Lisa Garcia Bedolla
 With depth and nuance, Lisa Garcia
Bedolla explores how the dynamics of immigration have
affected political socialization, attitudes and
practices, as well as levels of political participation
among Latinos, who now make up the country’s largest
minority.
Bedolla is Associate Professor of
Chicano/Latino Studies in the department of political
science at University of California, Irvine. Her
research focuses on the political incorporation of
Latinos and other racial/ethnic groups into the American
political system
Bedolla was assistant professor at California State
University, Long Beach, from 1999 to 2001. She served as
a visiting scholar in the Chicano Studies Research
Center at the University of California, Los Angeles from
2004 to 2006.
She is author of the Fluid Borders:
Latino Identity and Politics in Los Angeles, which
examines political attitudes and activity of Latinos in
the diverse areas of Southern California: working-class
East Los Angeles and middle-class Montebello. An
important book on Latino politics and race and politics,
this provocative study of the Latino political
experience offers an in-depth and often surprising
perspective. Bedolla has also published articles in the
Journal of Politics, Latino Studies, State
Politics and Policy Quarterly.
Drawing from in-depth interviews, she demonstrates
how Latino perceptions of social stigma shape collective
identities, social networks and forms of political
mobilization. Her respondents engage questions about
political marginality and empowerment that reveal how
class, gender and generation constitute significant
categories of difference among Latinos, overturning many
of the preconceptions social scientists have held about
the relationship between economic and linguistic
assimilation and political mobilization.
Fluid Borders includes the voices of many
individuals and offers new research on Latina
women, showing that they are more likely than men to vote
and to participate in political activities. The book
also considers how the experience of social stigma
affects the identification and political engagement of
members of marginal groups. This study points the way
toward a better understanding of the Latino political
experience, and how it differs from that of other racial
groups.
Bedolla's study addresses a very important
question about the electoral system in general. If this
system is an individualistic process, then how do we
explain the participation rates of one community where
there is greater participation and where the other
participates little or not at all? In asking these
questions of stigma, identity and group cohesion,
Bedolla captures the distinct role of the historical,
political and cultural context of the two communities.
Bedolla received her
bachelor's degree in Latin American studies and comparative
literature from the University of California, Berkeley,
in 1992; and in 1999 she received her doctorate in political
science from Yale University.
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