Minhye Joo has been awarded an APSA Dissertation Research Improvement Grant. Her dissertation is entitled "How Does Contact with Street-Level Bureaucrats Impact Immigrant Incorporation?"  

Abstract

How do immigrants develop their attitudes toward the new country? What leads them to engage in politics in the host country? In my dissertation project, I argue that interactions with the new political system provide one path for immigrants to learn how the new system works and how the government perceives and treats them, which may affect the development of political attitudes toward the new country. I specifically focus on immigrants’ contact with street-level bureaucrats. I argue that positive interactions with street-level bureaucrats lead immigrants to perceive their host country as responsive and trustworthy, which encourages them to engage in politics in the host country. On the other hand, negative interactions with street-level bureaucrats will give the impression that the host country is unwelcoming and hostile, which discourages political activities in the host country. I employ a mixed-method approach with semi-structured interviews, a large-N survey, and two survey experiments to understand how interactions with street-level bureaucrats impact immigrant political incorporation in the U.S. A mixed-method approach compensates for the limitations of using a single method and allows me to examine the validity of observations and results based on different sources of evidence. The results from my dissertation project will contribute to our knowledge about the socially and politically marginalized population of immigrants in American society.