Civics on the Move: The Politics of Latinx Civic Integration

• Published date: 01 January 2023
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1177/00027162231190530
• Author: Christian O. Paiz,Lisa García Bedolla,Kris D. Gutiérrez
• Date: 01 January 2023
• Subject Matter: Civic Empowerment of Underrepresented Communities

192 ANNALS, AAPSS, 705, January 2023

DOI: 10.1177/00027162231190530

Civics on the

Move: The

Politics of

Latinx Civic

Integration

By

CHRISTIAN O. PAIZ,

LISA GARCÍA BEDOLLA,

and

KRIS D. GUTIÉRREZ

1190530ANN THE ANNALS OF THE AMERICAN ACADEMYCIVICS ON THE MOVE

research-article2023

Throughout the U.S., Latinx communities represent a

growing and critical segment of local, regional, and

national electorates, but they are underrepresented at

the polls. Their political disengagement stems from

their historical sociopolitical marginalization and a lack

of investment in their political integration. To foster

more civic engagement among Latinx students, we

propose recognizing their communities’ past and pre-

sent “lived civics,” which are the actions that address

community concerns but are often forgotten or not

considered as political. The conception of lived civics

that we propose provides a road map for fostering

Latinx agency and political efficacy, and our “civics on

the move” framework aims to strengthen democratic

institutions, ensuring that they represent the needs of

this critical segment of the U.S. population.

Keywords: Latinx politics and history; lived civics;

emancipatory pedagogies

Whenever men and women straighten their

backs up, they are going somewhere, because a

man can’t ride your back unless it is bent.

—Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., April 3, 1968

Correspondence: christian.paiz@berkeley.edu

Christian O. Paiz is an associate professor in ethnic

studies at the University of California, Berkeley. His

book, The Strikers of Coachella: A Rank-and-File

History of the UFW Movement, follows the lives of

Filipino and Mexican farmworkers in the United Farm

Worker movement.

Lisa García Bedolla is the University of California,

Berkeley’s, vice provost for graduate studies and dean

of the Graduate Division and a professor in the School

of Education. She uses social science to reveal the

causes of educational and political inequalities in the

United States. She has published six books, including

Mobilizing Inclusion: Transforming the Electorate

through Get-Out-the-Vote Campaigns.

Kris D. Gutiérrez is associate dean of the School of

Education, University of California, Berkeley. She is

also Carol Liu Professor of Education and brings exper-

tise in the learning sciences, literacy, educational pol-

icy, and qualitative and design-based approaches to

inquiry. Gutiérrez is a coauthor of Learning and

Expanding with Activity Theory.

CIVICS ON THE MOVE 193

Every electoral cycle, political pundits lament the state of Latinx political engage-

ment by accusing Latinx communities of apathy, disinterest, and outright lazi-

ness, as if, to use Dr. Martin Luther King’s quote above, Latinx communities,

with backs still bent, have nowhere to go. But what if the definition of civic

engagement was broader, encompassing more than just voting behavior, and

including any collective activity Latinx community members engage in to solve a

community problem? What would Latinx political engagement look like then?

And what does this viewpoint imply for U.S. civics education, Latinx students,

and the future of our democratic institutions? In this article, we argue that a

more capacious and critical account of civics in the United States will help us

recognize the rich array of past and present Latinx civic participation and help us

empower our students to address pressing civic issues.

Building on the “lived civics” scholarship (Cohen, Kahne, and Marshall 2018;

Santiago, de los Ríos, and Gutiérrez 2021), we understand Latinx lived civics as

encompassing all actions that sustain Latinx life and address community con-

cerns, values, and goals. This expansive definition of civics includes everyday

forms of community sustenance and empowerment, such as transnational mon-

etary remittances, cultural and linguistic affirmations and celebrations, reli-

gious associations, and various mutual aid networks. Lived civics is thus not

limited only to civic behaviors more traditionally associated with political cam-

paigns. Instead, it is a collection of informal and formal practices that have

direct and indirect political significance to Latinx communities and to broader

social structures inside and outside the U.S. We understand Latinx lived civics

as more expansive, and still inclusive of, the behaviors that political pundits

often associate with civic engagement. Latinx communities, we argue, can lev-

erage existing forms of community empowerment to effect political change in

the U.S. One contemporary example comes from Latinx students, especially

young women, who turn coming-of-age celebrations (quinceañeras) into family-

and community-based voter registration drives. The celebration itself requires

significant community participation, mutuality, and solidarity, and thus it repre-

sents a form of lived civics among participating community members. As Latinx

students are teaching us, it can also facilitate more political behaviors as it moves

into new spaces, such as the celebration’s network entering electoral realms by

way of newly registered voters.

A Latinx lived civics framework, in other words, attends to how people live

culturally across a range of settings and how people build civics repertoires as

they “move” across a range of practices and concerns. With this broader defini-

tion of civics, we identify a thriving Latinx civics in both the past and present, and

we stress its value for Latinx communities in articulating and achieving political

demands in the present and in the future. We also identify the historical and

contemporary role of social and political inequality in shaping U.S. civic partici-

pation and recognize that Latinx communities’ everyday forms of political

engagement are, in part, a response to these social and political inequalities.

Making visible this shared collective organization and history and using it to

engage students in the movement building already happening in their