Residential concentration and political engagement among racialized Canadians: The moderating role of intragroup contact

Does living in communities with others from the same racialized minority background help or hinder political engagement? What role does social interaction with members of the same racialized minority group (intragroup contact) play? This paper addresses these questions with a systematic empirical investigation of political engagement in a large sample of racialized Canadians. Prior research assumes greater residential concentration of racialized group members leads to intragroup contact, but there is disagreement about whether the consequence is higher or lower levels of political engagement among members of racialized minority groups. We find no evidence that the residential concentration of Canadians from racialized groups has any independent effect on the political attitudes of racialized Canadians from the same groups. However, there is strong evidence of a more complex, conditional dynamic: if racialized minorities exhibit substantial intragroup social ties, then higher local concentrations of people from the same racial background leads to greater levels of political engagement among racialized minorities; however, if racialized minorities exhibit weak intragroup social ties, then higher local concentrations of people from the same racial background results in lower levels of political engagement among racialized minorities. Moreover, we find that, in part, this dynamic may be an indirect consequence of the ways in which non-racialized populations respond to local racial diversity. The findings may help to account for the incongruent results of previous studies of the effects of residential concentration on the political engagement of members of racialized minority groups.