Haitian Votes Matter Haitian Immigrants in Florida in Local Politics and Government

Haitian Votes Matter Haitian Immigrants in

Florida in Local Politics and Government

Chapter 1: Introduction to the Study

Introduction

In addition to having the right to vote, immigrants in the United States

also have the right to run for any office except for that of the President

(Corrigan, 2014). However, according to Portes and Rumbaut (2014), few

immigrants actually run or win elections. Barkan (2013) and de Graauw

(2014) stated that having U.S.-elected officials with immigrant backgrounds,

at the local or the national echelons, gives the immigrant population some

level of representation and a degree of influence in the U.S. political

mainstream. The more elected officials representing immigrant groups in

government, the more significant their political power in the United States.

The more power a group of immigrants has and the more involved a group

of immigrants is in their community public life, the more they sway the

outcome of presidential elections, especially in battleground states

(Hoschschild, Chattopadhyay, Gay, & Jones-Correa, 2013).

Power that derives from political activism and community

engagement ensures that immigrant groups are included in and are

benefitting from policy changes. According to Bhojwani (2014), political

mobilization is a tool that community leaders and immigrant professionals

utilize to communicate political opportunities available in the communities

with their respective immigrant constituents. Political mobilization enables

immigrants to incorporate into local politics and government in a

meaningful way (Alba & Foner, 2013; de Graauw, 2014). Political

mobilization help increase the number of officials elected into office.

Individuals who migrate from Haiti to the United States and

individuals born in the United States of at least one Haitian parent comprise

one of the many immigrant groups negotiating for power in the United

States. More than 1 million Haitian expatriate and Americans of Haitian

descent live throughout the United States in major states such as Florida,

New York, New Jersey, Massachusetts, Georgia, Pennsylvania, and Illinois

(Lucien, 2015). Haitian Hometown Associations (HHAs) and Haitian-

American Professional Associations (HAPAs)—composed of professionals,

community organizers, and political activists—are the critical nodes in a

network linking Haitian immigrants with policies and U.S.-elected officials.

HTA and HAPA members launch political mobilization strategies to

encourage Haitian immigrants to participate in electoral and nonelectoral

activities. Pierre (2015) noted that, despite policy implementation by HTA

and HAPA members, Haitian immigrants struggled to achieve an adequate

representation in the U.S. political mainstream. Adequate immigrant

political incorporation would have positioned Haitian immigrants in a

situation to enjoy the minimum level of political momentum necessary to

influence U.S. legislation (Wiltz, 2015). Their political incorporation would

have also given them the means to self-mobilize toward shifting

immigration policies to benefit Haitian immigrants, both newcomers and

long-term residents.

According to Trey and Spetick (2013), Haitian immigrants’

unresponsiveness to political representation has resulted in an ineffective

Haitian political force with little to no political value to U.S. lawmakers.

Local chapters of the Democratic and Republican parties did not also court

Haitian immigrants to participate or to become active players in local and

national elections. Hence, it was important to explore how HTA and HAPA

members did or did not mobilize Haitian immigrants to become engaged in

community and political activities.

It was also important to explore how the political mobilization of

Haitian immigrants affected Haitian immigrants’ abilities to achieve

political representation in the United States. The implications for positive

social change from my research may lead to legislative coalitions through

which leaders of the Haitian community can build the influence necessary to

lobby for changes in immigration policies and humanitarian aid policies to

Haiti. Results of my study may generate the development of sustainable

strategies that may foster enduring positive social change by incorporating

mobilization and community engagement behaviors to optimize the voice of

Haitian immigrants in their communities as well as increase their influence

of Haitian immigrants in the U.S. political landscape.

This chapter includes the background on the experiences of Haitian

immigrants in the Florida political mainstream. I address minority

incorporation theory, developed by Melissa and Anna (2013), to paint a new

picture of Haitian immigrants as a minority group struggling to establish a

political presence in the broader community and build political weight in

U.S. politics. I present the purpose of the study and key terms and

definitions to allow readers to understand the context and the setting of the

phenomenon. I also introduce the research design, target population, and

sampling strategies that I applied to recruit participants.

Background

The study of the political incorporation of the Haitian community

gained greater relevance after the earthquake that occurred in Haiti on

January 12, 2010. That earthquake killed approximately 300,000 people and

internally displaced more than 1.5 million persons (World Bank, 2013;

Yates & Paquette, 2014). According to Vigo (2015), since the earthquake, a

new breed of leaders emerged in the Haitian-American community who

worked to influence U.S. humanitarian aid policies to Haiti, as well as to

bring Haitian immigrants together for political empowerment (Pierre-Louis,

2013).

The new generation of leaders formed standalone, community-based

advocacy organizations, the HTAs and HAPAs. Scholars including Arnold

(2015), Bayor (2011), Lafleur (2015), Lafleur and Martinellio (2013), and

Pierre-Louis (2011) indicated that Haitian leaders became more politically

engaged in their communities in the early 2010s especially after the

earthquake of 12 January 2010 that destroyed thousands of homes and killed

thousands of lives. The 2010 earthquake prompted an increase in social

activity from Haitian Americans and Haitian immigrants desiring, wishing,

and wanting to help their homeland.

However, achieving political goals such as representation and

policymaking has proved to be difficult. This difficulty appears to be a result

of a lack of commitment to implement civic engagement and political

activism to mobilize the entire HaitianAmerican community to achieve civic

literacy (Alba & Foner, 2014). I focused on the perceived barriers to

participation or factors that seemed to prevent Haitian immigrants from

actively participating in the political aspects of their communities, states,

and federal government. My research also adds to the current knowledge of

the plight of Haitian immigrants in the US by providing a new and nuanced

portrait of lived experience of Haitian immigrants in seeking to achieve

political incorporation of their communities.

Problem Statement

Haitian immigrants in the United States made achieving their basic

needs a priority over becoming politically engaged in their communities

(Wah, 2013). Haitian immigrants did not become U.S. citizens for political

reasons, but for the immigration entitlements that a citizenship provides

(Lucien, 2015). Therefore, the Haitian population was growing

disproportionately to other immigrant groups that were actually voting or

running for office. As a result, the political presence and the political weight

of the Haitian-American community was unnoticeable by presidential

candidates as well as U.S.

lawmakers who, due to an ineffective representation and a low candidate

emergence, found no compelling interests in enacting and defending the

Haitian cause (Lafleur, 2013).

The rationale for my research was to understand the barriers that

seemed to prevent Haitian immigrants from actively participating in the

political aspects of their communities, states, and federal government to vote

and elect officials with Haitian backgrounds to public office in their

communities. Therefore, the central phenomenon of my research was the

incorporation of Haitian immigrants living in Florida communities to build

and maintain a political presence in their communities and to achieve a

policy responsiveness representation in local politics and government.

Recent studies explored the incorporation experienced by Africans,

South Asians, and Cubans in U.S. politics (Bedolla, 2015; Bhojwani, 2014;

Waweru, 2014). Nevertheless, there is a dearth of studies exploring the

process Haitian immigrants become involved in their community political

life. My study has bridged such a gap by documenting the activities

implemented by HTAs and HAPAs to help Haitian immigrants establish a

sustainable presence in the U.S. system of government; to gain policy

representation through the election of representatives of Haitian descent; and

to advocate for the political involvement of Haitian immigrants in their

neighborhoods, churches, clubs, and other political or civic associations.

Purpose of the Study

It is important to study the reasons that hinder Haitian migrants from

selfmobilizing politically to garner a political representation on both local

and national stages. This is because of the influence that community

engagement and political activism efforts may have on establishing a

political presence and a political weight in the U.S. political mainstream

(Alba & Forner, 2014; Hoschschild et al., 2013). It is also important to

understand the factors that prevented Haitian migrants from self-organizing

politically to attract U.S. lawmakers, presidential candidates, and officials of

the county and state political parties.

Therefore, in this qualitative phenomenological study, I explored the

perceived factors that appeared to hinder the Haitian expatriate community

from mobilizing effectively politically at local, state, and federal levels.

Specifically, I explored how

HTAs and HAPA in Florida help to mobilize Haitian immigrants in Florida

communities to incorporate into local politics and government. I also

explored how U.S. elected officials of Haitian descent influenced U.S.

legislation and acted to shift immigration policy to benefit Haitian migrants

in the US at the local, state, and federal levels.

The research was based on the Ramakrishnan (2013) and Browning,

Marshall, and Tabb’s (2003) models of immigrant political incorporation.

Ramakrishnan (2013) stated that political incorporation is measured by a

minority’s political presence and political weight in local politics and

government, whereas Browning et al. suggested that mobilization,

representation, and policy responsiveness as the main phases of political

incorporation. The Ramakrishnan and Browning et al.’s models of

immigrant political incorporation enabled me to better understand the

phenomenon of the lack of political mobilization of Haitian immigrants in

their communities.

Research Questions

Central Research Question: What were the factors perceived by the

members of the Haitian-American community that appear to hinder Haitian

immigrants from incorporating effectively into politics at local, state, and

federal levels?

Subquestion 1: What were the lived experiences and perceptions of

expatriate Haitian political leaders related to the barriers and impediments

to political mobilization at local, state, and federal levels?

Subquestion 2: What were the lived experiences and

perceptions of expatriate Haitian business and community leaders

related to the barriers and impediments to political mobilization at

local, state, and federal levels?

Subquestion 3: What were the lived experiences of perceptions of

expatriate Haitian community members who are recent citizens related to

the barriers and impediments to political mobilization at local, state, and

federal levels?

Subquestion 4: What were the perceptions of the Haitian-American

community in Florida regarding how U.S. elected officials of Haitian

descent influence changes in immigration and U.S. humanitarian aid to Haiti

policies?

Theoretical Framework

The theoretical framework for my research was the process of

minority political incorporation theory that was developed by Marschall and

Mikulska (2013). Marschall and Mikulska) developed this theory to explain

how African Americans were mobilized to incorporate into Louisiana’s

political mainstream. In their study, the scholars focused on the substantive

representation of Black Americans to explore areas where Black Americans

were better represented and areas where Black Americans were the least

represented. Marschall and Mikulska developed the process of minority

political incorporation theory to propose specific features and strategies for

Black Americans to win elections in Louisiana.

Marschall and Mikulska (2013) identified four stages of the process of

political incorporation. These four stages included candidate emergence,

electoral success, progressive political ambition, and substantive

representation. This theory allowed me to explain the lived experiences of

members of the Haitian immigrant community to present, after a thorough

data analysis, their opinions on the phenomenon of political incorporation in

Florida. It also allowed me to understand how Haitian immigrants were

engaged in electoral and nonelectoral activities to promote candidate

emergence, and to achieve electoral political goals such as political

representation and influences that affected policymaking.

I applied Marschall and Mikulska’s (2013) process of minority

political incorporation as the logical guide of my study to understand better

the strategies (if any) implemented by HTAs and HAPAs to encourage

Haitian immigrants to become involved in their community political life to

establish a political presence and build weight in the Florida political fabric.

Considering few U.S.-elected officials with the Haitian background hold

public office in Florida, particularly in Miami, the Marschall and Mikulska

process of minority political incorporation theory allowed me to understand

the processes by which Haitian immigrants were or were not mobilized to

incorporate into

Florida’s political mainstream.

Nature of the Study

I applied the Van Manen (2014) phenomenology method to explore

the reasons behind the unsuccessful political incorporation of Haitian

immigrants into local politics. The phenomenology approach allowed me to

explore the phenomenon through the lenses of Haitian Americans with

direct knowledge and experience of the phenomenon. The rationale for the

selection of the phenomenological method over a case study approach was

based on the fact that with the phenomenological method, I was able to

collect the experiences and understandings of Haitian immigrants of the

phenomenon of interest.

A case study differs from a phenomenology study for the former

would have allowed me to investigate the development of the political

incorporation of Haitian immigrants in Florida within a specific period

without capturing their experiences, perceptions, or their understanding of

the phenomenon. A case study focuses separately on the event the

experiences while a phenomenology design focuses on the participants and

their experiences together (Flyvbjerg, 2013; Sauro, 2015). My goal was to

capture the lived experiences of Haitian immigrants regarding political

incorporation; therefore, a phenomenology design was more suitable to help

me gain such understandings. In addition, I chose a phenomenology

approach over an ethnography approach because the aims of the study did

not involve understanding a particular phenomenon, but barriers to

community engagement and to civic engagement. Likewise, I did not select

a grounded theory approach because I did not intend to develop a new

theory.

I collected data from 10 members of HHAs, Haitian-American

professionals, and other politically active community members in the

Haitian-American community in Florida, particularly in Miami. I

administered an in-depth interview with open-ended questions to the

participants. Due to limited financial resources and geographical

restrictions, I delivered the in-depth interview through a web-based platform

called Zoom Video Communications. I used Dedoose, a computer data

analysis software package, to analyze the data and to help identify emergent

themes that was generated from the indepth interviews (Silver, 2012; Stone,

2013).

Definitions

Haitian immigrant community: According to Lucien (2015), Lafleur

(2015), Trey and Spetick (2013), and Pierre (2015), the term Haitian

immigrant community refers to

Haitian immigrants living abroad, and in the case of my study, those living

in the United States, particularly in Florida. This term is also extended to

Americans with the Haitian background or Americans with at least one

Haitian parent (Burga, 2012).

Hometown associations: Bayor (2011) defined hometown associations

as the link connecting the Haitian immigrant community to Haiti through the

practice of sending remittances, which are monies sent to struggling family

members still residing in Haiti. Since after the earthquake of January 12,

2010, many HTAs in Miami launched social programs and political

activities to encourage Haitian immigrants to be involved in their

community political life (Trey & Spetick, 2013).

Policy responsiveness representation: According to Dovi (2014) and

Alba and Foner (2014), policy responsiveness representation refers to the

relationship between the constituency and their elected officials. In the view

of Reingold and Harrell (2010), political representation is how elected

officials defend constituents’ needs.

Political incorporation: Hoschschild et al. (2013) defined immigrant

political incorporation as the process through which immigrants or groups

of immigrants become involved in their community political life.

Political mobilization: According to Beyer (2014) and Shertzer

(2013), political mobilization is the process by which a group or groups of

individuals combine their resources toward accomplishing specific goals.

Assumptions

I assumed that the Haitian community in Florida was representative of the

larger

Haitian community in the United States. I selected Florida for my study

because 65% of

U.S. Haitian immigrants and Haitian-Americans live in Florida (Lucien,

2015). I also assumed that findings from my study may be transferrable to

other Haitian immigrants across the United States because individuals in the

Haitian community in other states may experience the same challenges. I

also assumed that Haitian immigrants lacked the political enthusiasm

necessary to be involved in their community political life.

Hence, a cohesive mobilization that would promote community

engagement and political activism may capitalize on the political

possibilities offered by Florida as a battleground state. I also selected

Florida for my study because I assumed that the Haitian vote could sway

presidential elections in Florida where a mere 500-vote difference can have

significant influence on which candidate wins the elections (Gordian, 2012;

Menchaca, 2010). I also assumed that the Haitian community in Florida had

more potential to be mobilized politically due to its growing size. As such, if

mobilized to promote candidate emergence and policy changes, the Haitian

community in Florida could become the model for other Haitian enclaves

across the country to emulate.

Scope and Delimitations

I selected the state of Florida for my study because, according to

Romero (2018), as off 2017, in south Florida alone, there were 333,000

documented Haitian immigrants, of whom 244.000 were U.S.-born or

naturalized. Romero further stated that with an approximation of 75,000

Haitian immigrants, North Miami is the largest voting bloc of the state of

Florida. Moreover, Lucien (2015) advanced that, of the 1 million Haitian

immigrants living in the United States, 650,000 live in Florida. Thus,

Florida provided a solid ground for the mobilization of Haitian immigrants

at the local and state levels of

Florida politics.

The state of Florida was also appropriate for my study because it

offers many political opportunities for Haitian immigrants (Bostrom,

Brown, & Cechvala, 2016). As a swing state, should the Haitian vote

become attractive, Haitian immigrants could be in a unique position to affect

the next and future presidential elections.

The population of interest for my study included individuals of

Haitian descent in Florida who were political activists, community

organizers, spiritual leaders, professionals, or those in a leadership position

in the Haitian-American community. I selected participants who met the

eligibility criteria regardless of their gender, economic status, or political

orientation and were at least 18 years of age.

Although the target population of the study was the Haitian immigrant

community in the United States, other Haitian-American communities in

other U.S. locations were excluded. However, considering that the Haitian

communities in other states are also underrepresented in local politics and

government, findings from my study were generalized, replicated, or

transferred to them as well.

I did not cover the historical, cultural, and anthropological aspect of

Haitian immigration to the United States. Rather, I covered the Haitian

immigrant community as a potential political force that could affect the

outcomes of presidential elections in Florida. I did not focus on areas where

the Haitian immigrant community were more represented or least

represented nor did it focus the number of candidates or elected officials

representing the Haitian community. Rather, I focused on the Haitian

immigrant community as a whole to determine the reasons behind their

underrepresentation and their weak influence to shift appropriate policies to

benefit Haitian immigrants and Haiti.

Limitations

The study was limited to describing the process, not the results of the

Haitian community’s political mobilization, because it was already clear that

the Haitian immigrant community has not achieved incorporation into their

community political life. Given that many immigrant groups were

attempting to have a more significant presence and weight at local and

national levels (Bedolla, 2015), I did not focus on the political competition

and the power imbalances among groups of immigrants. Although scholars

have indicated that immigration policies played a vital role in immigrant

political incorporation, the majority of Haitians were aware of the process

and the various immigration forms and fees required to become legal or to

file for residency for their loved ones back home (Lucien, 2015). As such, I

did not specifically address immigration policies.

