New Immigrants in Local Politics

Jonathon Acosta, CSREA Interdisciplinary Opportunity Fellow

This talk will discuss how contemporary waves of migrants have captured local political power in a postindustrial New England community. It will apply a political demography lens to understand the rise of a pan-ethnic Latinx political majority.

Jonathon Acosta is a Ph.D. candidate in sociology at Brown University where he focuses on political sociology, inequality, race, and ethnicity. He’s currently a graduate fellow at the Center for the Study of Race and Ethnicity in America and a trainee at the Population Studies and Training Center. His dissertation is a community study of a postindustrial economically declining city that has been sustained via foreign-born migration. In his spare time, Acosta is a State Senator for Rhode Island District 16 representing Central Falls and Pawtucket.