My book project, Paradoxical Politics: Organizing Asian Americans’ Political Participation in a Southern Metropolis, details how the entrenched racial politics in the contemporary United States shape Asian American partisan political organizers’ experiences and their approach to organizing Asian American voters, many of whom are newly arrived immigrants. Particularly, it offers insights into how Asian American political organizers in a minority context organize Asian American voters and struggle to increase Asian Americans’ political power. The findings are based on 21 months of ethnographic fieldwork from March 2021 to November 2022 and 95 in-depth interviews with Asian American partisan and non-partisan political organizers in Houston, Texas.

By critically analyzing the experiences of Asian American political organizers, I use Asian Americans as a case to spell out the way immigrant minorities reproduce and reshape existing racial hierarchy when pursuing political power, as well as the marginalization and ostracism that they face when participating in politics. The findings advance our understanding of the impact Asian Americans have on US politics and race relations today.