The first limitation of my study was participant access. There was no

official database of HTAs and HAPAs operating in the United States.

Moreover, no official databases of U.S.-elected officials of Haitian descent

were found after many Internet searches and phone calls to city halls,

Florida, New York, and Massachusetts Black Caucus local elected officials.

These organizations claimed that such data could not be collected because of

discrimination laws in place preventing data collection by country of origin.

Few city halls were willing to provide such information. To mitigate that

situation, I ended up relying on social networks to look for HTAs and

Haitian-American professionals as prospective participants for my study.

I identified one location where HTAs and HAPAs met to disseminate,

communicate, and exchange ideas and information among themselves.

According to Wesolowski (2014) and Borgatti and Everett (2013), the rapid

rise of social networks provides an attractive tool for identifying and

recruiting prospective participants. I used the 11th Department online

platform, where Haitian immigrants form online communities to share ideas,

as my recruiting tool. The 11th Department is a social professional network

for Haitian professionals who are seeking to reach out to Haitians living in

Haiti and Haitians immigrants across the world, particularly in the United

States. Haitian professionals use the network as a marketing tool to advertise

their services to the community (Devara, 2010). Haitian professionals,

political activists, and community organizers used the 11th Department

website as a connection tool to connect with other

Haitian professionals and to show the international community the works of

a mobilized Haitian-American community in the United States. To date, the

11th Department network lists 221 organizations and more than 300

members. It also publishes a monthly newsletter that reaches more than

14,000 Haitian immigrants around the world (Devara, 2010).

Members of the 11th Department website post content (e.g., news

articles, photos, and videos), create groups and blog pages, buy and sell

Haitian products, post resumes, and job listings. HTAs and HAPAs use this

platform as a recruiting and advertising tool to build relationships with

friends, members, and followers (11th Department, 2016). I used the 11th

Department network because of geographical and monetary resource

restrictions.

The second limitation dealt with sample size and sample

representation. Kukull and Ganguli (2012) stated that selecting the right

sample size increases the generalizability and the dependability of research

results. Considering that approximately 330,000 documented Haitians live

in south Florida and North Miami, it was critical to select a sample that

represents the generalized population. Marshall, Cardon, Poddar, and

Fontenot (2013) posited that developing comprehensive criteria was a step

necessary to ensure samples are representative of the general population. I

reached data saturation when I obtained the same information or when there

was no room for more information to emerge about the phenomenon.

According to Fusch and Ness (2015), researchers reach data saturation when

there is no emergence of in depth information about a phenomenon.

The third limitation dealt with personal biases. According to Creswell

(2013), personal biases may originate from a researcher’s prior knowledge

of the phenomenon under study and a researcher’s prior relationship with

the participants. Because of my background as a Haitian immigrant who is

now a Haitian-American, it was likely that I held in abeyance my

preconceived beliefs of the phenomenon.

My goal was to approach the research with new perspectives and

ensure I did not incorporate into the data analysis my own interpretations of

the problem. Consequently, I did not have prior relationships with the

prospective participants. I recruited members of HTAs and HAPAs through

a purposeful sampling strategy. Moreover, I developed predefined questions

and I had respondents review their responses and my interpretations of their

responses as ways to address potential personal biases.

Significance

The current picture of the Haitian community was incomplete.

Previous studies presented the Haitian people in the United States as hard

workers who remain emotionally and culturally connected with their

homeland and who generally do not contribute to U.S. politics (Telus, 2011;

Titus, 2012; Zacair, 2010). I aimed to advance the current body of

knowledge by presenting a new portrait of the political perceptions of the

Haitian-American individuals who, as a group, had the potential to sway

election outcomes in the United States, especially in battleground states such

as Florida.

Other studies indicated that the Haitian immigrant community was

unorganized and thus the reason that its legislative efforts failed to gain

traction or catch the attention of U.S. lawmakers (Wiltz, 2015). My study’s

findings empowered the Haitian community to frame a cohesive strategy to

appeal to all Haitian immigrants across the

United States. My study’s findings can also advance changes in the way

organizational leaders and professionals in the Haitian-American

community communicate the political mobilization message as well as how

they socialize community and political events to the rest of the broader

Haitian community.

In terms of implications for positive social change, the Haitian

immigrant community may begin to become more active in their community

to support candidates and policies and thus establishing a political presence.

Haitian Americans may also begin to assume bigger roles in the political

arena by running and being elected into offices and thus building a political

weight to enjoy a policy responsiveness representation. With a political

presence in their communities and political weight in local politics and

government, presidential candidates, and the local chapters of the

Democratic and the

Republican parties will begin to court the Haitian vote.

Summary

In this chapter, I introduced the research by providing a thorough

background of the activities of the Haitian immigrant community in the

United States to incorporate into

Florida’s politics and local government. I presented the social change such a

research may have on the existing literature of immigrant political

incorporation in the United States. I described the rationale and the

significance of the study while giving an overview on the sample and

sample size I selected as participants. I also provided an overview of the

sampling strategies, the theoretical framework, the interview strategies, and

the site I selected to recruit 10 individuals with lived experiences and had

deep knowledge of the phenomenon.

In Chapter 2, I present the literature review for my study with a strong

emphasis on the process of minority political incorporation theory

developed by Marschall and Mikulska (2013). In this chapter, I provide an

exhaustive review of the literature through which I explain key themes like

political incorporation, political presence, political weight, and

representation, among others.

Chapter 2: Literature Review

Introduction

Approximately 2 million individuals of Haitian descent are living

legally in the United States, many of whom are not registered to vote or are

not interested in U.S. politics (Lucien, 2015; Wah, 2013; Wiltz, 2015). The

few who are registered are not actively engaged in their community public

life either as voters or as candidates. Due to their inert position, Haitian

immigrants have a low level of representation in local politics and

government (Wiltz, 2015). No comprehensive strategy exists to motivate,

inform, educate, and substantially increase the political value of the Haitian

constituency in Haitian-American communities (Pierre-Louis, 2011). Due to

poor community engagement and political activism, there appears to be no

direct legislative advocacy to influence American legislation on immigration

and humanitarian aid to Haiti (Rigueur, 2011).

Therefore, the Haitian community in the United States, particularly in

Florida, was not incorporated into local politics and government. Despite

multiple efforts by HTA and HAPA, the Haitian community’s political

mobilization strategy failed to gain traction to bring their civic engagement

and political activism to fruition. Haitian immigrants did not have a strong

political presence in their community, were underrepresented in local

politics and government, and lacked a cohesive mobilization movement to

grow as an attractive political force in the United States (Spetick, Spetick, &

Krtesedemas, 2001;

Wiltz, 2015).

I explored the political mobilization, or lack thereof, of Haitian immigrants

in the

United States to examine factors that hinder their ability to achieve a

representation in the U.S. political mainstream. I also explored the Haitian

community’s political alliance with other Haitian associations to determine

how they strengthened or weakened the efforts to influence policymaking

regarding the Haitian immigrant community.

After the earthquake on January 12, 2010, in Haiti, an estimated

96,000 Haitians immigrated to the United States (U.S. Census Bureau,

2012). This immigration was an opportunity to explore the Haitian

immigrant community in the United States. Gow

(2012) and Lindskoog (2013) primarily studied how U.S. humanitarian aid

to Haiti since 2010 affected the country’s sustainable economic

development. They also studied how, through remittances, the Haitian

immigrant community improved the sociopolitical and economic

development of Haiti (Rigueur, 2011; Terrazas, 2011; Wah, 2013).

According to Joseph (2015), Katz (2014), and Wah (2013), the Haitian

community implemented community projects to advocate for a better

management of funds allocated to Haitian earthquake recovery. The Haitian

advocacy efforts received little attention from U.S. lawmakers or the U.S.

media due to a poor outreach to local and national politicians (Lafleur, 2013;

Wiltz, 2015). Haitian community-based organizations were mainly

composed of wealthy and educated Haitian immigrants who attempted to

bring their advocacy agenda to the general population (Katz, 2014).

According to Wah, the organizational leaders and professionals in the

Haitian-American community failed to strategize to build a political force in

their community.

A disorganized Haitian immigrant community had arguably led to an

unattractive political force, which in turn has reduced the opportunity of

Haitian immigrants to influence U.S. policymaking, especially in the areas

of foreign assistance and immigration (Wiltz, 2015). Without an influence in

policymaking, the Haitian community did not have a voice for change and

assistance on important issues such as healthcare, immigration, and foreign

aid funds.

Without an organized and engaged political voice, the needs and demands

of the

Haitian community remained unanswered. According to Hochschild et al.

(2013) and Bhojwani (2014), the degree to which minorities or immigrant

groups affect policymaking is related to the extent to which they incorporate

their community in local politics and government. De Graauw (2014) stated

that political incorporation gives immigrants a political value with

opportunities to catch the attention of both the local and federal government.

Alba and Foner (2013) and Kurien (2014) posited that political

incorporation allows immigrants to have a political presence in their

community and a weight in local politics. Preuhs and Hero (2011) conveyed

that political presence and political weight are tools that immigrants need to

attract the entities that will listen and consider their demands. Through a

comprehensive mobilization, the Haitian community could achieve political

goals such as a descriptive representation and favorable policymaking. The

Haitian immigrant community has been in dire need of organized efforts

since the year 2000 (Lafleur, 2015; Rey & Stepick, 2013). With the delay in

political incorporation of the Haitian immigrant community, their political

goals continue to go unaddressed. Political incorporation is a process that

includes political mobilization through community engagement and political

activism. A comprehensive political mobilization leads to outcomes such as

political presence and political weight, or immigrant influence in local

politics through a descriptive representation and policy responsiveness.

In this chapter, I explore the extent of the political incorporation of the

Haitian immigrant community in the politics and governance of the United

States. Specifically, I describe how the Haitian immigrant community was

represented in U.S. politics and whether their political mobilization was

translated into a policy responsiveness representation in local politics and

government. I explain Marschall and Mikulska’s (2013) process of political

incorporation theory, which was the theoretical framework on which my

study was based. This chapter, moreover, provided an overview of

Hometown Associations, HAPAs, and U.S.-elected officials with Haitian

descent to explore what was known about mobilization and participation, or

the lack thereof, among Haitian immigrants and their counterparts.

Literature Search Strategy

The adequate and relevant literature of the political incorporation of

the Haitian immigrant community in the United States included appropriate

documentation such as books, policies, publications, and articles from

journals including the Academic Search Complete, Google Scholar, SAGE,

the Walden ProQuest, ArticleFirst, the UCLA Library, and ProQuest

Central. Keywords and Boolean phrases included the Haitian immigrant

community, political activism, community engagement, political activism of

Haitian immigrant community, community engagement of Haitian immigrant

community, cultural assimilation, political assimilation, and Haitian

migration to the US. Other keywords and phrases included Haiti Hometown

Associations (HTAs), Haitian

Professional Associations (HPAs), U.S. elected officials of Haitian descent,

mobilization, political mobilization, policy responsiveness, descriptive

representation, and political incorporation.

Background

Recent History

The primary sources of information for the phenomenon of political

incorporation are contained in the research of scholars and authors. Pierre-

Louis (2013) highlighted that corruption and unending violence coupled

with the unwillingness of the successive Haitian governments to maintain

relationships with Haitian immigrants played a significant role in the

decision of Haitian immigrants to become oriented toward local and national

politics. Pierre-Pierre (2016) stated that Haitian-American leaders and

Haitian Community-Based organizations have the responsibilities to

incorporate themselves into the U.S. political system and thereafter educate,

inform, and engage the general population to increase voter and political

participation.

After the earthquake of 2010, Haiti’s existing financial troubles

became much worse. Much of the Haitian immigrant community in the US

tried to help their homeland during those difficult times. Rigueur (2011) and

Telus (2011) gave a background and understanding of how, through

community-based and hometown associations, Haitian immigrants

contributed financially to alleviate poverty in their homeland. Rigueur

conducted a qualitative study to evaluate, among other things, the migration

of Haitians to the US and the Haitian immigrant community in the US, as

well as Haitian political and professional organizations. Rigueur found that

the Haitian immigrant community is an important factor in U.S. politics and

policymaking regarding Haiti. However, Rigueur also found that the

financial help the US and the Haitian immigrant community in the US

provided to Haiti has been detrimental to the country because it prohibits

political cohesion and self-sufficiency, enabling Haiti to depend on the US

rather than solving its own economic troubles. Lindskoog (2013) provided

examples of Haitian mobilization to topple the Duvalier regime and support

the Aristide government; however, the thesis did not fully state or analyze

how the political actions of Haitian immigrants influences their voting

behavior in the US.

In contrast to Rigueur’s (2011) study, Wah (2013) gave a detailed

report of the sociopolitical actions of the Haitian immigrant community and

stated that it is necessary for Haiti to rely on support from the Haitian

immigrant community in the US. Wah noted the fact that Haitians living in

Haiti have significantly less education than the Haitian immigrant

community in the US, with 93% of the Haitian immigrant community over

age 25 having had schooling compared to only 40% of Haitians in Haiti.

Due to this, Wah stated “Haiti has the highest illiteracy rate in the Western

Hemisphere” (p. 62). This failing in education is why Wah argued that Haiti

has no option but to accept and rely on support from the immigrant

community, despite Rigueur’s (2011) postulations that such help could hurt

the country. Wah’s (2013) research also found that the Haitian immigrant

community has not yet been able to construct a strategy to work together

toward the small goal. Although the homeland government does not invite

them to contribute politically to Haitian development, Haitian immigrants

continue to form organizations to raise funds to finance local projects

(Lafleur & Martiniello, 2013; Lucien, 2015). Haitian immigrants, mainly the

well-educated and the wealthy do incorporate into the U.S.

political system, but the general population has yet to build a mature

political force. The reason for the lack of voter participation is the absence

of a platform to civically educate the Haitian community (Rey & Stepick,

2013). These studies fail to analyze the root cause of the phenomenon for

they focus on the problem within only a portion of the plight and actions of

Haitian immigrants in Haitian-American communities.

Impact on U.S. Policy

Several studies also addressed the importance of the Haitian

immigrant community vote in the State of Florida, which is an important

swing state in presidential elections and has a large Haitian population.

Wiltz (2015) explained the incorporation of Haitian immigrants in the US,

especially in Florida where 65% of Haitian immigrants live. However, Wiltz

did not focus on the impact that community and political activism may have

on bringing more Haitians to voting polls. East (2012) explained that

HaitianAmericans in Florida were energized to vote for Barrack Obama in

2007, but the momentum died down by 2012. Haitian-Americans were

reluctant to vote for Obama because of the high skepticism and suspicion

that the Obama Administration had trampled upon Haitian laws and

institutions to legitimize narcotic trafficking and promote governmental

corruption (Ives, 2015). Haitian community-based organizations in the

United States accused the Obama Administration of interfering, high

jacking, and manipulating the 2010 election results to advance Mr. Michel

Martelly over Mr. Jude Celestin who was officially qualified to face off

Professor Mirlande Manigat in the 2010 runoff election (Neinaber, &

Beeton, 2014). These organizations also accused the Obama Administration

of allowing the Bill and Hillary Clinton Foundation to misuse the money the

Clinton Foundation collected for Haiti earthquake recovery.

Moreover, the Obama Administration did not intervene to hold the

United Nations accountable for the spread of cholera throughout the country

(Sietenfus, 2014). DeWind and Segura (2014) and Seitenfus (2013) stated

that the Obama Administration did not answer the requests to repurpose

funds the US Congress allocated yearly to the US Aid for International

Development (USAID) for Haiti. HAPAs, HHAs, and HaitianCommunity

Based Associations submitted numerous letters and projects to Congress and

State legislatures showing the potential worth of the Haitian immigrant

community to the sustainable economic development of Haiti (Wah, 2013).

The Haitian-American community has the necessary human and financial

capital to be involved in Haiti’s socio political and economic infrastructure

as well as to contribute, invest, or even assist in how the USAID and its

partners commit funds to implement projects for Haiti’s recovery.

Through Haiti Special Coordinator, Ambassador Kenneth Merten, the

Haitian immigrant community claims that Haitian-Americans can create

more jobs in Haiti and in the US than the USAID can; however, the Obama

administration did not give their support to the Haitian immigrant

community. Although the Obama administration granted temporary

protected status (TPS) to undocumented Haitians who were living in the US

prior to the earthquake of 2010, more Haitians were deported back to Haiti

under

Obama than any other previous administrations (Mazzei, 2016; Xenakis,

2016).

Political Incorporation

Several books and other research articles related to the concept of

immigrant political incorporation was used in the study. Bhojwani (2014)

explained the engagement of South Asians in their community public life.

The scholar studied the South Asian immigrant community in New York

and their influence on political officials through qualitative interviews with

participants and case studies. Bhojwani (2014) conducted 26 participant

interviews. Bhojwani stated that involvement in nonprofit organizations

could help provide low- and middle-income immigrant community members

with increased civic knowledge and skills that in turn increase civic

engagement. Bhojwani (2014) found that nonprofit organizations were vital

mobilizers for the immigrant community as it helped educate, train, and

engage members in civic matters. Dovi (2014) emphasized the different

types of political representation, while Ekman and Amna (2012) explained

in detail the concepts of minority political participation and civic

engagement. Gay (2007) showed that representation in politics and

government gave minority the influence to be involved and to influence

policymaking for their districts. Gillion’s (2014) study focused on U.S.

presidents, policy, and their impact on minority communities through an

assessment of presidents’ speeches, publications, and public opinion from

1990 through 2012. Gillion argued that minority behaviors and public policy

are linked, with one influencing the other. Gillion found that minority

activism, such as protests, can have a great impact on policymaking.

