There are more than 50 million Latinos currently living in the United States, making up 16.3% of the population. This represents a substantial increase from the 35 million Latinos who called the United States home 10 years ago. But is America truly “home” for Latinos? Or do recent immigrants find themselves to be outsiders in their new communities? These two books go a long way toward helping us understand the Latino population in general. Perhaps more importantly for scholars of politics, they also offer unique insights into the ways in which Latinos interact with political and civic institutions.

Both books start with the same question: How can we explain the (apparently) sudden mobilization of Latinos in 2006? That year, House of Representatives Bill 4437 proposed hardening criminal penalties for illegal immigrants, as well as making it a crime to knowingly aid an illegal immigrant in entering or remaining in the United States. The Latino community responded to this effort with marches in more than 125 cities within a two-month time span during the spring. An estimated 3 million people participated in these events, catching many observers of Latino politics off guard. The scope of these events, along with the noticeable participation of Puerto Ricans, Cubans, and native-born citizens suggests that current scholarship misunderstands Latino politics at a very basic level. These books attempt to correct our misconceptions, though in very different ways.

Latino Lives in America is the first book to come out of the Latino National Survey (LNS) project. Its release has been much anticipated, and its authors do not shy away from covering the wide array of issues that are of perennial concern to those interested in Latino politics. These include immigration, transnationalism, pan-ethnicity, education policy, experiences with discrimination, and intergroup relations. The method by which the authors choose to address these subjects deviates from what is typically seen within the literature and takes full advantage of the careful planning that went into the development of the LNS.

Rather than bombard readers with a complete description and analysis of the data gathered for the LNS, Luis Ricardo Fraga and his colleagues choose to concentrate on the stories gathered during the focus groups, which preceded the development of the LNS instrument. These focus groups aided the principal investigators in constructing a better-designed survey, but they also created information that stands on its own. Because the themes of the focus groups can be paired with data gathered later by the LNS, we are also not left with “words, not numbers.” Readers have access to both, even if the latter are only brought out in select chapters where their inclusion is most useful.

This book reminds us that Latino politics are complicated. This is something most scholars know intellectually, yet it has not prevented them from adopting overly simplistic narratives about Latino political behavior. These narratives are largely drawn from conclusions reached by those analyzing the data collected by the 1989 Latino National Political Survey (LNPS), which was a major step forward during its time but has become dated. The current Latino population is far more diverse in terms of national origin, and less than half of Latinos living in the United States today were potential respondents 20 years ago. Latino immigrants are also settling in many “new destination” states that were not on the radar for Latino politics scholars years ago.

Some of the focus groups conducted for the LNS took place in cities where the LNPS investigators would never have considered looking for subjects, such as West Liberty, Iowa, and Dalton, Georgia. Many of the participants came from the traditional “big three” national-origin groups (Mexican, Puerto Rican, Cuban), but they also included individuals from Central and South America. Fraga and his fellow authors are careful to point out the usual caveats associated with their approach. They refrain from making sweeping claims regarding generalizability and the comparability of their findings with those drawn from other methods. Still, the use of this open-ended format offers the reader a rare opportunity to hear participants' thoughts with clear meaning.

The literature on Latino political behavior has been littered with several perplexing empirical trends. For example, many Latino respondents say that it is very important to “blend into larger society,” even as an equal number say the same about “maintaining distinct culture.” The authors allow us to understand how seemingly contradictory positions such as these can coexist in the minds of respondents. They argue that such propositions are simply not viewed in either/or terms despite the fact that previous survey designers have intended them to be when developing instruments. The same unwillingness to see attitudes in an either/or framework appears when examining personal identity as an “American” or someone with strong ties to their country of origin. In fact, transnational ties may reinforce immigrants' attachment to the United States.

Another place where the book helps resolve tension within the empirical literature is on the subject of interracial contact. Scholars have long debated whether exposure to out-group members betters race relations by promoting social contact and eliminating false stereotypes or worsens relations by exacerbating a sense of competition between groups for political, economic, and social resources. The authors suggest that contact does not always produce a sense of closeness between different communities. Subjects often reported simply not knowing their non-Latino neighbors. They felt separate despite physical proximity.

Even with these rich insights, many would be disappointed if this was the only major project to come out of the Latino National Survey. Fortunately, the LNS data is already publicly available and has begun to generate numerous studies that build on many of the themes described in the book. The contribution of these authors has likewise only begun, with new projects utilizing the LNS data already near completion. Those works are also much anticipated, and whether they or Latino Lives in America makes the largest eventual contribution is unknown. Nevertheless, just as the development of the LNS instrument benefited from the information gathered from the focus groups, scholars will benefit immensely from reading what happened in those groups before digesting the findings coming out of the LNS.

Despite having a very different goal, ¡Marcha! bears many similarities to the work by Fraga and his colleagues. ¡Marcha! differs primarily in its scope. Amalia Pallares and Nilda Flores-González have put together an edited volume that offers significant depth on a topic that is narrower than the broad set of issues considered in Latino Lives. In seeking to explain how the immigrant rights marches unfolded in Chicago during 2006, the authors still must touch on a broad range of issues that will be familiar. Chapters consider the roles the role of the Catholic Church, news media, hometown associations, and the public school system in mobilization. This volume also offers readers a look at some unique data: a survey conducted by the Immigrant Mobilization Project (IMP) of 410 marchers. The IMP collected data on the identity of the marchers, their reasons for marching, and their history of political and civic engagement.

¡Marcha! is rich in background information but does not utilize this data to the full extent it could. Analysis of the data pops up in some chapters and is absent in others where one might think it relevant. When data are used, such as in Chapter 4's discussion of the Catholic Church, they are analyzed in a superficial manner, and some readers may want more than a handful of simple frequency distributions. Perhaps, like Latino Lives, this project is a first step and we will see more rigorous scholarship from the authors in the future.

One virtue of this study is that it asks us to rethink some of the basic assumptions held by scholars of Latino politics. The chapters argue against the portrayal of Latinos as a “sleeping giant” by showing us that the events of 2006 were anything but a spontaneous eruption. Instead, they were the product of an institutional campaign that built the capacity for large-scale mobilization by drawing on organizations that had already regularly mobilized subsets of the Latino population.

While the topics covered are varied, they are united by their common focus on immigrant empowerment. The volume would still have benefited from some broader reflection. The introduction briefly summarizes the chapters and introduces readers to the IMP data, but there is little foreshadowing about how these different pieces link together, other than being organized into broad clusters, such as “institutions.” Readers will undoubtedly draw many connections themselves. It nonetheless would have been useful to know how the editors saw these chapters relate to one another on a deeper theoretical level.

Criticisms aside, Pallares and Flores-González have put together an informative volume that will appeal to a wide range of audiences across disciplines. It would also be useful in courses on Latino politics or social movements. Latino Lives will have a similarly broad appeal, and most instructors should seriously consider adding it to their race and politics syllabi.