Spatial and Temporal Proximity: Examining the Effects of Protests on Political Attitudes

Abstract

This article utilizes data from the Latino National Survey (2006) to analyze temporal and spatial variation in the effects of the immigrant rights marches in 2006 on Latino attitudes towards trust in government and self‐efficacy. Using a unique protest dataset, we examine the effects of proximity and scale by mapping respondents’ specific geographic location against the location of the marches as well as size of the protests using Geographic Information Systems (GIS). We find that local proximity to small marches had a positive impact on feelings of efficacy, whereas large‐scale protests led to lower feelings of efficacy. The results shed light on the role localized political events can play in shaping feelings towards government, the importance of conceptions of space and time to the study of social movements, and the positive outcomes that can result from contentious politics.

The Impact of Large‐Scale Collective Action on Latino Perceptions of Commonality and Competition with African Americans*

“…Delimiting the boundaries at 30 days and 100 miles allows for meaningful variation while still conforming measuring exposure in terms of space and time in a theoretically sound way. Moreover, the specificity of these measures far exceeds standard measures of time and space and is consistent with prior work in this area (see Wallace et al., ).…”

“…For example, examing Latino public opinion before, during, and after the protest wave, Silber Mohamed () found that the demonstrations bolstered Latinos’ sense of American identity and panethnicity, while Zepeda‐Millán and Wallace's () study revealed that Latino perceptions of racial identity increased during and after the protests compared to before they began. Similarly, very little prior work examines the spatial dimensions of the protests and how proximity influenced Latino public opinion (see, however, Wallace, Zepeda‐Millán, and Jones Correa, ; Carey et al., ).…”

“…Silber Mohamed's study sets a start date of April 10, 2006 for the marches, which is much later than the first protest date of February 14 in both the Wallace et al. () and Bada et al. data sets.…”

Racialization in times of contention: how social movements influence Latino racial identity

“…Whether there is a relationship between the protests and Latino racial identity is an important question to examine because most research looking into the empirical effects of the rallies on Latino public opinion have focused on questions such as how Latinos viewed the demonstrations and why those who took part in the marches did so (Pallares and Flores-Gonzalez 2008;); what impacts the protests had on feelings of Latino panethnicity (Mohamed 2013); and what effects the series of demonstrations had on Latino political efficacy and trust in government (Pedraza, Segura, and Bowler 2011;Wallace, Zepeda-Millán, and Jones Correa, Forthcoming). Yet, with the exception of Wallace, Zepeda-Millán, and Jones Correa (Forthcoming) and Mohamed (2013), 5 studies that focus on the relationship between the marches and Latino political attitudes are limited in that the data they utilize are drawn from a single point in time, either from surveys undertaken during the demonstrations or after the protest wave had subsided (Suro and Escobar 2006;Pedraza, Segura, and Bowler 2011).…”

Politicizing Undocumented Immigrants One Corner at a Time: How Day Laborers Became a Politically Contentious Group

“…More recently, there has been an important attempt to address this empirical and theoretical blind‐spot. A significant number of scholars have stressed the centrality of urban environments in shaping the political incorporation of immigrants (Bloemraad, ; Varsanyi, ; de Graauw et al ., ; Steil and Vasi, ; Wallace et al ., ). De Graauw et al .…”