity of the host nation and blur loyalties that should be one and indivisible (Lamm and Imhoff 1985; Huntington 2004a). The oath of allegiance to the United States, taken by new citizens, includes an explicit renunciation of all past national loyalties. This is in line with the consensus in international law that all persons are entitled to citizenship in one nation, and one nation only (Freeman 1995; Faist et al. 2004). According to this school, transnational organizations, including the unwelcome meddling of foreign governments, necessarily slows down the integration of immigrants into the host nation and compromises their successful political incorporation. At worst, it turns immigrants into a “fifth column” of foreign advocates undermining the interest of the society that received them (Brimelow 1995; Huntington 2004b).
