Yuriko Takahashi

Residency: September 2021 – July 2022; September 2022 – June 2023

Research Project: Political Attitudes and Participation of Mexican Immigrants in the U.S.: A Study Using a Mixed-Method Approach

Research Interests: Mexican politics, political rights of Mexican immigrants in the U.S. and Mexico, Democratic representation of minority groups, comparative politics, political economy, social policy, quantitative methodology

Biography

Yuriko Takahashi is associate professor in political science at Waseda University in Japan. At the Center for U.S.-Mexico Studies, she plans to conduct a systematic study of the political attitudes and participation of Mexican immigrants in the U.S., addressing such questions as why the overseas voting rate was so low, what kind of immigrants voted, how much electoral information they received and how they made their voting decisions. Specifically, she is interested in devising a method to accurately estimate the population of Mexican immigrants in the U.S. and answer these questions by conducting a large-scale survey. Furthermore, she aims to conduct focus group interviews with leaders of the Home Town Associations (HTAs) to examine what kinds of efforts they have made to mobilize their compatriots’ votes in Mexican elections.

She holds a Ph.D. in government from Cornell University. She has constantly studied how interests of vulnerable groups are represented in newly established democracies in Latin America with a special focus on Mexico. She has employed a variety of quantitative and qualitative methods including extensive field work in Mexico. Her research on the political economy of poverty alleviation, quality of democracy, clientelism and politics of accountability reform were published in Japanese, English and Spanish. The past and current projects have been funded by the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science and several private foundations. She has served on the board of the Japanese Association for Comparative Politics (2021-Present) and the Japan Society of Social Science on Latin America (2010-16).