Strangers, Friends and the Political Realm: Increasing Arab Americans’ Political Behavior in the Face of Different Sources of Hate
Summary
This project explores the way in which different sources of hate and threats affect Arab Americans’ political behavior. Our results will shed light on when and why different sources of hate demobilize groups and how interventions can increase the willingness of such groups to politically participate, especially considering they are an increasingly important demographic in elections and mobilization across the United States. We propose a survey experiment to explore the dynamics of threat and political behavior, comprising a new understanding of how ethnic identity among Arab Americans in response to political threat affects their engagement with less traditional forms of participation, including protest voting (abstentions), demonstrations and boycotts. Our work seeks to explore how and why Arabs in the U.S. respond to and cope with these types of experiences and the types of interventions that can mitigate the negative effects of these experiences.
Team
Sabrina Habchi (PI), Political Science
Sabrina Habchi is a political science Ph.D. student at the University of California, Los Angeles, focusing on comparative political behavior. Her research primarily investigates the relationships between exposure to threat and discrimination and marginalized groups’ political behavior. She also examines the way in which the negative consequences of this type of exposure can be mitigated. Some of her current projects include evaluating the role this type of threat plays in affecting nonelectoral political behavior of ethnic minorities and women and interventions to counteract this type of threat across Western democracies. In addition, she also founded Womxn in Political Science, a group to promote community among and the professional development of women and women-identifying political science graduate students, and is a research associate for Women Also Know Stuff, an organization that promotes the work of women in political science.
Graham Straus, graduate student, Political Science
Graham is a fourth-year PhD student at UCLA. He is a political scientist studying American elections, local politics, and statistical methods. He works with national voter records to better understand when and why people turn out. Other projects include analyzing the economic impacts of political competition and describing who serves on the city council when elections are nonpartisan.