Claiming Citizenship

What are the factors that motivate the political mobilization of immigrants, and what strategies do they use to achieve political power? Claiming Citizenship looks at the civic and political activism of Indian Americans, currently the second-largest group of immigrants in the United States, and a group that has seen significant representation in the three most recent presidential administrations. Yet they do not follow the unified model of mobilization of other powerful American ethnic groups. Prema Kurien argues that race, religion and caste take on new layers of meaning through the Indian experience of racialization in the United States, and across generations of Indian Americans. This book is a template for understanding how religion, national identity, race, and pan-ethnicity interact in ethnic politics and the role that generational status plays in determining these patterns.