Reorganizing the hierarchy : issue salience and preferences among Latino national-origin groups

Political science has not adequately explored the many differences among Latino subgroups and what these differences may mean for policy preferences among Latinos in the aggregate. In this thesis, I seek to answer whether Latino subgroup identities have an effect on issue saliency and preferences and whether this effect remains relevant when accounting for the many socioeconomic and other factors that are thought to characterize Latino communities. I argue that Latino subgroup members have established goals and preferences that shape which issues they prioritize based upon their individual histories and interactions with U.S. policy. While a change in issue saliency may reorganize the hierarchy of preferences, it does not change the preferences themselves, just the attention given to an individual goal. These changes may appear to illustrate a stronger Latino solidarity overall and more homogenous opinion in terms of immigration policy, but they instead capture attention rather than the underlying established preferences among subgroups. This thesis constitutes a proposal to test this theory