Hochschild et al. (2013) showed that mobilization is the most viable tool

that immigrants can use to become embedded social actors into their

community. All of these articles, and more, was synthesized and discussed

in this chapter.

Theoretical Foundation

The theoretical framework for my research was the process of

minority political incorporation that Marschall and Mikulska developed in

2013. In their study, Marschall and Mikulska examined the process through

which Black people sought and held political offices in the State of

Louisiana. Simply put, the authors studied the representation of Blacks in

local government to determine where they made the most progress, where

they made the least progress. They studied also areas in which they could

improve should they mobilize and educate the Black population to register

to vote, participate in town hall meetings, sign and submit petitions, know

their representative, and support a specific candidate. With such a

knowledge base, the Black community in Louisiana would have had an

adequate force to increase their representation in local politics and thereafter

pressure their representative to be responsive to the interests of Blacks living

in both major and inner cities. Political literacy provides minorities the

necessary muscle to push their representative towards influencing

policymaking (de Graauw, 2014). I selected Marschall and Mikulska’s

(2013) minority political incorporation theory because, despite its emerging

political constituency of approximately two million individuals, the Haitian

community remains a minority group in the U.S. that has yet not made

substantial gains in local politics to influence relevant policies (Baerg,

Hotchkiss, & Quispe-Agnoli, 2014). In comparison to other minority

groups, especially the Hispanic and Jewish communities, local chapters of

political parties and national candidates have not deployed known strategies

to court the votes of the Haitian immigrant community (Bedolla, 2015; Rey

& Stepick, 2013). This theory may allow me to understand and then help to

offer a fresh and more nuanced portrait of the Haitian immigrant

community. Through this portrait, I may be able to highlight the unlimited

political potential to sway future presidential elections in the US, especially

in battleground states such as Florida. It will also allow me to describe the

process of the Haitian immigrant community’s political incorporation by

analyzing how they are mobilized to establish a policy responsiveness

representation in the US.

Shift in the Haitian Immigrant Community Cultural Identity

Younger Haitian immigrants are adopting lifestyles that seem to

bridge both U.S. and Haitian cultures. Telus (2011) noted the cultural

fluidity of younger Haitian immigrants who willingly espouse the U.S. way

of life, while continuing to participate in

Haitian cultural events such as Haitian Flag Day and Haitian Independence

Day. Galgano, Arndt, and Hyser (2012) affirmed that Haitian migrants

developed various formal and informal networks in their communities to

promote Haitian pride, assist each other, connect Haitian immigrants with

specific policies, and promote a sense of community (Lafleur, 2015; Lucien,

2015; Rey & Stepick, 2013). Mooney (2013) observed that the cultural shift

in the Haitian immigrant community has manifested through the

establishment of various community organizations. The various Haitian

Community-Based Organization include the Haitian American Foundation

Inc. (HAFI), the Haitian Women in Miami (FANM), the Florida Department

of Children and Family in North Miami, and Haitian Support Inc. Notably,

such agencies affirmed to have an integral role in dealing with the problems

that Haitian immigrants face (Wiltz, 2015). The shift in the cultural

identity of the Haitian community has also been evident in the participation

of Haitians in local elections. According to Galgano, Arndt, and Hyser

(2012), Haitian-Americans become involved in their community public life

to eradicate integration challenges faced by the earlier waves of Haitian

migrants. They also want to ensure that current and new waves of

immigrants are informed of immigration procedures and social and legal

services available to facilitate integration into their communities. LeMay

(2012) and Gow (2012) contended that Haitians residing in Florida,

Massachusetts, and New York are more politically active than Haitians

living in Illinois, Georgia, and Pennsylvania.

The number of U.S. elected officials and candidates of Haitian descent

and the formation of hometown and professional associations with political

undertones prove that the Haitian immigrant community is getting involved

in local politics and governments. However, their progression to political

incorporation has yet to reach the desired target and to achieve the desired

outcomes. The low number of elected officials, the weak participation in

community affairs, and the light political weight in the Haitian community

may be the result of low voter turnouts in local elections as well as the

political mobilization message that has not yet caught up with the larger

Haitian population.

A Booming Political Minority

The Haitian immigrant community is an emerging political

constituency in the US, but it is still a slow-moving political electorate. Very

little attention is drawn to its patterns of involvement in local affairs as well

as participation in their community electoral process. Historians,

anthropologists, and sociologists who presented the minority as a group not

interested in or not understanding of U.S. politics have mainly conducted

existing research on the Haitian immigrant community (Katz, 2014). When

it comes to studies on immigrant or minority political incorporation, major

studies primarily focus their resources on Latinos, Asians, and Africans

(Baerg, Hotchkiss, & Quispe-Agnoli, 2014; Bedolla, 2015; Bhojwani, 2014;

Keyes, 2014; Waweru, 2014). Recently, a limited number of scholars have

studied the Haitian immigrant community’s political behavior to assess their

contribution to their community political mainstream (Gow, 2012; LeMay,

2012; Rey & Stepick, 2013).

Although few Americans with a Haitian background have won seats at

the local level, a lot more needs to be achieved to facilitate the political

incorporation of the entire Haitian immigrant community (Wiltz, 2015).

Disinterest in politics and lack of civic skills were identified as some of the

reasons for the Haitians’ lack of participation in local politics and

involvement in community activities. Lindskoog (2013) conducted his study

on international activism of the Haitian immigrant community in New York

City and Miami. He posited that Haitian political activism in the US began

in 1957, when a group of Haitian refugees mobilized members of the

Haitian immigrant community and made

U.S. allies to topple the Duvalier regime. The Haitian immigrant community

also builds professional associations to promote community connectedness

and civic participation via active collaboration and effective partnerships

with other immigrant groups. Hence, the community and political

involvement of the Haitian immigrant community in the US is represented

by the hometown and professional associations and elected officials of

Haitian descent, which continue to be opportunities for future community

engagement.

Haitian Hometown Associations

HHAs are groups of Haitian immigrants who come together in an

effort of social responsibility to support and improve the lives of those who

still live in Haiti. Previous literature documented HHAs as agents of

international development or immigrant community organizations involved

in remitting monies and developing projects to alleviate poverty in their

homeland, especially in their city of origin (Bosiakoh, 2012). Less attention

has been paid to HTA capabilities of bringing people together for political

empowerment through civic participation and immigrant mobilization. On

various occasions, HTA members acted as political activists and community

organizers in attempts to bolster civic participation (Wiltz, 2015). They

provide classes on citizenship, residence, and voter registration to sharpen

their members’ knowledge of U.S. politics (Stepick & Stepick, 2013).

Somerville, Durana, and Terrazas (2008) asserted that HTAs were predictors

of political participation because of their capabilities to reach a larger

number of members. Pierre-Louis (2013) highlighted that HTAs have

launched local grassroots movements and advocacy programs to provide a

voice to their respective immigrant community.

Ozdemir (2014) defined HTAs as immigrant community and

community-based organizations through which groups of immigrants

formed social alliances to maintain connections with their homeland.

Dowding (2011) stated that the role of HTAs had shifted from transnational

politics to ethnic politics by which they became involved in affecting

policymaking in their local communities. According to Ramakrishnan and

Viramontes (2010) and Mossel, Procaccia, and Rácz (2013), HTAs had

potential to assemble immigrants around the same purpose through

community and political activities. Very often, HTAs act as the bridge

between the immigrant group they represent and candidates and the

government. HTAs support specific policies and, at times, play the role of

Political Action Committees (PACs) to finance political campaigns.

The 2010 Earthquake and HTAs

After the earthquake of January, 2010, there was an increase in the

formation of

HHAs in the US, many of which were registered under the charity and non-

profit code

501(c)3 of the IRS (Passel et al., 2014). There is no centralized HTA

database, but Rigueur (2011) found that as of 2011, there were 346 Haitian

HTAs registered in the US as 501(c)3s. They are most prominent on social

networks where they share their mission with the public. These

organizations utilize social media, primarily Twitter, Facebook, and the 11th

Department as avenues to raise awareness and rally more individuals around

their cause. Very often, their posts do not generate the necessary energy to

capture the audience and carry out or execute their mission.

The Limitations of HTAs

HTAs operate as standalone entities involved at the neighborhood

level to influence change in their small communities. They maintain strong

relationships with leaders and churches to reach a wider audience. They fill

the vacuum left by political parties at local levels to boost immigrant

participation in elections and electoral activities (Rey & Stepick, 2013).

However, despite their community engagement and political activism, many

HTAs have not been strong enough to seek coalitions with other pockets of

Haitian leadership or other HTAs operating in other Haitian-American

communities (Yu, 2014). They have not been strong enough to either seek

or form alliance with other minorities and other ethnic groups including

Black people, Hispanics, or Asians (Witz, 2015). Ramikrishnan and

Viramontes (2010) asserted that coalitions and alliances among immigrant

communities were instrumental in attracting the required channels and

facilitating the incorporation of the immigrant community they serve. These

conflicting views of the potential strength that HTAs have left a gap in the

knowledge for researchers to further explore the potential and possible

growing influence of HTAs.

Haitian HTAs are likely to have two missions: a transnational mission

to engage and encourage members to influence on homeland politics and an

ethnic mission to educate, inform and engage members with the goal of

increasing voter and political participation (Bosiakoh, 2012). However, both

of their missions involve mobilizing the whole immigrant community to

become agents of social change (Gow, 2012). While they work toward

influencing political decisions in Haiti, they also develop strategies to

articulate U.S. political issues and concerns to Haitian migrants (Rey &

Stepick, 2013; Terrazas, 2011). HTAs, which range from professional,

religious, and political organizations, bring the Haitian immigrants together

to address the urgent needs of their communities and their homeland. They

are formed by Haitian migrants who share a commitment to bringing

benefits to Haitians in Haiti and the US in the fields of health, education,

environment, and politics. Rey and Stepick (2013) found there was little to

no collaboration among HTAs. Although they had common goals, they

acted individually, competed for the same members and same financial

resources, and very often worked at cross-purposes. The inability of the

Haitian immigrant community to collaborate to develop a cohesive political

mobilization may be the root cause of being so poorly represented in local

politics and not having a strong political presence in their communities.

Haitian HTAs and Politics

Haitian HTAs are composed of organizational leaders in the Haitian-

American community who work to connect elected officials and community

leadership with their constituency (Lafleur, 2015). They are community

organizers, political activists, professionals, spiritual leaders, and radio and

television hosts. They have unlimited strengths and incentives to politically

mobilize Haitian migrants to vote and support specific policies at the same

rate that they promote transnational politics. Due to the local chapters of the

Democratic and Republican Parties not having a strong presence in Haitian-

American communities, Haitian HTAs may be also involved in launching

political campaigns and lobbying for political candidates.

Haitian HTAs encourage the Haitian constituency to participate in

non-electoral events including protests, town hall meetings, and

demonstrations. Getting immigrants out in the streets is vital to achieve the

success of political activities. Active participation in these events generates

attention from the public, media, and thereafter that of lawmakers and high

profile political candidates (DeGraauw, 2014). Bhojwani (2014) posited that

minorities build their political presence and political weight by having a

continuous presence in local activities.

HTAs have also implemented non-electoral, culturally-sensitive

activities to prepare the larger Haitian constituency to become an electoral

base and achieve successful political incorporation. Culturally-sensitive

activities include literacy and linguistic skills, citizenship classes for already

deeply rooted immigrants, immigration classes for newcomers, healthcare

related issues, social service information, voter registration, and Get Out the

Vote programs. HTAs are better positioned to lead these movements not

because of their education or wealth, but because they have firsthand

experience of these issues (Pierre, 2015).

Their connections with the local leadership and their professional

interactions with the larger population provide them strong legitimacy to

approach the population and mobilize them around issues affecting the

Haitian immigrant community. Political mobilization initiatives at the local

levels are likely to attract minorities because community organizers and

political activists are likely to develop issue-based and issueoriented

political agendas affecting the entire Haitian immigrant community (Beyer,

2014). Implementing these initiatives would be greatly beneficial to the

Haitian immigrant community because increased mobilization would enable

them to influence policy-making that directly or indirectly influences them.

Haitian-American Professional Associations

Immigrants in the U.S. are not only job seekers; they are

professionals. They are also individuals seeking to improve their education.

Immigrants attend college, earn degrees, work in their field of expertise, and

very often launch businesses to serve their community. Immigrant

professional associations are entities that mobilize and connect immigrant

professionals of diverse occupations around providing services to

community residents (Dowding, 2011). Immigrant professional associations

are vital to facilitate immigrant integration into their community (Ozdemir,

2014). Immigrant professional associations are also involved in political

mobilization to impact future policies (Beyer, 2014). However, despite their

ability to bring immigrant professionals together, in order to attract and

maintain membership, these associations need to be able to offer

opportunities that may not be available elsewhere.

Professionals of the Haitian immigrant community organize

themselves into professional associations to share their skills and identify

gaps in services provided to immigrants in their communities. Specifically,

each state in which Haitian migrants settle has a professional association

formed by forward-thinking Haitian migrants and Americans of Haitian

descent who are committed to working together toward the political and

economic empowerment of the Haitian immigrant community in the US.

This difficulty may arise for various reasons. Markova, Ford, Dickson, and

Bohn

(2013) found that professional associations struggle to keep members

because they

cannot deliver tangible benefits. On a broad scale, although Haitian

professionals may join professional associations to make a difference in

their community, they struggle to expand their membership numbers to a

level that is effective nationwide.

Political Representation

Immigrants build their representation traditionally by using politics as

a bridge to connect them with local and federal governments. By gaining

seats at city halls and statehouses, immigrants ensure they are represented in

local politics and government (Bhojwani, 2014). Jiménez (2014) asserted

that immigrants used community activities to gain and maintain visibility in

their community. Immigrant visibility or representation is synonymous with

political weight and political presence (Morales, 2011).

Political representation is descriptive, formalistic, symbolic, and

substantive (Bhojwani, 2014). Each of these forms determines the level of

presence and weight immigrants have (Disch, 2011). Political presence and

political weight give immigrants an active voice regarding issues that

negatively affect their communities.

Descriptive Representation

Many researchers offered their definition of descriptive representation. For

Dovi

(2014), descriptive representation occurs when elected officials bear cultural

resemblances to those they represent. It is based on the interests elected

officials shared with the constituency and the electorate (Ramakrishnan,

2013). In a descriptive representation, elected officials help build the trust of

the people government because officials are representing solutions to

overcome sociopolitical problems and remove obstacles to community

development. Descriptive representation creates legitimacy and visibility,

and more importantly, compels ethnic elected officials to make alliance with

other minority elected officials to influence and pass legislation that may

improve the socio-economic and political growth of the diverse immigrant

population (Swain, 2011). In the case of the members of the Haitian

immigrant community, a descriptive representation would build the Haitian

immigrant community’s political presence and add political currency to the

process of political incorporation. Achieving a descriptive representation,

elected officials would better represent and defend their and those of their

country of origin in the U.S. political structure (De Graauw, 2014).

Formalistic Representation

Political representation involves relationships between the people and

their elected officials (Swain, 2011). It promotes formal agreements where

the constituency authorizes its representatives to perform specific duties

regarding the constituency’s interests. By this formal agreement, the

representatives are held accountable and are required to provide accounts of

their actions and decisions (Garbaye & Mollenkopf, 2012). Bhojwani

(2014) contended that formalistic representation is based on preestablished

institutional arrangements. In a much simpler term, elected officials receive

authorization to represent the constituency, and the constituents can punish

officials if they fail to perform based on such pre-established institutional

arrangements. There have not been studies on the Haitian immigrant

community’s formalistic representation in the US. The unique case,

nonetheless, involved Mayor Lucie Tondreau. On 16 December 2014, she

was sentenced to 65 months in prison for her direct involvement in a

multimillion-dollar mortgage fraud scheme (Munzenreider, 2015).

Although her actions were not related to her duties as a Mayor, the 12-

person jury conveyed that her position as the North Miami mayor placed her

in an influential position to lure “straw buyers” into her eleven-million-

dollar scheme. The City of North Miami punished Trondeau for poor

accountability and for failing to be responsive to her constituency (Dixon,

2015). Weaver and Dixon (2015) highlighted that although another Haitian-

American won the election to replace Trondeau, Haitian immigrants in

North

Miami received a bad reputation of untrustworthiness (Wiltz, 2015). The

actions of Trondeau compelled other Haitian-American community and

political leaders to tailor their campaign speeches around mobilizing,

restoring trust and confidence, and convincing the North Miami

constituency they would uphold the standards of a better formalistic

representation.

Symbolic Representation

Political representation involves the acts of materializing the physical

presence of a group or groups of immigrants in policy debates

(Ramakrishnan, 2013). It is about the meanings the constituency attributes

to its elected officials and vice versa. It is about the pride associated with the

actions of having Haitian-Americans as candidates or elected officials.

Symbolic representation encourages the Haitian immigrant community to

push more Haitian-Americans into office (Wiltz, 2015). Although Wyclef

Jean was not a political figure, when he accepted the Grammy on Black

Entertainment Television (BET), it was a moment of pride to see the Haitian

flag flying for the first time on national television. Before the year 2000,

Haitian-Americans were scared, rather ashamed, to socialize their Haitian

background. Once they started winning elections, they began to publicize

their Haitian heritage to attract the Haitian immigrant community vote

(Rey & Stepick, 2013). They move parts of their campaigns on Haitian

media and in

Haitian-Creole to reach and captivate a wider audience.

