Do Neighborhoods Empower or Disenfranchise?
Do Neighborhoods Empower or Disenfranchise?
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OSC Scientific Seminar 2021-2022
Friday 3rd December 2021, 11:30 am / 1 pm
Available on Zoom Videoconference
Do Neighborhoods Empower or Disenfranchise?
Coethnic concentration, spatial disadvantage, and voter registration in France
Haley McAvay & Pavlos Vasilopoulos
Lecturers (sociology & politics), University of York
Ethnoracial inequalities in political participation are a key feature of many advanced democracies. Prior research suggests that the socioeconomic and ethnoracial composition of citizens’ local communities could be driving these disparities.
This talk draws on longitudinal data linking individual- and neighborhood-level variables to explore the role of neighborhoods in shaping disparities in voter registration in France.
We make a novel contribution by focusing on both coethnic concentration and spatial disadvantage, controlling for individual heterogeneity to account for residential self-selection. Findings show a robust negative effect of living in a disadvantaged neighborhood on registration. However, proximity to coethnics increases registration among African origin citizens, yet depresses it among Europeans. These differential effects across groups shed new light on the underlying mechanisms of coethnic concentration: collective consciousness of discrimination is the likely mobilizing factor in African neighborhoods, whereas lower sociopolitical integration may hinder political participation in European neighborhoods.
Registration is mandatory (Zoom users: the link will be sent one day before)
