CHALLENGES TO CITIZENSHIP - LATINO IMMIGRANTS AND POLITICAL ORGANIZING IN THE LOS-ANGELES AREA

Los Angeles County is home to over 700 000 undocumented residents, lar gely from Mexico and Central America. They are largely poor and live i n segregated neighborhoods. As they have entered the country illegally they have no citizenship rights. Yet the political system in the Unit ed States rests on the assumptions of democratic consent and citizen p articipation. When there is an increasing divergence between the popul ation as a whole and an increasingly unrepresented politically active subgroup, the legitimacy of the political system itself is in jeopardy . In this paper, the political and economic organizing among undocumen ted Latino residents is examined, and questions are raised about the r eformulation of the notion of citizenship.