Substantive Representation

Minorities with substantive representation elect officials with the

influence to achieve policy gains for their ethnic communities. This type of

representation is assessed by how representatives intervene to advance

policies that serve the constituency’s best interests and champion

community needs (Dovi, 2014). Haitian politicians, especially the Haitian

government, with the support of few Haitian activists in the US, pushed

Congress to enact the Haitian Immigration Fairness Act in 1998 to allow

Haitian nationals who had been living in the US to apply for permanent

residence (Lindskoog, 2013). In 2010, a handful of Haitian politicians

pushed the Obama Administration to allow Haitians who have been living in

the US without proper authorization to apply for TPS (Katz, 2014). In 2011,

Haitian politicians were deeply involved in helping Congress in their

selection of diplomats to initiate more enhanced dialogues between Haiti

and the US (Lafleur, 2015). Thus, the Hemispheric Opportunity through

Partnership Encouragement (HOPE) Act of

2006 was amended and extended to appropriate more funds to strengthen

Haiti’s political structures and to improve the country’s economic

development (USAID, 2015). A substantive representation is needed to have

a strong political presence in local politics and government (Preuhs & Hero,

2011). Without a strong political presence in local politics and government,

the voice and needs of the Haitian community may not achieve the

outcomes of political incorporation.

Political Mobilization

Older studies of immigrant groups reflected that citizenship is needed

for immigrants to register to vote, vote, and participate in electoral activities,

and in the decision-making of their communities (Gay, 2007; Mansbridge,

2003). Newer research took a different approach and advanced that

citizenship or legal status is not required for immigrants to enter the political

environment of their communities (Alba & Foner, 2013; Jones-Correa,

2013; Lieberman, 2013). Bedolla (2015) stated that political mobilization

applies to all immigrants physically present in the community independently

of their immigration status. Although unable to vote, there is no law, policy,

or ordinance preventing immigrants to mobilize to build a political presence

in their communities. Additionally, Alba and Foner (2013) highlighted that

political incorporation is not synonymous with electoral success and policy

responsiveness representation, but a factor providing immigrants unlimited

opportunities to be engaged in community activities and build coalitions

with other groups of immigrants to sway the vote of their citizen

counterparts.

On the other hand, Bhojwani (2014) stated that political participation

cannot happen in isolation. To be effective, political mobilization requires a

strategic plan to educate, inform, and engage individuals with the goals of

increasing voter and political participation (Uriel, 2014). The literature on

political mobilization suggested that political action and advocacy groups as

well as community-based organizations are uniquely positioned to

encourage individuals to participate in both electoral and non-electoral

activities (Klandermans, 2013). Minorities’ affiliations with specific

political candidates motivate organizational leaders and professionals in the

Haitian-American community to establish the logic behind mobilizing their

respective constituency (Fischer, 2012).

Political Mobilization in Minority Groups

DeGraauw (2014) and Marschall and Mikulska (2013) highlighted

that political mobilization transformed inert immigrants into active agents of

change with a continuous presence on the political scene. However, other

researchers (Bedolla, 2015; Bhojwani, 2014; Però & Solomos, 2013;

Rodrigue, 2013) contended that because political mobilization requires that

minorities be civically literate to participate in electoral and non-electoral

activities; it becomes the responsibility of organizational leaders and

professionals in the Haitian-American community to initiate dialogues

around issues that hinder the integration of Haitian immigrants into their

communities. Doing so may enable the Haitian immigrants to become

engaged in their communities and in politics.

Political mobilization is an expedient utilized by immigrant or

minority groups in the US to build a presence, weight, and representation in

local politics and governments (Alba & Foner, 2013). Mobilization presents

opportunities for minorities to influence the existing distribution of powers

because it improves the relationship between the people and their

representation as well as between the people and community leaders

(Barreto, Merolla, & Soto, 2011; Beyer, 2014). The two dimensions of the

process of political incorporation are civic engagement and political

activism (Morales, 2011). Bhojwani (2014) stated that the political outcome

of political mobilization is a policy responsiveness representation. Political

mobilization is especially important to the

Haitian immigrant community because it is so underrepresented in the US.

The inequality in government representation gives more influence to

other immigrant community groups to impact U.S. policymaking. Political

underrepresentation strongly influences the decision making of elected

officials in the ways they represent their constituents (De Graaw, 2014). For

example, an immigrant community group with a strong representation may

have laws and policies enacted in their favor. This is present in the current

immigration policies that are more welcoming to Cuban immigrants than

Haitian immigrants (Bedolla, 2015). As a result, the low percentage of

Haitian-

Americans in politics affect the descriptive characteristics of the entire

Haitian immigrant community in the sense that Congress and state

legislatures will continue to write laws and expectations that are not tailored

to the needs of the Haitian community (Bhojwani, 2014).

Underrepresentation may lead to greater individual, family, and community

neglect, with real-world consequences for income potential, health and well-

being, and educational opportunities. It may also influence voter behavior

and turn out because Haitian Americans do not feel empowered in the

political system and that their needs are not fairly represented in the

government.

Civic and Community Engagement

To facilitate a more active political voice, Haitian immigrants,

regardless of their immigration status, likely need a platform to help

motivate them to participate in community and political activities including

protests, town hall meetings, volunteering, signing petitions, and other forms

of traditional and non-traditional politics. The platform could also energize

the Haitian-American electorate to register to vote, vote, and run for office

while emphasizing on the impact of the Haitian vote on future legislative

and presidential elections. Read and Overfelt (2014) defined civic

engagement as a set of actions that motivate a particular group of

individuals to be involved in their sociopolitical community. Civic

engagement is both political and non-political and leads to future political

endeavors (Morales, 2011). According to Gillion (2014) and Weller and

Nobbs (2010), civic engagement becomes political when it involves the acts

of voting and getting elected. Civic engagement is critical because it does

not require residence, citizenship, or any other legalization (Amna &

Eckman, 2012). Consequently, any Haitian migrant, regardless of

immigration status, can choose to be involved in community political life

through community engagement and can do so without having a green card

or a certificate of naturalization. Community engagement, limited to

nonelectoral activities is, therefore, an option available to all members of the

Haitian constituency (Titus, 2012). In a simpler term, as it pertains to my

study, civic engagement includes actions implemented or communicated by

organizational leaders and professionals in the Haitian-American

community to appeal to the Haitian immigrants’ concerns including

immigration, citizenship, and employment.

Community engagement moves across racial lines to enable

immigrants to maintain multiple social networks across ethnic boundaries to

strengthen their voice (Kazemipur, 2012). Through practices of community

engagement, immigrants bind in homogenous areas to collaborate among

them and with community leaders (Jimenez, 2011). Immigrants develop

citywide civic engagement practices to connect with diverse groups through

a deliberative process and communication (Morales, 2011). With

community involvement, community leaders implement social networking,

civic awareness, and social connectedness activities to enhance

communication among participants (Kazemipur, 2012). Civic engagement

activities teach the larger Haitian population literacy skills and reinforce and

articulate the political mobilization message to the whole Haitian immigrant

community (Rey & Stepick, 2013). Civic engagement activities motivate

Haitians to become involved in local voluntary organizations as agents of

change (Lafleur & Martiniello, 2013).

There is a lack of scholarly research on the kinds of community and

civic activities on the Haitian political behavior in the US, especially in

Florida. Prominent local newspapers such as the Miami Herald and Orlando

Sentinel, however, publish editorial articles explaining the involvement of

Haitian immigrants in politics. Members of the Haitian immigrant

community form online groups to encourage Haitians to support or vote for

candidates with Haitian background (Wiltz, 2015). Haitian community-

based organizations and professionals utilize social networks, radios, and

televisions to transmit their messages to Haitian-American communities as

well as to connect prospective candidates with the Haitian constituency and

electorate (Lucien, 2015).

The Haitian immigrant community began socially integrating into

their respective communities at the beginning of the year 2000. The first

Haitian task force was the Haitian Association of Elected Officials whose

ten elected officials began to initiate civic engagement dialogues with the

Haitian community of Miami-Dade County. In 2000, HAFI was launched to

work closely with other non-Haitian agencies, the Florida Department of

Children and Family in North Miami, and the Florida Department of

Health in North Miami to support at-risk girls (Lucien, 2012).

There was an increase in 2000 in the number of Haitians wanting to

make their voice heard by government officials (Lafleur & Martiniello,

2013). Haitian communitybased organizations utilized carnivals and

sporting events and concerts promoting Haitian culture as venues to transmit

community engagement and political messages (Lafleur, 2015). According

to Wiltz (2015), HTAs and HAFAs are more active in their communities on

Haitian Flag Day and Haitian Independence Day, which respectively fall on

May 18 and January 1. They are also active on Labor Day in New York

where they organize the Haitian carnival in the streets of Flatbush in

Brooklyn. On these days, Haitian migrants take the streets in droves wearing

T-Shirts with the country’s logo and waving the Haitian flag and. Politicians

and elected officials their ideas to connect and reconnect with the Haitian

immigrant community. These activities would be better for the Haitian

immigrant community’s political presence if they were sustained throughout

the year (Lucien, 2015).

Political Activism

Political activism consists of sets of actions taken by individuals to

promote or raise awareness of particular issues. Ciment and Radzilowski

(2015), McAdam (2013), and Schacter (2014) posited that immigrants or

members of a minority group take political actions to be involved in their

community political life. Political presence and political weight are not

necessarily about having immigrants elected into offices; they are also about

mobilizing immigrant communities around a common purpose through

shaping interactions between local and community leaders (Bhojwani,

2014). According to Marschall and Mikulska (2013), political activism is

framed around leadership and political exchange. Bedolla (2015) stated that

political actions primarily include the acts of becoming citizens, voting,

getting elected, or receiving presidential appointments.

The Haitian immigrant community’s political achievements, when

studied separately, may show that the Haitian immigrant community has

garnered a political representation at the local and national stages. However,

considering the Haitian immigrant community is approximately two million

individuals, Haitian immigrants are far from achieving political

incorporation (Pierre, 2015). A lot needs to be achieved to help the Haitian

immigrant community establish presence and build political weight in their

communities.

Wiltz (2015) posited that although the first Haitian-American elected

to office was in 1993 in El Portal as the Miami-Date councilman and later as

a mayor, it was not until 1998 that the Haitian immigrant community “came

into their own” politically. In

2000, they elected the first Haitian-American to the Florida Legislature

(Lafleur, 2015; Lucien, 2015). From 2000 to 2010, they continued electing

Haitian-Americans, but according to Rey and Stepick (2013), the level of

civic engagement and political activism was not enough to increase the

political momentum required to achieve tangible outcomes.

Wiltz (2015) reported that in an interview, three-time elected

Representative Daphne Campbell answered a journalist’s question, saying:

“If we are voting, why are we still struggling, why can’t we do more to

impact immigration policies, why am I the only one in the Florida

legislature and why are we not providing a voice to the voiceless?” She

pressed organizational leaders and professionals in the Haitian-American

community to be engaged and mobilized the rest of the Haitian immigrant

community to tackle the issues of literacy and English proficiency that

prevent Haitians from engaging in building a mature political base (Wiltz,

2015). In 2012, there was a surge of candidates with

Haitian background in Florida’s primary election field and members of the

Haitian immigrant community were motivated to vote for them. However,

although most candidates were running as Democrats, the Haitian political

activism suffered a setback when President Obama personally endorsed

another Black minority candidate over a

Haitian-American, Dr. Rudy Moise (Wiltz, 2015).

Political Presence

Political presence refers to the visibility and legitimacy of a minority

group in the community (Preuhs & Hero, 2011). The Haitian immigrant

community vote has not been a political object of desire for the past four

election cycles and was still not for the 2016 elections (Pierre, 2015).

Political parties have not invested much energy in gaining their vote

because, in the most non-technical language, national candidates do not

know that the Haitian immigrant community exists (Pierre, 2015). Political

parties’ disinterest in the Haitian vote is due to a lack of continuous and

sustainable political mobilization to encourage Haitians to show up at street

rallies and town hall meetings, to launch voter registration programs,

(Keyes, 2014; LeMay, 2012).

Pierre (2015) noted a lack of Haitian political participation in the US,

especially in the 2000 presidential election. In fact, East (2012) reported that

the most political energy shown by the Haitian immigrant community was in

2008. Such political enthusiasm was related to the fact that Barack Obama

promised immigration changes all across the board. Their political

participation in the 2008 election paid off in 2010 when the Obama

Administration granted Temporary Protected Status (TPS) to undocumented

Haitians who were living in the United States 1 year before and after the

earthquake of

January, 2010 (Lucien, 2015). According to the US Citizenship and

Immigration Services (USICIS), TPS for undocumented Haitians has been

extended through July, 22 2017 to allow more eligible Haitian immigrants to

apply (Lafleur, 2015).

The lack of political participation of the members of Haitians in their

immigrant communities is related to the fact that most Haitians are engaged

in their homeland’s politics while seeking employment and legalization

opportunities in their state of residence (Passel et al., 2014). Their ties with

Haiti and their quest to become legal residents of the US and to land

employment sap their political energy and their inclination toward

involvement in ethnic politics.

Ethnic politics allow immigrants to incorporate into their community

political mainstream whereas transnational politics allow immigrants to

maintain sociopolitical ties with their native country. Lafleur (2015) and

Lucien (2015) stated that Haitian community based-organizations and

Haitian leaders tailor their activities around mobilizing the members of the

Haitian immigrant community to come together to influence their native

country’s politics. Because of their continuous focus on transnational

politics, Haitians discarded ethnic politics and they had a weak political

representation in their communities (Passel et al., 2014). According to

Salawu and

Hassan (2011), ethnic politics is defined as actions implemented by

immigrants to be involved in the politics of their host country. Waweru

(2014) posited that, through ethnic politics, immigrants seek political

powers to be represented in politics to improve their living conditions in

their community. They also do so to build a political power to influence

their host country’s policies toward improving their homeland.

The lack of efforts by organizational leaders and professionals in the

HaitianAmerican community to mobilize the Haitian community has been

very candidate and election specifics in the sense that they are not sustained

in periods of non-elections (Pierre, 2015). Candidates for public office,

Haitian community-based organizations, political activists, and community

organizers interact with each other primarily at cultural events where

members of the Haitian immigrant community are likely to attend.

According to Pierre (2015), in 2008, Haitian-Americans showed up at the

polls to vote for Obama. Pierre highlighted that many Haitians posted selfies

with their Certificate of

Naturalization on Facebook or in front of the U.S. flag with the caption “My

Vote is for Obama. Haitians who were not eligible to vote were seen

wearing Obama T-Shirts to encourage Haitian-Americans, Blacks and other

immigrant groups to vote for Obama because of his message of hope and

change (Lucien, 2015).

After the election of 2008, the Haitian immigrant community did not

keep the community engagement, advocacy, outreach, and momentum going

to keep their presence visible on the US political scene (East, 2012). The

Haitian immigrant community did not display the same political enthusiasm

in Obama’s 2012 political campaign although the administration ran on the

same 2008 message (Wiltz, 2015).

Obama did not do much to fix the U.S. immigration problem, where more

Haitians have been deported under the Obama administration than under any

other administration (Xenakis, 2016). In 2016, the Haitian vote was ignored

by the Clinton campaign while the Trump campaign reached out to the

Haitian community in Little Haiti.

The scale of outreach efforts such a minority or immigrant group

utilizes to keep its constituents engaged and its electorate energized

maintains a political presence of a minority or an immigrant group in a

community. The Haitian immigrant community’s civic and community

engagement is achieved through the presence of Haitian community-based

organizations providing civic support and political activity and educating the

larger Haitian population on the political process. Haitian communitybased

organizations are nodes between political actors, candidates, and the larger

Haitian population (Rey & Stepick, 2013).

Policy Responsiveness Representation

Political representation, regardless of its dimensions, does not

guarantee a policy responsiveness representation (Bhojwani, 2014).

Representation is more about political presence in the communities than it is

about political weight (Dovi, 2014; Preuhs & Hero, 2011). It is not about the

number of elected officials that immigrants have in local politics. It is rather

about how these immigrants are represented or how elected officials work to

raise issues, bring awareness to their constituency’s plight, and advance

policies that are responsive to the needs of the communities or groups they

represent (Marschall & Mikulska, 2013). Uriel (2014) defined policy

responsiveness as a system promoting a comprehensive relationship

between citizens and representatives. Policy responsiveness involves a two-

way communication between a minority group and their representatives

(Pildes, 2014). A policy responsiveness representation is based on the

formalistic representation in which two dimensions are authorization and

accountability (Dovi, 2014).

In the context of the Haitian immigrant community, political

incorporation is defined as the willingness of elected officials of Haitian

descent to influence, lobby, and suggest policy change or enact new policies

that meet the preferences of the Haitian immigrant community as a whole.

In the past five years, Haitian elected officials, with the support of

organizational leaders and professionals in the Haitian-American

community, encourage Haitian immigrants to support protests organized by

the Black Lives Matter and Stop Ethnic Cleansing movements (Zack, 2015).

Representative

Campbell also reacted to the killing of Trayvon Martin and requested a

repeal of the Stand Your Ground law. Haitians are more likely to associate

themselves with the Black community than they are with the Hispanic

communities (Lafleur, 2015; Lucien, 2015; Pierre, 2015). From 2010 to

2015, the Haitian policy responsiveness representation has been playing a

significant role in improving the lives of undocumented Haitians in the

US. They pressured the Obama administration not only to grant TPS to

undocumented Haitians but to also extend the program until July 2017 to

allow eligible Haitians to garner the documents and the fees needed to file

the appropriate US Citizenship and Immigration Services forms.

A policy responsiveness representation provides political weight to

immigrants.

Political weight gives immigrant the power to influence policymaking

(Bhojwani, 2014).

