Following the weakening of the Voting Rights Act in the United States, many Republican-controlled states enacted restrictive voting ID laws aimed at limiting franchise access to communities of color. In their research, Hajar Yazdiha and Blanca Ramirez examine how immigrant-serving organizations in five Southern states recalibrated their resources to help immigrants vote. Focusing on Alabama, they investigate five shifts these immigrant-serving organizations have made to address the impact of voter ID laws, which, the authors argue, shows how these restrictive laws can lead to new forms of organizing and resistance.
Hajar Yazdiha
Hajar Yazdiha is an assistant professor of sociology at the University of Southern California, faculty affiliate of the Equity Research Institute, and former postdoctoral fellow of the USC Turpanjian Chair in Civil Society and Social Change. Yazdiha’s research uses mixed methods to examine the mechanisms underlying the politics of inclusion and exclusion as they shape collective behavior, intergroup relations, and political culture. This work bridges subfields of race and ethnicity, migration, social movements, religion, and culture and has been published in numerous scholarly journals including Social Problems, Mobilization, Sociology of Race and Ethnicity, Ethnic and Racial Studies, and Socius.