| Summary/Abstract |
The existing scholarship typically measures “Americanization” along structural lines—such as knowledge of public policies, percentage of life spent in the U.S., or proficiency in the English language. While these variables are certainly important, they overlook another important dimension of newcomers’ post-migration experiences—namely, immigrants’ psychological attachment and sense of belonging to the American social, political, and economic fabric. This article therefore reevaluates what it means to Americanize by exploring the psychological (or symbolic) dimensions of multigenerational immigrants’ evolving political beliefs toward the polity. In rethinking the process of Americanization, we rely on a largely understudied immigrant population—that is, the Los Angeles Armenians (or Armenian Angelenos)—and an original public opinion survey—the Armenian Angeleno Survey (AAS). This study demonstrates that symbolic (rather than merely structural) Americanization is a useful framework in studying how contemporary immigrant groups position themselves in relation to the polity and understand important political outcomes. This article thus introduces an expanded model based on how multigenerational immigrants cultivate their ethnic communities while becoming ideological members of American society.
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