Through better policy responsiveness representation, the Haitian immigrant

community’s concerns and interests could be addressed more effectively and

their political presence maintained to become an attractive political force

with great value to lawmakers, state and national officials, and presidential

candidates.

The question remains whether the political mobilization strategies

implemented by organizational leaders and professionals in the Haitian-

American community are comprehensive enough to reach the intended

target and whether these strategies are sustainable to facilitate the Haitian

immigrant community’s path to political selfsufficiency. Political self-

sufficiency is attained when a group’s representation is descriptive enough

to represent the interests of its constituency without relying too much on

support from the government or other ethnic elected officials (Long, 2013).

Summary and Conclusion

This chapter presented an exhaustive literature of the Haitian

immigrant community and their efforts toward political representation in

Florida. It introduced the Haitian immigrant community as political minority

through a background of how they affected US policy. It also presented the

two dimensions of political incorporation, which are political presence and

political weight. This chapter gave an overview of HTAs and HAPA; two

categories of Haitian Community-Based Organizations that are involved in

mobilizing Haitian immigrants around political mobilization. It also

expanded on the different categories of political representation and the

impact community engagement and political activism may have on the

Haitian immigrant community path to residency and citizenship.

The next chapter primarily focused on explaining how data was

collected from participants and who was recruited based on their knowledge

or interests in the topics of political incorporation and political mobilization.

I explained the approach and the sampling methods that I applied to select

the participants and administer the instrumentations to them while

emphasizing reducing personal biases to increase the credibility of the

research.

Chapter 3: Research Method

Introduction

In this qualitative phenomenological study, I explored the perceived

factors that appear to hinder the Haitian expatriate community from

mobilizing effectively politically at local, state, and federal levels.

Specifically, I investigated how members of HHAs, Haitian-American

professionals, and other politically active Haitian community members in

Florida motivated the Florida’s Haitian-American immigrant community to

participate in electoral and nonelectoral activities.

This chapter includes the research design and the rationale for

choosing phenomenology as the research tradition. It also includes criteria

for participant selection with a deep emphasis on explaining the procedures

for participant recruitment and the logic for instrumentation selection. This

chapter also contains a comprehensive plan for data analysis and procedures

that I applied to achieve issues of trustworthiness. I also present the ethical

procedures I applied to enhance the privacy and the confidentiality of the

participants of my study.

Research Design and Rationale

I based my research on the following central research question and

subquestions:

Central Research Question: What were the factors perceived by

members of the Haitian-American community that appeared to hinder

Haitian immigrants from incorporating effectively into politics at local,

state, and federal levels?

Subquestion 1: What were the lived experiences and perceptions of

expatriate Haitian political leaders related to the barriers and impediments

to political mobilization at local, state, and federal levels?

Subquestion 2: What were the lived experiences and

perceptions of expatriate Haitian business and community leaders

related to the barriers and impediments to political mobilization at

local, state, and federal levels?

Subquestion 3: What were the lived experiences of perceptions of

expatriate Haitian community members who are recent citizens related to

the barriers and impediments to political mobilization at local, state, and

federal levels?

Subquestion 4: What were the perceptions of the Haitian-American

community in Florida regarding how U.S. elected officials of Haitian

descent influence changes in immigration and U.S. humanitarian aid to Haiti

policies?

The central phenomenon of the study was the incorporation of Haitian

immigrants living in Florida communities to build and maintain a political

presence in their communities and to achieve a policy responsiveness

representation in local politics and government. The process of political

incorporation revolves around political mobilization, which two primary

dimensions are community engagement and political activism (Jiménez,

2011; Morales, 2011).

According to Bhojwani (2014), the outcomes of political

incorporation are political presence and political weight, which translates

into an attractive political representation in local politics and government.

Specifically, therefore, I focused on barriers to participation or factors that

seemed to have prevented Haitian immigrants from actively participating in

the political aspects of their communities, states, and federal government.

The phenomenological design was the research tradition for my research.

The rationale for choosing a phenomenological design was to, through

exploration, gain a deeper understanding of the process of political

incorporation that members of HTAs and Haitian-American professionals

implement to achieve the outcomes of political incorporation. A

phenomenological design allowed participants with direct knowledge of and

experience with the phenomenon of interest to provide their perceptions and

relate their experiences (Van Manen, 2014). Such a design has been applied

in several studies of immigrant incorporation in U.S. academia and cultural

and political mainstreams. Ellis (2013) applied the design to describe the

perceptions and barriers to Liberian refugee’s academic success in the U.S.

college classroom. Amor (2015) explored the experiences of Latin

American immigrants integrating to the U.S. mainstream culture using the

phenomenology design. Spetick et al. (2001) applied the phenomenology

design to interview fifteen leaders of the Haitian community in Miami

Dade to discover the obstacles to Haitian participation in civic and political

arenas.

Spetick et al. (2001) found that the motivation to fulfill basic needs

and unwelcomed immigration policies was the main factors Haitians were

not actively engagement in their community public life. They found also

that the leaders of the Haitian community had not been successfully

implemented civic programs to educate Haitians on literacy skills,

citizenship, voting, and running for office.

Using the phenomenology design as my research design, Haitian-

Americans living in Florida had the opportunities to explicate in their own

words what they themselves perceived as impediments to greater

community involvement and active civic participation in their communities.

I used the phenomenology design to gain a better understanding of factors

that prevented the Haitian-American community in Florida to self-mobilize

toward incorporation into local politics and government.

Role of the Researcher

My role in my study was to collect data instead of being naturally and

normally part of the social setting. I chose this stance because, although the

participants was aware of my Haitian background, I was not a member of

the group under study since I did not live and had never lived in Florida.

Assuming the role of a neutral interviewer allowed me to remain as

culturally neutral as possible. It limited any ethnocentric, political, or

cultural bias or alienation I currently had relating to the phenomenon (Olive,

2014).

The neutral interviewer role was more appropriate for the

phenomenological approach because it generate data that are more accurate

and allows researchers to focus on collecting the data instead of interjecting

their opinions throughout the data collection phase (Van Manen, 2014). I did

not have any personal or professional relationships with the participants.

Hence, I did not recruit my friends and members of my family for the study.

Not having prior relationships and not having friends and family members

as participants reduce the possibilities for personal biases and power

differentials (Creswell, 2013). Using a standard scripted interview questions,

I reduced personal biases by reading the survey questions verbatim to each

participant. I also had the participants reviewed their answers before I

proceeded to the data analysis phase. I also performed transcript checking

through which I sent my interpretations of their answers to the participants.

Methodology

In this section, I discuss the population, samples, and sampling

procedures for the study. The population consisted of members of the

Haitian immigrant community in Florida, which were Haitian immigrants

who was naturalized Americans or who were born in the United States of at

least one parent who was Haitian or who was a Haitian descent

I recruited individuals of Haitian descent who were political activists,

community organizers, spiritual leaders, professionals in the Haitian-

American community in Florida. The individuals I recruited provided

relevant data regarding the Haitian immigrant community’s path to political

incorporation in communities in Florida. I recruited the participants from the

11th Department website using a purposive sampling. The 11th Department

was a great online source to recruit the participants for my study because it

offered a platform to Haitian professionals to connect with local

representatives, congressional representatives, officials of the Haitian

government, other Haitian professionals and members of the international

community.

Participation Selection Logic

I recruited participants who resided in the state of Florida, particularly

in Miami, because of the electoral importance that Florida has accrued

throughout presidential election periods. Decades of research referred to

Florida as “the road through which presidential elections go” because of its

composition of a politically diverse electorate shaped by a diverse growing

immigrant population (Bedolla, 2015). Florida is necessary stop for any

candidate who is serious about winning the White House. It is also where

immigrant based organizations have been carrying invaluable civic

engagement efforts including civic education and voter mobilization

activities to energize immigrants to understand the importance of their vote.

I also selected Florida because of its growing Haitian-American

population dispersed throughout many major Floridian counties and inner

cities. Demographic increases and geographic concentrations of Haitian

immigrants in common areas including North Miami, West Palm Beach,

Fort Myers, Homestead, and Fort Lauderdale Haitian migration

characterized Haitian migration (Lucien, 2015; Spetick, 2013). The dynamic

growth the Haitian immigrant population provides attractive opportunities

for national candidates to court the Haitian vote as they do for the Latino

vote (Lafleur, 2013; Wiltz, 2015). Moreover, such a dynamic growth

provides substantive opportunities to launch a necessary legislative

advocacy strategy to address challenges such as domestic issues such as

healthcare, immigration, and civil rights that Haitian migrants face in a daily

basis.

For my study, Haitian immigrants were Haitians who migrated and

lived in the United States irrespective of their immigration statuses. The

population that comprised the Haitian immigrant community in the United

State included undocumented, residents, TPS holders, and naturalized

citizens. The term Haitian immigrant also applied to individuals born in the

United States of at least one Haitian parent.

For my study, only naturalized citizens and Americans of Haitian

descent were considered because they were eligible to vote and to hold

public office in the US as well as they account for 6.7% of the voting

population in Florida (Wiltz, 2015). I selected individuals in the Haitian

immigrant community in Florida because out of the million individuals with

Haitian background living in the United States, 654,000 live in Florida,

particularly in Miami (Lucien, 2015). Moreover, as a battleground state, the

Haitian vote or the Haitian political presence had stronger potential to sway

presidential election outcomes in a state whether neither major political

party holds or maintains a winning edge.

My study included ten members of Hometown Associations, Haitian-

American professionals, and other Haitian-American community members

who I recruited from the 11th Department network using the stratification

technique. I stratified the population to ensure each segment of the Haitian-

American community was accurately represented. The members of the 11th

Department are leaders and professionals in the HaitianAmerican

community. They use the network to advertise their services to the

community, to seek new opportunities to grow their careers, and to build

connections and form coalitions with other Haitian leaders, businesses, and

organizations.

I selected the members of Hometown Associations, Haitian-American

professionals, and other Haitian community members because they were

equipped to drive change in their communities. They had a closed proximity

with the general population and organize social, cultural and political events

to mobilize Haitian immigrants (Pierre-Louis, 2013). They were uniquely

positioned to provide insightful descriptions of their experiences of political

incorporation as well as barriers they perceived as hindering the path of

Haitian immigrants to incorporation into local politics and governments.

Based on Button, Ioannidis, Mokrysz, Nosek, Flint, Robinson, and Munafò

(2013) and Mason (2010), a sample size of ten interviews should produce

sufficient data to achieve saturation.

In keeping with the overall purpose of the study, I applied a purposive

sampling method to recruit the participants on the 11th Department online

network. Creswell (2013) stated that the purposive sampling is used to

recruit of participants who have knowledge or experience the phenomenon

of interest. Researchers apply the purposive sampling when there is a

limited number of individuals fit the criteria to serve as primary participants

based on to answer the research questions, the nature of research design and

the aims and objectives of the research (Saunders, Lewis & Thornhill,

2012). According to Dudovskiy (2017) and Black (2010), the purposive

sampling method produces rich descriptions of the phenomenon when it is

applied with the phenomenology approach of inquiry. The purposive

sampling method, therefore, allowed me to rely on my own judgment to

select participants who experienced or had breadth of knowledge of the

community engagement and civic participation of Haitian migrants in

Florida. Van Manen (2013) noted that the purposive sampling method is

more appropriate when the researcher’s goal is to gain insights of the lived

experiences of the participants.

The criteria for eligibility to participate in the study was that all

participants were at least 18 years of age, eligible to vote, and had been

living in Florida for at least three years. I applied a minimum residency of

three years as criteria of eligibility because the longer a participant lived in

Florida, the more insightful his or her experience and the more information

he or she provided in comparison to an individual who lived in Florida for a

year or two. Individuals who used to live in Florida were not be eligible to

participate.

To ensure, I recruited from all members of the Haitian-American

community, I performed stratification through which all eligible individuals

were placed into three groups. Stratification is the process of dividing the

population of interest into homogenous subgroups before sampling (Shi,

2015). Stratification allowed me to recruit participants who represented the

entire population under study. It also allowed me to reduce selection biases

in the sense all the segments of the Haitian-American population was

accurately represented. Without stratification, I could have ended up with a

segment that was underrepresented or not represented at all. Without

stratification, I could have probably ended up with ten organizational leaders

or two professionals, eight community leaders and zero community member

or vice versa. In such a case, the Haitian-American community in Florida

would not have been entirely represented to capture data that are to be

replicable, generalized and transferred to any immigrants groups across the

state or across the country

I divided my population of interest into three groups, which were

organizational leaders, Haitian-American professionals, and community

members. Individuals were assigned to one stratum and each stratum

experienced the phenomenon differently and were given the opportunities to

relate their experiences as they lived it.

The group of organizational leaders was composed of three members

who belonged or were affiliated with a Haitian Hometown Association,

Haitian-Community Based Association or an association involved in the

promotion of the interest of the

Haitian-American community in Florida, particularly in Miami. The group

of HaitianAmerican professionals was composed of three Haitian-

Americans who held a specific knowledge in a particular field and provided

professional services in the field in which he or she received such

specialized training. The group of community members was composed of

four Haitian-Americans who belonged to neither a Haitian Community-

Based Organization, nor he or she was a professional.

For example, a member of the Haitian-American community who

held a degree in Social Work was considered as a professional although that

member worked as a social worker. However, if that same member did not

work as a social worker, but was affiliated with an HTA, that member would

have been eligible to be recruited as an organizational leader. If that same

member neither worked as a social worker, nor was that member affiliated

with an HTA, that member would have been eligible to participate as a

community member.

Instrumentation

I developed an interview with open-ended questions to measure the

phenomenon of political incorporation of Haitian immigrants in Florida,

particularly in Miami (See Appendices A, B. C). An interview is a process

through which researchers capture the knowledge, perceptions, and opinions

of an individual or a group/subgroup of individuals (Creswell, 2013). Since

interviews rely upon the knowledge of participants, I applied content

validity through which I aligned the research and the interview questions

with the phenomenon so the answers of the participants provided established

sufficient data that captured the lived experiences of the participants

Content validity ensures the instrument measures accurately what it is

intended to measure and that the results can be applied to other settings

(Creswell, 2013). The questions were formulated to answer all aspects of

civic participation and community engagement of Haitian immigrants so to

provide a comprehensive landscape of factors that the Haitian-American

community perceived as factors hindering the incorporation of Haitian

immigrants in local politics and government.

Open-ended questions are designed to generate data around the

research questions to give participants opportunities to answer based on

their lived experience and understanding of the dynamics of expatriate

community mobilization. I designed the interview questions to ask about

participants’ experiences with political mobilization. Example questions

included: “What are your experiences with mobilizing Haitian migrants in

your community to get them involved in local politics?” and “What do you

believe are the biggest barriers to Haitian political mobilization in your

community?” in case of ambiguity or vagueness in the participants’

responses, I asked probing questions to prompt participants to expand on

their answers. According to Preide, Jokinen, Ruuskenen, and Farrall (2014),

researchers ask probing questions to gain deeper insight and informative

feedback about a specific phenomenon.

Probing interview questions were not planned because it was

impossible to predict ambiguities that may derive from an answer or when a

question may open the door for an issue (Willis & Artenio, 2013). However,

I used generic probing questions in instances I had difficulties understanding

some answers. I also used probing questions to clarify ambiguity that

appeared in the interview questions. My use of probing questions depended

on the clarity of participants’ answers.

Examples of probes included: “Tell me more about that,” “What

eventually happened,” “Looking back, what would you do differently now,

if anything,” and “How did the… respond to that?”

See Figure 1 for a mapping of the interview questions to the research

questions.

Procedures for Recruitment, Participation, and Data Collection

Using a purposive sampling, the participants was recruited either by

email that I sent to their 11th Department’s inbox or through a survey that I

posted on the website to request for participants. Both options are available

free to members of the network. Although emails were not publicly

available on the website, any user had the option to communicate using the

site-messaging feature.

I visited the 11th Department website to conduct a search for members

and organizations. I sent emails to the first 25 members and organizations.

Although 25 emails were sent and although there was a survey asking for

participants, I selected the first 3 leaders, the first 3 professionals and the

first 4 community members who answered positively to the email. The

emails and the survey request described the purpose of the study and the

eligibility requirements to potential participants utilizing said network.

Once interested individuals contacted me, I emailed them to provide a

one-page description of the study. I also attached a consent form to the

email. They electronically signed the form and return it to me. I also

included my phone number if they would require additional information

before agreeing to participate. I scheduled interviews for the individuals

who positively responded to the e-mail and who returned the consent form. I

scheduled and conducted the interviews using a web video teleconference

called

Zoom Video Communications.

Zoom is a cloud-based video teleconference platform that facilitates

online meetings with screen sharing capabilities (Maldow, 2013). Zoom

allows users to setup a meeting calendar and send it to invitees. Zooms

allows two-way video conferencing, audio recording, join by phone, and

screen sharing capabilities. No camera is needed to use the screen sharing

capabilities, but at least one camera is needed for video conferencing. My

camera was turned on for the participants to see me. Participants chose to

turn theirs on and off as the two-way video feature was not be required for

the interview. Adequate audio connections were required for the interviews.

Participants received an email containing the meeting ID, which they

used to attend the conference. Using any laptop, smartphone, or tablet with

an Internet connection, participants signed into the meeting by installing the

Zoom application or a small executable adobe flash player file in order to

view the Zoom icon, which appeared on the home screen of their device.

Once installation was completed, the participant entered the Meeting ID

onto a small box to join the live session.

Once the meeting started, I shared my screen with the participants. I

displayed the signed consent form and had the participants affirm in the

recorded audio that they had read and signed the form. After such

affirmation, I placed information about the interview process. Information

included the purpose of the study, length of the interview, number of

questions, follow-up procedures, and their ability to end participation at any

time during the interview.

