How The Contemporary Mexican Immigrant Communities are Reshaping California’s Politics in 2025
- Vardui Chtrkyan
- Nov 8
- 3 min read
By: Yusra Asad
California’s political mainstream has always been closely tied to its immigrant communities. However, in 2025, the influence of Mexican-origin Californian immigrants has come too far and is impossible to overlook. From the city of Los Angeles to Fresno, the same families who built California’s farm lands, factories, and towns are now shaping the state’s policies and political landscape. Their voices echo in city halls and as far as to universities—reflecting a generation that no longer views itself as bystanders in American history.
According to an economist, Dr. Francisca M. Antman of the University of Colorado Boulder (2023), Mexican-origin Americans have shown “unusually large advances in education and earnings between the immigrant generation and the U.S.-born generations that follow.” Antman and her colleagues, such as Dr. Brian Duncan—an economics professor at the University of Colorado Denver, and Dr. Stephen J. Trejo—a labor economist at the University of Texas at Austin—analyze long-term labor data to trace these shifts. Their research found that while first-generation Mexican immigrants faced more shortage in a four-year school compared to second- and third-generation non-Hispanic individuals—the Mexican Americans in California have narrowed this gap immensely (Antman et al., 2023). This improvement shows the lasting impact of immigrant labor on California’s economy, as well as on its middle class. Antman’s credentials as a high-ranking economist at nationally recognized universities lend strong credibility to their findings, which essentially combine decades of census and survey data with across-generational analytics.
Although economic growth is only part of the Mexican immigrant communities, for Native Mexican Californians, empowerment may also occur from campaigning against discrimination. Dr. Sara L. Buckingham of the University of Alaska Anchorage et al. (2021) found that “oppression of immigrants is structured, constant, and incorporated throughout all levels of societies.” Still, those acts of resistance “often thrive in ‘empowering settings’ such as community organizations, schools, and faith-based networks.” The peer-reviewed policy briefly utilizes theoretical knowledge from psychology to illustrate that immigrant subgroups—especially those residing in California—create “counterspaces" that offer protection, ethnic pride, and opportunities for political engagement. In Los Angeles and the central valley of California, these counterspaces manifest as lawyers’ offices providing legal services to immigrants who face deportation threats or discrimination at work. The stress on establishing justice and decolonization by Buckingham strongly resonates with the efforts of Mexican Californians, who not only realize that politics accounts for an important part of activism but also is an act of survival.
While immigrant communities have surely gained power, public narratives around immigration remain divided. Dr Giovana Campani, professor at the University of Florence, studies this tension in her 2022 peer-reviewed study. Campani and her co-authors from Centro de Investigaciones de Política Internacional argue that the topic of immigration has recently been used as a form of populism and as an idea of threat within the framework of comprehensive national identities. The authors mention that “opposition to immigration means delimiting the borders of the nation,” which also represents an opposition to “globalization and multiculturalism” (Campani et al., 2022).
Together, these studies represent the ways in which California’s Mexican community is not simply responding to national politics but also shaping it. Experts such as Antman chart the economic success and growth of upward mobility. Psychologists like Buckingham describe the mechanisms of that success, and scholars such as Campani analyze the narratives that both obstruct and propel immigrant success.
As California prepares for the next local elections, Mexican-origin voters emerging as a deciding factor with almost 40% of California’s voting population are living in a narrative that not only expands them as a demographic phenomenon, but also symbolizes the transition from work to posititons of power, such as marginalized to represented.
In the words of Dr. Buckingham and her colleagues, resistance starts with dismantling oppression “within our own systems.” In 2025, that call connects all across California’s neighborhoods, where the power of diaspora has evolved into the power to define the future.
Works cited
Antman, F. M., Duncan, B., & Trejo, S. J. (2023). Hispanic Americans in the labor market: Patterns over time and across generations. Journal of Economic Perspectives, 37(1), 169–198. https://doi.org/10.1257/jep.37.1.169
Buckingham, S. L., Langhout, R. D., Rusch, D., Mehta, T., Chávez, N. R., Ferreiravan Leer, K., Oberoi, A., Indart, M., Paloma, V., King, V. E., & Olson, B. (2021). The roles of settings in supporting immigrants’ resistance to injustice and oppression. American Journal of Community Psychology, 68(3–4), 269–291.
Campani, G., Fabelo Concepción, S., Rodríguez Soler, A., & Sánchez Savín, C. (2022). The Rise of Donald Trump Right-Wing Populism in the United States: Middle American Radicalism and Anti-Immigration Discourse. Societies, 12(6), 154. https://doi.org/10.3390/soc12060154
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