What leads Asian Americans and Latinos to develop panethnicity? What are the political consequences of panethnicity? In answering these two questions, I first define panethnicity as a sense of solidarity beyond different ethnic or national origins. My emphasis in defining panethnicity as a sense of solidarity shared among Asian Americans and Latinos is on differentiating the concept panethnicity from panethnic self-identification and group consciousness. Then, I theoretically discuss the nature of panethnicity, drawing on the ethnic studies literature. I identify two important groups of theories on ethnicity: culturalism and instrumentalism. Building on instrumentalism as an underlying theory of panethnicity, I assume that panethnicity among Asian Americans and Latinos is a social product. Panethnicity is a creation of both objective outer contextual settings and personal reactions to them. Following the theoretical discussion, I empirically test how outer contextual settings and individual features affect the formation of panethnicity. Specifically, the contextual factors include the size of the panethnic population, the level of segregation, the number of panethnic elected officials and organizations, and religious service attendance. The individual factors of interest include panethnic self-identification, discrimination experience, English proficiency and birth place. I call these factors individual socializing factors. After this test, I examine how panethnicity, combined with the contextual factors and individual socializing factors, affects political participation including voting and nonvoting activities among Asian Americans and Latinos. The main thesis of this dissertation is threefold. First, panethnicity is formed as a product of social process. Asian Americans and Latinos develop panethnicity by responding to external settings and through their personal socializing experiences. Second, panethnicity shapes Asian Americans' and Latinos' political participation. That is, panethnicity as a political resource influences voting and nonvoting participation among Asian Americans and Latinos. However, how panethnicity affects political participation varies, depending on panethnic groups and their modes of political participation. Lastly, along with panethnicity, group features such as discrimination experience and contextual factors are important ingredients for political participation among Asian Americans and Latinos. Particularly, my evidence suggests that the contextual factors are better predictors of Asian American and Latino voting participation than nonvoting participation.

<p><a>This study sought to identify obstacles and challenges that impact political participation and involvement among Latino voters. At the same time, it explored how the Latino Democrats of Allen County (LDAC), a constituency caucus in a primarily conservative area, could address such barriers to engage Latinos from the area politically (specifically in support of the Democratic party). Social Identity Theory provided a backdrop from which to examine the challenges and obstacles that Latinos face to participating in local government. By exploring these questions from the perspective of Social Identity Theory, I examined how a demographic in a primarily conservative area grapples with their political participation. Findings suggest that Latinos struggle with their participation due to lack of awareness about opportunity, low political efficacy, lack of trust in the political process and those that facilitate it, and lack of education about how the political process works. Literature on communication strategies and techniques used by organizations and groups with similar structures and goals provided a roadmap for constructing a functional and meaningful strategic communication plan for LDAC based on the findings from this study.</a></p>

People who are racialized in Sweden as ‘Asian’—a panethnic category—come from different countries or ethnic backgrounds and yet, often face similar, gender-specific forms of discrimination which have a significant impact on their whole lives. This thesis centres women who are racialized as 'Asian', focusing on how their racialization affects, and is shaped by, their social, professional and intimate relationships, and their interactions with others—in particular, with white majority Swedes, but also other ethnic minorities. Against a broader context encompassing discourses concerning ‘Asians’ within Swedish media, art and culture, Swedish ‘non-racist’ exceptionalism and gender equality politics, the narratives of nine women are analysed through the lenses of the racializing processes of visuality and coercive mimeticism, and epistemic injustice.