I began the interview by showing each question, one by one, on the

screen so the participant can read or refer to the question while answering.

Once participants finished answered the question, the screen moved to the

next question. After all questions were completed, a ''debriefing' screen

appeared where I thanked the participants, reminding them they would have

an opportunity to review my transcription and provide feedback, and letting

them know I would provide an electronic copy of the results to them via

email.

There was one participant who did not have computer audio, but that

participant ended using a smartphone to join the meeting. Participants

viewed the consent form and the questions on the screen of their device

while being interviewed. Four participants were recorded. I sent a copy of

the recording to the six participants who did not record the interview so they

could verify and validate what they reported during the interview. I saved

the recordings of the interviews, which I used later of data analysis.

To enhance accuracy, credibility and validity, I performed two rounds

of member checking. I sent a verbatim transcripts of the interview to the

participants so they could verify and validate the authenticity of exactly

what they said during the interview. For the second round of member

checking, I sent the findings, which were my interpretations of participants’

accounts of the phenomenon, to the participants. I provided further details of

the second round of member checking in the “Issues of Trustworthiness”

section of the research. Member checking is a nod of participation validation

that provides participants another opportunity to analyze and comment (Birt,

Scott, Cavers, Campbell, & Walter, 2016). I applied the second round of

member checking to compare my understanding of the transcripts of the

interviews with that of the participants.

Data Analysis Plan

I imported the audio transcripts into Dedoose for the data analysis

phase. Dedoose is a web-based program that allows researchers to analyze

data in the forms of text, audio, video, and photos (Silver & Lewins, 2015). I

applied the Braun and Clarke (2006) thematic analysis method as the basis

for the data analysis for my research. The Braun and Clarke (2006) thematic

analysis method facilitate the identification and analysis of patterns of the

qualitative data that was generated from the interviews. As suggested by

Braun and Clarke (2006), I used thematic analysis to identify themes that

answered the research question and sub-questions.

The Braun and Clarke (2006) thematic analysis method is a rigorous

six-phase approach that involves data familiarization, initial code

generalization, theme searching, theme reviewing, defining and renaming

theme, and report production. After I imported the transcripts of the

interviews onto Dedoose, I listened to the recording many times, so I could

have a firm idea of what the transcripts contained. Listening to the

recordings allowed me to immerse myself in and to be actively engaged in

the data. Becoming familiar with the lived experiences of the participants

provided me with a comprehensive foundation to produce a better analysis

of the phenomenon. Initial codes were generated from a list of themes that

emerged from the literature review.

After I familiarize myself with the data, I began to generate initial

codes by establishing many meaningful groups to organize my data. By

example, “immigration” was repeated many times, I made a group for that

code and continued to add themes that reflect the code to that group. Other

words like citizenship, residence, TPS, undocumented, refugees were added

to the group “immigration.” Van Patten and Jegerski (2010) and Walker

(2012) called this step thematic hierarchy for it involves establishing

relationships among themes as well as generating analytical themes.

Thereafter, I applied the winnowing phase through which I searched

the collated codes to transform codes into potential themes for an

interpretive analysis. Upon the discovery of new themes, I weighed the

themes were to determine which ones were the most relevant and the most

appropriate to the study (Creswell, 2013). I continued the theme evaluation

process to link themes together to determine how they related to the

theoretical framework and determine how well they answered the central

research question and the sub-questions.

In the next step, I reviewed the themes to establish relationships

among the codes, subthemes, and themes. This step was a process of

elimination through which, I chose which themes to review, combine,

separate, or discard. I discarded the least repeated themes or themes that

added no value to the interpretive analysis. I kept the themes that were

repeated the most times or the themes that provided sufficient data to answer

the central research question and the subquestions.

The themes were retained to be named, refined, and defined to capture

how they related to the phenomenon of interest. At that point, I combined all

themes to tell a unified story of the lived experiences of the participants. The

report was a deep narrative analysis supported with empirical evidence that

addressed the research questions.

The six phases combined allowed me to analyze and interpret

subjective data and present the results in ways they could hold validity. The

six-phase approach also helped me conduct a thorough analysis to discover

how and why patterns occurred as well as develop themes and present

results in a way that told the readers the story of the individuals who

experienced the phenomenon.

Issues of Trustworthiness

I applied stringent measures to present data to ensure participation

eligibility and that participants possess the interests, the knowledge, and the

experiences of the phenomenon under study. I made sure that the group of

organizational leaders, professionals, and other community members were

actively engaged in political and community activism to determine the

impact of their efforts on the larger population’s path to political

incorporation. To ensure I selected the appropriate participants, I applied

purposive sampling through which I addressed all issues of trustworthiness

that had rose throughout the data analysis phase.

Credibility

In a phenomenological design, credibility is the extent that

participants describe accurately their experiences and perceptions of a

specific phenomenon (Van Manen,

2014). To achieve credibility, I established the truth of things through

reflexology, which

Houghton et al (2013) define as the researcher’s ability to assume an

observer as participant role to obtain inter-subjective data. I identified and

set aside any personal biases as best as I could, to minimize undue influence

in my interpretation of the data. I attempted to ensure credibility by

performing two rounds of member checking. In the first round, participants

listened to the audio interview so to allow them the opportunities to confirm

or change their stories. In the second round, participants had the

opportunities to review my interpretations of their lived experiences to

ensure I recounted their stories the way they told them to me. I knew when I

achieved credibility of the results when participants returned the transcripts

of my narrative report with minor or without changes. Establishing

credibility allowed me to present a true picture of the lived accounts of the

participants in ways that my research findings were verifiable and

transferable to other

Haitian immigrant groups around the country.

Transferability

Transferability is the extent that the findings of ring true of other’s

experiences or that the findings can be applied to others in similar situations

(Houghton et al., 2013).

Haitians in other states are likely to experience the same political

incorporation issues as Haitians in Florida (LeMay, 2012). I thoroughly

analyzed the data so as to enable readers to relate and subsequently apply

the findings to their situation. Jeanfreau (2010) stated transferability occurs

when readers conclude that they are related to the findings for they have

experienced similar situations.

In my study, transferability was the degree to which my findings

could be generalized or applied to other Haitian immigrant community

groups dispersed throughout the US. To enhance transferability or

generalizability, I selected subject matter experts or individuals with first-

hand knowledge of the Haitian immigrant community’s path to

incorporation into the Florida political mainstream. The participants I

recruited from the 11th Department social network of Haitian professionals

were subject matter experts, community organizers, political activists,

members of Haitian

Community-Based Organization, or professionals with the experiences and

knowledge of community engagement and civic participation.

Moreover, I provided a thorough explication of the research context

and central theme thorough analysis of the answers to allow Haitian

immigrants in the US to understand and relate to the problem under study.

Van Manen (2014) posited that transferability is not the responsibility of the

researcher, but that of the readers. To ensure my findings resonated with

other Haitian immigrants across the country, I recruited Haitian-Americans

who indeed experienced the phenomenon. I ensured the research and the

interview questions were formulated in ways to provide data regarding the

phenomenon of interest. My role was to provide highly detailed descriptions

of the research context and the assumptions that were central to the research.

Member Checking

Member checking is a validation technique that researchers utilize to

determine the credibility of findings. Member checking occurs when

researchers return data or results to participants to determine the level of

participant’s resonance with researcher’s interpretations of data collected

from said participants (Brit et al., 2016). After the data analysis, I emailed

the results to the participants. I invited them to go through the findings to

provide feedback and to make changes where necessary. I applied this

method to determine whether my interpretations rang true with their original

statement or resonated with the experience participants shared with me.

Their concurrence with my findings was a nod of validation and a

confirmation of their experience as a whole.

Dependability

Dependability is the extent other researchers under different

circumstances can replicate replicated a study (Houghton, Casey, Shawn, &

Murphy, 2013). To increase dependability, I described all the procedures

and the steps in the data collection and data analysis process in sufficient

detail so that others researchers could replicate my study. I enhanced

dependability by applying emphatic validation, which Hughes and Hayhoe

(2008) defined as the notion that the researcher understands participant’s

feelings and perspectives. Emphatic validation impacts dependability in the

sense researchers will likely tend to validate the participants’ opinions or

understanding of the phenomenon (Batchelder, Brosman & Ashwin, 2017). I

also kept a researcher log to document my research experience and to make

note of any issues that arise.

Confirmability

Confirmability refers to the degree that the results of a study are

guided by the participants’ responses rather than the biases and

preconceptions of the researcher

(Houghton et al, 2013). I applied reflexivity as a strategy to increase

confirmability. Reflexivity occurs when a researcher's background and

position will affect what they choose to investigate (Malterud, 2001). To do

so, I did my best to set aside my preconceived ideas about the Haitian

immigrant community’s political incorporation to approach the data analysis

phase with an open perspective. Reflexivity is about being transparent and

as such, during the data analysis, I ensured to remain neutral by focusing on

what the participants said instead of what I think they said or what I would

have wanted them to say based on what I knew already about the

phenomenon. I remained conscious to produce a narrative report that

focused on the needs or the circumstances instead of the needs of my ego or

my perceptions. The unified story of the participants regarding barriers to

civic participation of Haitian immigrants in Florida was the story of the

participants; not mine and I was objective to ensure I reported the lived

experiences, as they told them to me.

According to Houghton et al. (2013), confirmability relies on the

quality of the results as described by the researcher. To enhance

confirmability, I performed audit trails through which I presented a clear

description of the research path from participant logic selection and

recruitment to findings development and reporting. My audit trails entailed

keeping records regarding of all the steps to conduct the analysis of the data

analysis. I also kept a log of all process and analysis notes, raw data, and

preliminary development information. Performing audit trails allowed me to

have a record of how the study unfolded. Creswell (2013) stated that audit

trails give readers a systematic picture to follow each stage of the process of

the data analysis. Audit trails allow other researchers to determine whether

the findings of a study are reliable and replicable and whether these findings

can be used as a basis for decision-making (Carcary, 2009).

Ethical Procedures

After I obtained the IRB approval on November 17, 2017, I began to

recruit participants in keeping with the IRB checklist pertaining to integrity,

fairness, privacy, and confidentiality of the participants. My IRB approval

number is 11-17-17-0311808. After my initial contact, I explained to the

participants the worthiness of the research and the impact their participation

would have in gaining a much greater understanding of the conditions of

Haitian immigrants in the State of Florida.

I reminded them that participation was voluntary and that they could

withdraw from the study at any time. In fact, during the interview, they were

briefed that at any time during the process, they could leave the meeting by

simply clicking on the button that read “Leave Meeting.” There was no

repercussion or reprisals to leave the meeting. Participants were afforded

ample time to reply to the emails I sent to them. There was no deadline to

reply so to avoid influencing the decision of the prospective participants.

In the recruiting materials, I avoided making an unbiased presentation

of the study. I instead focused on stating purpose of the study and the

significance of their participation. I did not make the research attractive by

offering gifts or money to the participants. I did not make any promises to

the participants. Specifically, I told them that their interviews were to be

kept confidential and anonymous. Their names would never be associated

with the research. The IRB approval number was listed in all the

correspondences between the participants and me.

I asked the participants to read and sign an informed consent form to

indicate their agreement to participate. The informed consent form ensured

that participants understand the purpose of the study, their role in the

process, and their rights as participants. Specifically, the informed consent

included a full disclosure statement on the goals and the benefits of the

study and how and to whom I reported the data I collected from the

participants.

The sampling methods ensured that I recruited the appropriate

individuals to participate in the study. Anyone who used the website met the

criteria was eligible for participation, but I only recruited 10 individuals to

equally represent the three subgroups of my study. I did not select

participants who were my close friends, coworkers, or who were members

of my family so to avoid recruiting individuals who could have felt a sense

of obligation to participate in the study or individuals upon whom I could

influence.

The recordings of the interviews were saved onto a thumb drive. The

files will not be saved under any participant’s name so to protect the

confidentiality of the patient.

They were filed using a naming convention that went as such:

PolIncHAIntone00/00/2017. Pol was for political, Inc was for incorporation,

HA is for Haitian-American, one was for the sequence of the interview, and

the date was for the date the interview was conducted.

The files were password protected so to prevent unwanted accesses by

others who may be using my laptop or in case my laptop was lost or stolen.

The files can only be accessed by me and were only shared during member

checks. I will store the files for five years, after which, they will be

destroyed..

The findings may have the potential to be transferred to other settings

and contexts. In simpler terms, I ensured that the results would be beneficial

and that they would increase the knowledge of the Haitian-American

community’s path to political incorporation. The potential benefits were

included in the email invitations as well as in the informed consent. To

administer the interviews, I applied the ethical guideline checklist developed

by the IRB. The IRB ethical guideline provides enforceable rules for

researchers to ensure the integrity of research while protecting the privacy,

the anonymity, and the confidentiality of the participants as well as the

respect for people’s rights and dignity (Brinthaup, 2002 ; Oakes, 2002 ;

Miles et al (2014 ; Resnik, 2015).

Summary

This chapter contained the details of the study methodology. I applied

a qualitative approach and a phenomenological methodology because

central purpose of the research was to understand the lived experiences of

Haitian-Americans regarding their involvement, or lack thereof, in the

Florida political mainstream. To gain such knowledge, I interviewed ten

Haitian-Americans who were either professionals or members of HHAs.

Throughout the interview, I assumed an observer as participant role to

reduce the introduction of my preconceived ideas or prior knowledge of the

phenomenon of interest. My responsibilities were to establish strategies to

empower the reader to assign worth and value to the research. Although the

answers may be subjective, the analysis of the findings was based on a

neutral interpretation of the data on how to engage in political activities in

Florida to generate the applicability of the findings in other contexts. In so

doing, I remained focused on consistency and repeatability. I also remained

focused on maintaining a high degree of neutrality in a way that reduced my

biases or preconceived ideas. I described potential issues of trustworthiness

and all standards to achieve credibility, dependability, transferability, and

confirmability and explained relevant strategies to meet these standards. I

concluded the methodology chapter by explaining ethical procedures for

data collection and data analysis. In the following chapter, I provided a

summary of my findings according to the descriptions that the participants

provided. Throughout data interpretation, I ensured to synthesize the

research questions with the data that I collected from members of the

Haitian immigrant community in the State of Florida.

Chapter 4: Results

Introduction

My purpose in this phenomenological study was to describe the

perceptions and experience of the members of the Haitian-American

community in Florida related to their incorporation into local politics and

government. I applied a phenomenological approach because I wanted to

capture rich and insightful descriptions of the phenomenon. I explored the

perceived factors that prevented Haitian immigrants from being involved

in their community political life. I used in-depth interviews with

openended questions to gather data from four community members, three

professional and three organizational leaders. The participants were all

Haitian-Americans living in Miami, Florida, for at least 10 years. In this

chapter, I describe the data analysis and present the results of the study. I

addressed the following central research question and subquestions:

Central Research Question: What were the factors perceived by the

members of the Haitian-American community that appear to hinder Haitian

immigrants from incorporating effectively into politics at local, state, and

federal levels?

Subquestion 1: What were the lived experiences and perceptions of

expatriate Haitian political leaders related to the barriers and impediments

to political mobilization at local, state, and federal levels?

Subquestion 2: What were the lived experiences and

perceptions of expatriate Haitian business and community leaders

related to the barriers and impediments to political mobilization at

local, state, and federal levels?

Subquestion 3: What are the lived experiences of perceptions of

expatriate Haitian community members who are recent citizens related to

the barriers and impediments to political mobilization at local, state, and

federal levels?

Subquestion 4: What are the perceptions of the Haitian-American

community in Florida regarding how U.S. elected officials of Haitian

descent influence changes in immigration and U.S. humanitarian aid to Haiti

policies?

Setting

I conducted the interviews using a web-based audio video platform

called Zoom. Once the invitees agreed to participate, I sent to them the link

to download Zoom with information to join the meeting. Except for one

participant who had a television playing in the background and one who had

a barking dog, the atmosphere for the interviews was distraction free. The

participants did not have any difficulty logging in to the platform. There

were no objections to being recorded. Using Zoom provided a great benefit

of privacy and confidentiality to the participants because Zoom required no

email address, or their phone number. Another benefit of using Zoom was

that I was able to share my screen with the participants. The participants

were able to see the questions on their screen before and while they were

answering them. After the interviews, I emailed the respective audio

recordings to the participants so each participant could review and approve

what they had reported during the interview. I recruited from all segments of

the Haitian-American community in order to have a diverse demography of

the population of Haitian immigrants in Florida.

Demographics

To ensure confidentiality, I protected participants’ identities by

omitting all references or identifiers in the audio recordings. There is no

direct reference to individuals’ names, professions, organizations, places

of employment, email addresses, or job titles. I interviewed 10

participants during a 1-month period with an average of three interviews a

week. I purposively identified the sample on the 11th Department online

network of Haitian professionals. Seven participants were males and three

were females. I stratified participants into three groups of three

professionals, four community members, and three organizational leaders.

The four community members who participated in the study had

been residing in Florida for 30 years in average, but only one had ever

voted in local elections. One community member was involved in local

politics although never voted while the other two community members

were never involved in local politics. The four community members did

not know if there was any U.S.-elected official with the Haitian

background in the Florida Legislature. All ten participants knew or had

heard about the Mayor of North Miami who was a Haitian born. The

community members were older and came to the country as adults.

The professional and organizational leaders who participated in my

study either were born or were brought to the United States as children.

Their political experience ranged between 10 to 25 years. They all have

voted and claimed they were familiar with the U.S. political process. They

were active in advocating for Haitian immigrants through writing and

signing petitions and organizing protests against TPS.

