Across a number of politically relevant domains, Latinx immigrants and their co-ethnics hold progressive attitudes and preferences relative to Anglo whites despite countervailing pressure to assimilate to Anglo political standards. This dissertation includes three papers that explain the puzzle of relative political progressivism among Latinxs by highlighting the role of an increasingly threatening interior immigration enforcement context after the implementation of Clinton-era immigration restrictions. I posit many Latinx immigrants and their co-ethnics experience a \textit{generalized sense of illegality}, that is, a palpable fear of deportability. I theorize a generalized sense of illegality is motivated by 1) the increasing societal integration of undocumented immigrants, 2) an increasingly restrictive immigration enforcement context, and 3) the development of an ethnicized illegality attached to Latinx ethnic group members. I then demonstrate a sense of illegality maintains Latinx progressivism despite countervailing conservative forces. Chapter 1 demonstrates perceptibly threatening immigration enforcement contexts undercut well-established patterns of attitudinal convergence with Anglo whites on immigration policy preferences. Chapter 2 forwards a Dynamic Theory of Threat Solution Ownership to explain how the threat of deportation motivates support for Democratic candidates among Latinxs and partisan defection among Republican Latinxs specifically. Chapter 3 offers a theoretical framework to understand how the threat of deportation may motivate pro-Black political attitudes among non-Black Latinxs despite the perceptible lack of commonality in exposure to immigration enforcement.

This dissertation explores the causes and consequences of contemporary policing practices, focusing particular attention on the high volume, aggressive, and racially discriminatory policing strategies that police departments throughout the United States began to adopt in the 1970s and 1980s. In a series of empirical analyses, it makes three principle claims. First, this dissertation argues that the adoption of these punitive policing practices can be attributed in no small part to municipal strategies of gentrification and revitalization. In doing so, it advances research on the post-industrial policing hypothesis, which argues that as cities pursue growth strategies designed to appeal to members of the so-called "creative classes'' or businesses in the post-industrial sector, they will increasingly adopt punitive policing practices to harass, displace, or control groups (including racial and ethnic minorities) that are deemed incompatible with these strategies. Mobilizing data on order maintenance policing (OMP) in New York City and the Stop, Question, and Frisk (SQF) police stops that OMP generated, this dissertation finds that gentrification in New York City is associated with significantly higher rates of SQF police stops, mostly in neighborhoods that lie adjacent to or near gentrifying tracts.

In a second analysis, this dissertation argues that these aggressive policing strategies have the potential to impact political behavior, and explores how OMP practices in New York City affected voter turnout and candidate choice in that city. In a series of national and local elections, it finds that while concentrated policing can negatively affect political participation in the form of voter turnout, heavily policed communities can and do mobilize to counteract these harmful and discriminatory policing policies. Specifically, it finds that while SQF policing was associated with lower rates of turnout in the 2010 and 2006 national elections, it was also associated with higher rates of turnout in the 2008 national election and the 2013 mayoral election and Democratic primary. While the positive association between turnout and policing in the 2008 national election was likely do to the unique mobilizing affect that Barack Obama's campaign had on marginalized communities, this dissertation argues that the higher rates of turnout in the 2013 general and Democratic primary are attributable to the mobilization of communities in New York City to end SQF policing. In support of this claim, this chapter presents additional evidence that higher rates of SQF policing was associated with more support for the Democratic primary candidate (John Liu) who promised to end SQF policing and significantly less support for the candidate (William Thompson) who promised to keep it.

In its third and final analysis, this dissertation explores the extent to which aggressive and discriminatory policing affects political behavior in other national contexts, specifically the United Kingdom. Characterizing contemporary policing practices in Britain which: 1) were adopted specifically following their successful implementation in American cities such as New York City and 2) which exhibit similar levels of racial and ethnic disparity, this chapter argues that like gentrification, post-industrial policing and its political consequences are global in scope. Mobilizing data from police stops of citizens in Greater London, Manchester, and the West-Midlands this analysis similarly finds that as the intensity of police-citizen contact increases, political participation decreases. Unlike in New York City, however, this analysis does not uncover instances or contexts where higher levels of policing were associated with higher rates of turnout, which it tentatively attributes to differences in political opportunity structure in the two contexts.

How do perceptions of belonging or lack of inclusion to American society influence political interest and political engagement? To date, there have been few inquiries that systematically investigate perceived belonging or lack of belonging to U.S. society and the political ramifications of these predispositions. This project addresses this puzzle and investigates how a sense of social belonging influences political engagement among Latinos, the largest, one of the fastest growing and most pivotal groups in American politics. To examine how varying perceptions of inclusion influence Latino political engagement, this project employs a novel framework ---the politics of inclusion framework--- and an original measure of perceived belonging to U.S. society. This multi-method project investigates what drives Latinos to have varying perceptions of social inclusion, and how a sense of perceived belonging to U.S. society, or lack thereof, influence Latino political participation. This project contends that feelings of belonging, social membership and inclusion are fundamental to political incorporation and subsequent political participation. The results indicate that Latinos' perceptions of inclusion to U.S. society are a function of income, gender, generation and, most importantly, experiences of discrimination. Experimental evidence shows that when primed with a hostile message Latinos are more likely to report lower perceptions of belonging to U.S. society. Furthermore, the findings reveal that a sense of belonging is a unique and independent predictor of political interest and various forms of electoral and non-electoral political engagement for Latinos. This project finds that perceptions of belonging to U.S. society, as well as perceived sense of respect by other Americans, are strongly associated with higher levels of political engagement for Latinos. This project extends our overall understanding of Latino political behavior at a time when the presence of Latinos is transforming the electorate and all of U.S. society. The findings of this dissertation also have significant and broad implications for the political behavior of blacks, Asian Americans, Muslim Americans and members of other minority groups who face similar experiences of exclusion and for whom a sense of belonging to America is not a given. Furthermore, the contribution of this project spans beyond race and ethnic politics and it brings into consideration the important role of psychological perceptions of belonging, or lack of belonging, to the national community for political behavior more broadly.