It's a Family Affair Intergenerational Mobilization in the Spring 2006 Protests

Up to a million children and teenagers participated in the 2006 immigrant rights marches. Why do young people engage in protest politics, and how are they mobilized into such activities? A longstanding literature on political socialization suggests that young people learn from their parents, acquiring political attitudes and interests from older generations. This article argues that for immigrant families processes of political learning and mobilization also occur in the reverse: Younger family members can use English language skills and differential access to political information to inform and mobilize parents. The authors make the case for a model of bidirectional political socialization and show how intergenerational communication and interaction can increase a whole family's political engagement by pooling different information sources and networks: from schools and new technologies among teens, and from workplaces, churches, and ethnic media among parents. We build our argument on 79 in-depth interviews with Mexican-origin teens and parents living in Richmond and Oakland, California, who are U.S.-born citizens, naturalized citizens, legal permanent residents, or undocumented migrants.