They claimed they had organized many community events to energize the

Haitian electoral base and to teach Haitian immigrants civic and literacy

skills.

Data Collection

The interviews lasted 30 minutes on average. I recorded all interviews

with permission from each participant. I ensured that all topics of political

incorporation relevant to the study were covered by asking probing

questions when appropriate as recommended by Preide et al. (2014). I used

open-ended and probing questions (Appendix A) to guide the discussions

and to provide participants the opportunity to discuss issues that were

important (Van Manen, 2014).

I performed two rounds of member checking for accuracy. I asked

participants to verify and validate the data transcribed from the interviews.

In the first round of member checking, I sent the audio files to the

participants and I asked them to review them to ensure the recordings

related exactly what they intended to convey. I gave the participants the

opportunity to change their answers where or if necessary. I asked each

participant to reply to my email with the statement “I have reviewed the

audio of the interview and the statements therein are accurate.”

In the second round of member checking, I sent a transcript of my

findings to the participants. I asked them to read and review the transcripts

to ensure that my findings conveyed their perceptions, their experience and

their knowledge of the phenomenon. The two rounds of member checking

allowed me to avoid misinterpretations or over interpretations of the data

reported by the participants. I uploaded the participant verified and

validated audio recording onto Dedoose for data analysis.

Data Analysis

I applied the six-phase thematic analysis method formulated by

Braun and Clarke (2006) as the guide to analyze the data I collected from

the 10 participants. In the first phase, I listened to the audio recordings

several times while withholding my prior political incorporation’s

knowledge and experience. The purpose of the first phase was to become

familiar with the data and to ensure that I explored the phenomenon, as the

participants knew and experienced it (Van Manen, 2014).

In the second and third phases, I generalized initial codes by

extracting significant statements or statements that were directly related to

the phenomenon. I arranged the codes into groups of codes and each group

of codes were later collated to be transformed into potential themes to

establish a thematic hierarchy as well as conduct an interpretive analysis

(Van Patten & Jegerski, 2010; Walker, 2012). I coded meaningful

statements into themes using nodes in Dedoose. I used the auto code

function to classify the participants’ responses into nodes according to the

interview questions and subquestions.

I checked each expression relevant to each participant experience for

their relationship with the purpose statement and the research and

subquestions of the study. This process facilitated the emergence and the

identification of new themes and subthemes. Once I confirmed that no new

data emerged or revealed, I weighted and linked the themes together to

determine which ones were repeated the most and which ones were the most

aligned with the purpose of the study.

In the fourth and fifth phases, I reviewed the themes to eliminate the

ones that did not add value to the interpretive analysis or that did not

provide sufficient data to answer the research question and the

subquestions.

In the sixth phase, I wrote an exhaustive and unified story of the data

collected. I wrote the findings in the forms of verbatim statements,

meanings, nodes, themes, and summary to report the story of the

individuals who experienced the phenomenon so readers, especially other

groups of immigrants in other U.S. states, could feel related to the story.

The six-phase thematic analysis method provided me the necessary

tools and knowledge to understand the data and to present the findings in

ways that will make sense to readers.

Evidence of Trustworthiness

As I mentioned in Chapter 3, I took several steps to ensure evidence

of trustworthiness in this phenomenological study. My focus was to ensure

I was in fact analyzing the data I collected. I ensured also that the data I

collected answered the research and the sub questions. Moreover, I

ensured that the participants represented the different segments of Haitian-

American community, and that the participants validated my

interpretations of the data I collected from them.

Before I engaged in any recruitment and interviews, I submitted the

interview questions and the consent form to Walden University‘s IRB. I

obtained IRB approval on November 17, 2017. To achieve trustworthiness,

as stated by Creswell (2013), I applied the standards of credibility,

transferability, dependability, and confirmability as the main criteria to

verify my conclusions.

Credibility

I was aware of the risks of misinformation that could temper with the

data analysis due to the subjectivity related to participants having different

experience and different knowledge of political incorporation of the Haitian-

American community. Thus, to ensure I collected the most relevant data and

that I recruited the most appropriate sample, I applied a purposeful sampling

and member checking as tools to achieve credibility.

During the recruiting phase, I selected participants who exhibited

evidence of having rich experience and deep knowledge of the phenomenon

(Van Manen, 2014). I visited the profile pages of 25 prospective participants

on the 11th Department online network to form an idea of their background

and their works in the community. Out of 25 individuals who responded

affirmatively to my invitation to participate in the study, I selected ten who I

felt could provide the most pertinent and honest information regarding the

phenomenon.

Before the interviews, as suggested by Miles et al (2014), I engaged in

personal conversations about the Haitian diaspora as a whole with each

participant to provide a relaxing environment. The personal conversations

allowed me to confirm that the participants had indeed experience and were

knowledgeable of the issues facing by

Haitian immigrants in Florida.

Furthermore, to enhance credibility and to reduce personal biases, the

IRB and two expert panels at Walden University reviewed the research

questions, the interview questions and the interview protocol. I performed

two rounds of member checking to provide participants the opportunities to

review what they had reported and to validate the interpretations of what

they had reported during the interviews. I sent to each participant their

respective audio file three hours after the initial interview and three days

after I concluded the preliminary data analysis phase.

I also maintained a detailed audit trail of the data collected. I adhered

to direct quotes from the participants to ensure that the findings and data

were objectively gathered. Although the sample selected for my study was

relatively small, I reached saturation to provide an accurate and rich

description of research findings.

Transferability

I conducted this data analysis in way for other researchers to

generalize and replicate my findings across other diaspora groups living in

Florida and other U.S. states. For this purpose, I recorded my research

activities in a word document into which I typed events that occurred,

actions that I took in these circumstances, deadlines, milestones, interview

schedules, length of each interview, and my personal experiences

throughout the interviewing process. The Word document, which I used as

my reflexive journal, allowed me to describe in detail each step of the

research methodology provided the basis of strong evidence to substantiate

my analysis of the data I collected from the participants. Keeping a trail of

my activities enabled me to record a vivid description of participants’

experiences and offered transparency in the analysis of the data.

I addressed transferability by providing clear descriptions of the

sample and data collection procedures, as well as providing textual

excerpts directly from the interview audio transcripts. The results of my

study could be transferred to other researchers with the use of information

to explore other possible obstacles or how these obstacles negatively

affected immigrant incorporation into governments and US politics. In

addition, the study provided ample knowledge to gain a thorough

understanding of social and institutional barriers that Haitian immigrants

were facing regarding their incorporation into local politics and

government. I obtained informed consent from each participant along with

the assurances of confidentiality and anonymity.

Dependability

Dependability occurs in the interpretation of participants’

statements and personal opinions during a consistent analysis of the

interview transcripts (Miles et al. 2014). Personal biases and preconceived

ideas may have an adverse impact on data analysis. This is why Creswell

(2013) recommended that researchers immerse themselves into the study

to become familiar with the amount of data collected in order to better

transcribe the interviews and to code reliably the data. I became familiar

with the data first by conducting extensive research on the situations

Haitian immigrants and second by listening and re-listening the audio

files. I also stored all my sources and archived all the steps so the process

may be reproduced eventually using the data and the sources compiled

and collected. I achieved dependability through the detailed and clear

description of the study from problem identification to data analysis.

Confirmability

I obtained confirmability through the member checking technique,

which allowed me to establish openness and to gain trust and full

cooperation of the participants. Member checking also allowed me to give

participants the opportunities to challenge my interpretations of their

statements (Miles et al., 2014). I also obtained confirmability by avoiding

subjectivity in the interpretation of data. I had put aside any prior knowledge

of the phenomenon to generate accurate findings and to formulate

conclusions that had implications for social change. I also performed audit

trails to support confirmability (Creswell, 2013). The data collected, which

included the recordings of each interview and all the transcripts will be

available for a minimum of 5 years.

Results

In this chapter, I report the findings according to the central research

question, subquestions, and themes. I report the themes individually but

one theme could be attributed to more than one response or one response

could be attributed to more than on theme. The central research question

addressed the participant’s perceptions regarding the factors that appear to

hinder Haitian immigrants from incorporating effectively into politics at

local, state, and federal levels. Thematic analysis revealed communication,

leadership, language, and immigration as perceived barriers that generated

a lack of interest, a poor knowledge of US politics, a low engagement, and

a weak commitment of Haitian immigrants to local political and

nonpolitical activities. The statements of the participants provided ample

descriptions to answer questions two, three, four, six, eight, and nine to

eleven of the interview.

The first, second, and third research subquestions addressed the lived

experiences and the perceptions of expatriate Haitian political leaders,

Haitian business and community leaders, and Haitian community members

who are recent citizens related to the barriers and impediments to political

mobilization at local, state, and federal levels. The themes that emerged

from the analysis were immigration, civic education, leadership and the

absence of a unified and cohesive strategy to strength the voice of the

entire Haitian diaspora. Those themes appeared to have led to a poor

political presence of Haitian immigrants in their community’s electoral and

nonelectoral activities as well as a weak political weight of Haitian

migrants in local politics and government.

The fourth research subquestion addressed the perceptions of the

HaitianAmerican community in Florida regarding how U.S. elected

officials of Haitian descent influence changes in immigration and U.S.

humanitarian aid to Haiti policies. Thematic analysis revealed themes

related to policy responsiveness, underrepresentation, and the absence of

outreach activities to reach the HaitianAmerican community at large. The

Haitian-American community in Florida lacked the basic knowledge about

the mission of US elected officials of Haitian descent related to the plight

of Haitian immigrants in the United States especially in Florida (Wiltz,

2014).

According to Lucien (2015), members of Haitian-American

community received more support from community leaders, political

activists, and HaitianAmerican professionals than they received from the

elected officials with the Haitian background. Moreover, members of

Haitian-American community were not too active in their community

public life (Rigueur, 2012). Wiltz (2014) stated that HaitianAmericans

either did not vote or did not register to vote because they did not accord

too much significance to local elections. The statements the participants

provided ample descriptions to answer Questions 1, 5, and 7 of the

interview.

Table 1 presents the themes and subthemes according to each research

and sub question.

Table 1

Themes and Corresponding Summaries

Research question and subquestions Themes Summary

RQ: What were the factors

perceived by the members of the

Haitian-American community that

appear to hinder Haitian

immigrants from incorporating

effectively into politics at local,

state, and federal levels?

Immigration

Language

Leadership

Communication

All 10

participants

expressed that

because the

majority of

Haitian were

either residents

undocumented,

they were not too

focused on U.S.

politics. Their

primary concern

was job and

becoming U.S.

citizens to speed

their immigration

request to be

united with

their family who

were still

back home.

Immigration

status prevented

many

Haitian

immigrants from

getting involved in

politics.

SQ1: What were the lived

experiences and perceptions of

expatriate Haitian political leaders

related to the barriers and

impediments to political mobilization

at local, state, and federal levels? Immigration

Civic education

Communicatio

Leadership

Collaboration

Seven of the 10

participants

expressed that the

Haitian American

was

not civically

literate, which

prevented them

from

getting involved in

local

politics.

SQ2: What were the lived

experiences and perceptions of

expatriate Haitian business and

community leaders related to the

barriers and impediments to

political mobilization at local, state,

and federal levels?

SQ3: What were the lived

experiences of perceptions of

expatriate Haitian community

members who are recent citizens

related to the barriers and

impediments to political

mobilization at local, state, and

federal levels?

Immigration

Civic education

Communicatio

Collaboration

Communicatio

n Immigration

Civic education

Five of the 10

participants noted

that the Haitian

leadership was not

doing a great job

communication

their agenda to the

Haitian

community.

Six of the 10

participants stated

that it was easier

for their children to

become involved in

U.S. politics

because they

were not facing

the same

immigration and

language barriers

they, themselves,

did face when they

first arrived in the

country.

SQ4: What were the perceptions of the Haitian-

Communication American community in Florida

regarding how Responsiveness U.S. elected

officials of Haitian descent influence Outreach

changes in immigration and U.S. humanitarian aid

Underrepresentation to Haiti policies?

Six of the 10 participants expressed that as long the

Haitian-

American

community was

composed of

several clicks of

people with

different

personalities, it

would be almost

impossible for Haitian immigrants to influence

changes in

immigration and U.S.

humanitarian aid to

Haiti

policies

Theme 1: Immigration

All ten participants noted immigration as the perceived factor that

prevented Haitian immigrants in Florida, especially the older generations,

from effectively getting involved in politics at the local, state, and federal

levels. They mentioned that the majority of Haitians living in Florida were

either undocumented or not legal residents. The few who were legal

residents or green card holders were waiting to become US citizens to begin

to get involved in US politics. The majority of Haitian immigrants who

became naturalized citizens were not registered to vote and few of them who

were registered to vote, indeed, did not vote (Wiltz, 2014).

A participant mentioned that Haitians came late into the political

game because they had to wait five years after they became legal to become

US citizens and to begin to be politically involved. Another participant

stated that if Haitians did not have to go through the waiting period or if

Haitians had the same advantages as the Cubans, the

Haitian-American community could have been by now a strong political

force. The Wet

Foot Dry Foot is an immigration policy that essentially prevented the United

States from deporting Cubans who fled Cuba to enter the United States.

(Menchaca, 2015). Bedolla (2015) stated that the Wet Foot Dry Foot policy

allowed newly arrived Cubans to pursue the US residency a year later.

The organizational leaders I interviewed for my study stated Haitians

did not know what their immigration status entitled them to do in America.

They said when they invited Haitians to attend community events, they

claimed they were either illegal or were not US citizens. Organizational

leaders spent countless of hours explaining and convincing Haitian

immigrants that political engagement did not only include registering to vote

and voting; it also involved protesting, donating or donating to campaigns

and mostly protesting and demonstrating to take a public stand against

unfair immigration policies. “Therefore, we must begin to educate them

before we can begin to mobilize them,” a professional leader stated.

Two of the Haitian-American professionals stated that the Haitian

leadership was failing on teaching Haitian immigrants civic and literacy

skills to empower them become involved and to make intelligent political

decisions. Two of the community members expressed that Haitian

immigrants needed to know about immigration especially how and where to

file for residence, TPS, and political asylum as well as the advantages that

come with being here in America.

Theme 2: Language

All ten participants mentioned that, in addition to their immigration

status (undocumented, legal residents, not naturalized citizens), Haitian

immigrants faced a language barrier, which prevented them from

understanding US politics. “It is not that we do not speak English; it is that

we do not speak it well enough to understand the language of the U.S.

political system,” expressed a community member.

The participants noted that because of their immigration status and

their lack of fluency in the English language, Haitian immigrants did not try

to understand the U.S. political process. Instead, they remained focused on

jobs and saving money to remit to their loved ones back in Haiti. The three

organizational leaders expressed that, because

Haitian immigrants showed a low level of interests in their community life,

the HaitianAmerican community had no political presence in local politics

and no political weight in U.S. politics.

Six participants, notably the organizational and the professional

leaders, expressed that second and third generations of Haitian immigrants

were quicker to incorporate into local politics because they grew up

speaking English and learning the U.S. political system. They did not face

the same issues their parents did. A participant said that younger

generations were born here and their parents did their best to provide them

a better education. They grew up within the network their parents had built

and did not have to worry about sending money to Haiti after they started

working. Another participant mentioned that younger Haitians were more

likely to learn English and Haitian immigrants who spoke English were

more likely to participate in politics. All ten participants cited that the

lack of fluency in English had led to an unsuccessful political engagement

of the Haitian-American community as well as a political attachment to

their community public life. The first generation of Haitian immigrants is

not politically active whereas the second and third generations are highly

politically active because they do not have the same physiological needs as

they parents did when they first come to America. A community member

stated that the older generation of Haitian immigrants had been victim of

prejudice and discrimination since the first day they arrived in the country.

Such a prejudice compelled them to focus, not on politics, but on getting as

many jobs as they could to save money to remit home (Lucien, 2015).

Another community member expressed that politics was the last thing on

the minds of Haitians who did not become U.S. citizens to be eligible to

vote, but to place themselves on a quicker path to apply for residence for

their children.

Theme 3: Civic Education

All ten participants expressed that the Haitian-American community

in Florida lacked adequate literacy skills to understand the U.S. policy

system and thus the reason Haitian immigrants were not engaged in political

and community activities. Six participants noted that the Haitian leadership

was to blame for failing to launch civic actions, teach literateness, and

promote social cohesion among Haitian immigrants in the United States,

especially in Florida.

Without a civic education construct, Haitian immigrants do not know

how to get involved in their community as well as to gain and develop

knowledge, skills, values and motivation to build a mature and attractive

political force (Pierre-Louis, 2013). According to Wiltz (2014), without the

proper literacy skills, Haitian immigrants are slow to integrate into the larger

U.S. social fabric and, therefore, were unable to grasp the basic concepts of

their commitment toward the community through civic, political, and non-

political activities.

The three organizational leaders, a professional, and a community

member stated that the lack of civic education confined the Haitian

American on only defending or attempting to resolve immigration problems

while they ignored to focus on educating Haitians so they could become

familiar with alternative approaches to voice their opinions. “Protests and

demonstrations are not the only means of getting heard; attending town hall

and city council meetings, knowing their candidates, reaching to their

representatives, and donating and volunteering to campaigns are also great

means to get involved in politics,” a Haitian-American professional noted.

Theme 4: Leadership

All ten participants noted that the various Haitian community-

based organizations, hometown associations, and professional associations

were working as separate entities. They observed that many individuals in

the Haitian Americans were venting on their accomplishment but were

failing collectively because of personal egos and agenda derived from an

unorganized Haitian-American community.

