UC San Diego

In this work I analyze how the political engagement of Ecuadorian immigrants takes place in New York City and Madrid. In so doing, I ask what features of Ecuador appear in the context of settlement, and how these features shape immigrant political engagement. I argue that tensions among immigrants of the same nationality unintentionally lead to their incorporation into the larger civil society organizations of the receiving context. Then I turn the focus of my attention to New York City and Madrid to understand how the contextual features of these cities shape the participants' political incorporation. In Chapter 2, I take on issues of citizenship and membership to demonstrate that the differences in the demographic composition, language, political institutions, and religious organizations of Madrid and New York City shape the way in which Ecuadorian immigrants collectively mobilize to make demands on the government. In chapter 3, I describe the formal political structures of these cities and show how participants in this study gained access to them. In chapter 4, I focus on the collective action repertoires of participants as vessels of bridging social capital. I show that trust and cooperation can develop between first-generation Ecuadorian immigrants and other social groups. Lastly, in chapter 5 I describe the gender differences in political behavior that I found in these two contexts. I argue that in Madrid language similarities allowed male participants to be employed in posts which require interaction with the rest of society. Also, under a less restrictive context of immigration law, the participants in Madrid were able to regularize their immigration status sooner, spending little or no time in an undocumented status and accessing the larger labor market. I show that the women participants engaged in political organizations due to concerns with social issues involving abuses in housing or salary payments and through friends, rather than through their children as the literature had emphasized