The participants expressed that there was lack of trust among

Haitian immigrants. “Nothing can be done without a minimum trust,” one

participant stated. They stated that Haitian immigrants had to work toward

restore trust among them prior doing anything. They expressed that the

Haitian leadership was composed of clicks of people with different

personalities and different agendas and who were more concerned about

boosting their ego.

The participants stated there was no show of common force in the

Haitian leadership. They further stated that although Haitian immigrants

were unified around the TPS issue, each organization were in it for

themselves because they did not come together to send one message that

could have driven, more effectively, the point of TPS beneficiaries to

Washington. These organizations just happened to be at the same place at

the same time.

The participants perceived an emotional outburst where

individual and groups were reacting on their own way instead of providing

a unified response. To provide a unified response and to become a mature

political force, the Haitian leadership must be organized (Wiltz, 2014).

The participants expressed that the Haitian leadership was not

active, except during election campaigns, in motivating Haitian immigrants

to be engaged in the public sphere of their community. The Haitian

leadership was not active in mobilizing Haitian immigrants toward

building a presence and making their voice heard to influence government

actions in Florida, especially in healthcare, education and immigration

programs.

Due to an ineffective leadership, the Haitian-American community

lacks the educational, political and social framework to strengthen and boost

civic participation and citizen engagement they needed to grow as a political

force as well as to increase their political value in the Florida’s political

mainstream (Rigueur, 2012).

Theme 5: Underrepresentation

The four community members expressed they did not know who the

US elected officials with the Haitian background, let alone, their

representatives were. The three

Haitian-American professionals and the three organizational leaders noted

that the US elected officials with the Haitian background were not elected to

represent only Haitian immigrants but all Americans living in Florida. They

further mentioned that US elected officials with the Haitian background

were in minority and therefore they were, unless they made alliances with

other US elected officials with other foreign backgrounds, unable to

influence legislation for the Haitian-American constituency.

A participant voiced that the Haitian-American community was

underrepresented in local politics because Haitian immigrants were not

interested in local politics and as whole did not vote. Another participant

expressed that it was impossible for US elected officials of Haitian descent

or even the representatives to represent and defend the interests of a group

that was so politically unstructured and unattractive.

Theme 6: Communication

Eight out of the ten participants posited that there was a sharp

disconnect among the various Haitian Community Based Organizations.

That sharp disconnect existed also between Haitian Community Based

Organizations and US elected officials of Haitian descent. It further existed

between the Haitian constituency and US elected officials of Haitian

descent. According to the participants, community leaders did not share

information among them nor did they pass out information to the

community of Haitian immigrants in Florida, US elected officials of Haitian

descent were not reaching out to community leaders to inform them of

social programs they envisioned for the community.

The participants expressed a lack of dialogue or a communication

channel for

Haitian immigrants to express their needs and their concerns regarding the

performances of their political leaders. They further expressed that he

Haitian-American community in Florida functioned as clicks of individuals

with strong egos, competing interests, and disparate personalities.

The participants noted that the Haitian Community Based

Organizations were not taking advantage of the social networks to reach out

to Haitian immigrants. Thus, the reason Haitian protests, even those for the

TPS extensions failed to unite a big number of Haitian immigrants. Many of

these organizations do not have a web presence; they are active only in

times of protests that reunited few hundred Haitians (Lucien, 2015).

The participants noted that Haitian immigrants must begin to work

together and collaboratively if they wish to make difference in future

elections.

Theme 7: Outreach

Seven participants complained of a lack of outreach activities by the

Haitian leadership to disseminate ideas and practices and to connect Haitian

organizations and Haitian businesses along with their services with the

population. In fact, Haitian immigrants were not familiar with the

philosophy and mission of the myriad of Haitian community-based

associations (Rigueur, 2012).

Theme 8: Responsiveness

All ten participants expressed that their representatives were not

responsive to the needs of the Haitian-American community nor did they

defend the Haitian case before the state legislature. Such policy

unresponsiveness was related to Haitian immigrants not representing an

attractive political force due to not having a political presence and a political

weight in the community (Wiltz, 2014).

Theme 9: Collaboration

Nine participants expressed that the Haitian leadership is spontaneous

who rose when there was a problem or a situation to be fixed or each time

someone said something bad about Haiti. The participants stated that most

of the Haitian leaders were the product of a situation who previously were

simple community members. The internet had provided many opportunities

for Haitian immigrants with the most friends, fans or with the most to

become leaders except these leaders spoke one time about a situation and

never followed up.

The participants noted that the Haitian leadership was failing in

accompanying the community in protests because the leadership was

unorganized without a “go to war” plan to address the immigration issues.

The participants further noted that the Haitian leadership must come out as

one to get Haitian immigrants out of their zone of their zone of comfort

because Haitian immigrants felt they were too happy with a job, a social

security number, or a green card. Moreover, they expressed that the Haitian

leadership must stop being reactive, the community needed a proactive

leadership; a leadership with a plan.

Summary

In this phenomenological study, I investigated perceived factors that

prevented the Haitian-American community in Florida from getting active

to increase their value in the Florida political mainstream. Ten participants,

all living in Miami, FL and representing different segments of the Haitian-

American community participated in interviews with open-ended questions

regarding their perceptions, experiences, and knowledge of Haitian’s

political incorporation in Florida. During data analysis, eight themes

emerged from the thematic analysis, which I used to address the research

question and the four sub research questions. In Chapter 5, I present a

summary and interpretation of the findings, which I will compare and

contrast to current literature about immigrant political incorporation. I will

also describe implications for social change, recommendations for further

study, and my experiences in the process.

Chapter 5: Discussion, Conclusions, and Recommendations

Introduction

In this qualitative phenomenological study, I explored barriers that

prevented Haitian Americans in Florida from being politically mobilized to

incorporate into politics and government at local, state, and federal levels.

Capturing the lived experiences and the perceptions of 10 participants, I

portrayed the Haitian-American community as a political minority with the

abilities to increase their political value, attract lawmakers, sway results of

presidential elections, and influence U.S. immigration and humanitarian aid

to Haiti policies. It filled the gap in previous literature as well as in the

current political climate that depicted Haitian immigrants as a burden on the

shoulders of the United States, as having AIDS, and from a “shit-hole”

country. In this chapter, I present a summary and interpretations of the

findings in relation to the process of minority political incorporation theory

and that to peer-reviewed research. I also present the limitations of the

study. I then recommend subject areas for further research and implications

for positive social change.

Summary of Findings

My study captured the barriers to the incorporation of Haitian

immigrants into politics in Florida. The central research question

investigated the factors perceived by professionals, organizational leaders,

and members of the Haitian-American community that appear to hinder

Haitian immigrants from incorporating effectively into politics at local,

state, and federal levels.

The first three subquestions explored the lived experiences and

perceptions of political, business and community leaders, and community

members who were recent citizens related to the barriers to their political

mobilization at local, state, and federal levels. The fourth subquestion

examined the perceptions of the Haitian-American community in Florida

regarding how U.S. elected officials of Haitian background influenced

changes in immigration and U.S. humanitarian aid policies for Haiti.

I recruited and interviewed 10 Haitian Americans. I stratified the

participants into three groups to capture the different segments of the

Haitian-American community as a whole. The main criteria for eligibility

was that participants resided in Miami for at least three years and that they

had experienced and were knowledgeable of the plight of

Haitian immigrants in relation to their political incorporation.

The first group was composed of four community members. In the

context of my study, community members were Haitian Americans who

lived in the community, but did not have a leadership position. They were

neither professionals, nor did they belong to any Haitian community-based

organization. The second group was composed of three professionals,

Haitian Americans who provided services in the community in their field of

expertise. Lawyers, doctors, nurses, social workers, and engineers were

recruited to represent professionals. The third group was composed of

community leaders. Also called organizational leaders, community leaders

were considered to be those Haitian Americans who were in a leadership

position in the community regardless of their level of education. Members

of Haitian community-based associations, political activists, community

organizers, teachers, preachers, and radio hosts were recruited as community

leaders. The three community leaders recruited for my study belonged to a

Haitian community-based organization.

A Haitian American who had a degree in law but was not practicing

law was not eligible to participate as a professional because a professional

had to provide services to the community in his or her field of expertise.

However, if such a Haitian American belonged to a HCBA, he or she was

eligible to be recruited as a community leader. Moreover, if such Haitian

American was neither providing services, nor did he or she belong to any

Haitian organization, he or she was only eligible to be recruited as a

community member. Haitian community-based organization was referred to

as any type of activities that reunited more than two Haitian immigrants to

discuss political ideas for their community.

The key findings resulting from the analysis of participants’

responses revealed nine interrelated themes: collaboration, immigration,

language, civic education, leadership, communication, underrepresentation,

outreach, and responsiveness. According to the participants, these themes

were the barriers that impeded the effective community engagement and

political activism of Haitian immigrants in Florida. All 10

participants expressed the view that because the majority of Haitian

immigrants living in Florida were either residents or undocumented, they

demonstrated low levels of interest in U.S. politics. The primary concern of

Haitian immigrants was work and the process of becoming a U.S. citizen to

improve the prospects of bringing to the U.S. their family members still in

Haiti.

Seven out of the 10 participants expressed the view that the Haitian-

American community was not civically literate, which prevented them from

getting involved in local politics. Five out of the ten participants noted that

the Haitian leadership was not doing a great job communicating their agenda

to the Haitian community. Six out of the 10 participants stated that it was

easier for their children to become involved in U.S. politics because they did

not face the same immigration and language barriers they, themselves, faced

when they first arrived in the country. Six out the 10 participants noted that,

as long the Haitian-American community was composed of several cliques,

it would be almost impossible for Haitian immigrants to influence changes

in immigration and U.S. humanitarian aid to Haiti policies. Nine participants

stated that the Haitian leadership was too reactive, too emotional, too

spontaneous, and too unfocused.

Applying the Theoretical Framework to the Findings

The theoretical framework is a practical guide that allows researchers

to determine whether an approach to solving a research problem or

answering a research question is feasible (Lederman & Lederman, 2015).

Creswell (2013) discussed the theoretical framework as a means to

complement, extend, or verify research findings. Grant and Ossanlo (2014)

described a theoretical framework as the most important aspect of the

research process for it provides the logical guide to create, design, and the

blueprint of the research. The theoretical framework designs and shapes the

study Charmaz (2011).

I applied the process of minority political incorporation that Marschall and

Mikulska (2013) developed to explain how Blacks were mobilized to

incorporate into

Louisiana’s political mainstream. The theory, moreover, explored how those

Black Americans achieved electoral success, especially areas where they

were the least represented and political areas where they were the most

represented. Marschall and Mikulska (2013) explored candidate emergence,

electoral success, progressive political ambition, and substantive

representation as four stages of the process of minority political

incorporation. Although the process of political incorporation focused on

Black Americans in Louisiana, the stages were consistent with the

conditions of Haitian immigrants in the sense Haitian Americans in Florida

faced many of the same issues as Black Americans in Louisiana. The

absence of Haitian immigrants on the political scene led to a low voter

turnout because Haitian Americans did not demonstrate the progressive

political ambitions to emerge as candidates and as voters who are engaged

toward making electoral successes (Wiltz, 2015).

Candidate Emergence

Participants in the study clearly indicated that there were challenges in

candidate emergence in the Haitian-American community. The participants

stated there was a great need for the Haitian-American community to

identify Haitian Americans who had the competencies to run for office and

to unite the Haitian American under one political agenda, regardless of

immigration status and political affiliation. The lack of candidate emergence

was underscored during the writing of this chapter as the Trump

administration declined to renew the Temporary Protective Status for 60,000

Haitians displaced by the earthquake of January 12, 2010.

These facts fit the analysis of de Graauw (2014), Hoschschild et al. (2013),

Lafleur (2015), Morales (2011), Rigueur (2012), and Wah (2013) who

advanced the view that candidate who emerged from minority or immigrant

group was the result of the political mobilization of such minority or

immigrant group. These facts also fit the analysis of Ramakrishnan (2013)

who contend that political mobilization provided immigrants the adequate

resources to identify, within their group, the individual or individuals who

can represent them in elections or candidates with the most progressive

political ambitions.

Moreover, these facts fit the study of Alba and Foner (2011),

Bhojwani (2014), and Morales (2011) who expressed that minority or an

immigrant group with candidate emergence clearly demonstrated the

political competencies and the organizational skills to influence and shift

policymaking. Candidate emergence would have sent the signals to the US

government that the Haitian-American community was a reliable, attractive,

and growing voting bloc.

Participants to the study mentioned that the Haitian-American

community has the essential skills and the competencies necessary to be an

attractive political force, but the community lacked true and active political

leaders. They also responded that the HaitianAmerican community had

made significant success in education and sports in the United States, but

not in the political arena where a handful of U.S.-elected officials of Haitian

descent voted, ran, and won political seats. These statements fit the analysis

of Lafleur (2013), Pierre- Louis (2013), Romero (2018), Wah (2013), and

Wiltz (2015) who advanced the idea that, despite their growing number, the

Haitian-American community was yet to be seen as political minority in the

United States. The participants’ responses explained that Haitian Americans

were not emerging as voters, let alone as candidates.

The non-emergence of Haitian Americans as voters and candidates was due

primarily to an unorganized, uncollaborated, and unstructured Haitian-

American leadership as well as to unwelcoming US immigration policies

(Wiltz, 2015).

Electoral Success

Participants in the study clearly specified that Haitian immigrants

were not making notable electoral success in local politics. The participants

stated there was not too many US elected officials with the Haitian

background in the Florida state legislature. The lack of electoral success was

highlighted during the writing of this chapter as, out of 333.000 Haitian

immigrants in Florida, of whom 224.000 were naturalized citizens, there had

been only one Haitian American elected to the 147 member Florida House

of Representatives (Romero, 2018 ; Wiltz, 2015). Moreover, according to

the authors with an approximation of 75.000 Haitian immigrants in North

Miami, there had been a handful

U.S. officials of Haitian descent elected as Mayor, Councilman, or Judge in

North Miami. These facts fit the analysis of Telus (2011) and White

(2013) who advanced the view that immigrant electoral success depended

on how a specific immigrant group voted for a specific immigrant-candidate

or candidates with whom they shared the same ethnic background. These

facts also fit the analysis of Morales (2011) who stated that with electoral

success, immigrants gained political seats in government. Such gains

political gains could generate a substantive representation. Substantive

representation entails that elected legislators advocate on behalf of certain

group or the group that elects them

(Bhojwani, 2014; Browning et al., 2003).

Participant to the study expressed that the Haitian-American

community was doing poorly in politics because of the lack of Haitian

Americans with the political ambitions to run for office. Participants further

noted low interest levels of Haitian immigrants in U.S. politics as a factor

for the non-emergence of Haitian-American candidates and unsuccessful

results at the polls.

Progressive Political Ambition

Participants in the study openly indicated that the Haitian-American

community lacked the necessary progressive political ambition to transform

Haitian immigrants into a mature political base with an active constituency

and an energized electorate. The lack of political ambition of Haitian

immigrants in Florida was stressed during the writing of this chapter, as

Haitian immigrants were not mobilized politically to be involved in their

community political life, which resulted in the Haitian-American

community having an insignificant political value to U.S. lawmakers.

These facts fit the analysis of Marschall and Mikulska (2013),

Rigueur (2012), Wah, (2013), Wiltz (2015) who expressed that progressive

political ambitions motivated minority or immigrant groups to seek political

advancements in their respective community. These facts also fit the

analysis of Bhojwani (2015) and Ramakrishnan (2013) who conveyed that

progressive political ambition drove immigrants to become active in

politics. De Graauw (2014) contented that progressive political ambitions

led to candidate emergence, electoral success and, perhaps, a substantive

representation in politics and government.

Haitian immigrants demonstrated low political ambitions due

primarily to their immigration status, their lack of civic education, poor

leadership, and a lack of collaboration among Haitian leaders. The low

progressive political ambitions of Haitian immigrants contributed to Haitian

immigrants not having a strong voice, presence, and weight in their

community.

Substantive Representation

Participants in the study expressed that it was difficult for the Haitian-

American community to achieve substantive representation in local politics.

The participants further stated that without a substantive representation or

without more representatives of Haitian descent in politics and without more

Haitian Americans heading to the polls, the immigration Haitian-American

community were facing were not debated in legislative sessions or town and

council meetings. That was because Haitian Americans lacked progressive

political ambitions and suffered from candidate emergence.

The lack of substantive representation was emphasized during the

writing of this chapter as the Haitian American was only represented by one

State Representative and a

Mayor in North Miami. These facts fit the analysis of Dovi (2014),

Marschall and Mikulska (2013) and Wallace (2014) who stated that a

political substantive representation was responsive to the needs and interests

of the constituents, especially the group with which the representatives

identify themselves.

Applying Peer Reviewed Research to the Findings

Immigration

Participants to the study clearly expressed that the main barrier to

the incorporation of the Haitian-American community into local politics

was immigration. The current immigration policies were not favorable to

the integration and assimilation of Haitian immigrants. The participants

further indicated that unwelcoming immigration policies isolated Haitian

immigrants while the same immigration policies were providing better

opportunities for other diaspora groups such as Cubans, South Asians, and

Jewish. These facts were consistent with existing literature on the plight of

immigrants in the United States, which dubbed immigration as the premier

impediment to immigrant incorporation into politics (de Graauw, 2014 ;

Hoschschild et al, 2013). These facts also fit the analysis of Morales

(2011) who determined that disparities in immigration policies enhanced

the incorporation of certain groups of immigrants while they delayed that

of other groups. Menchaca (2012) expressed the view that immigration

entitlements were not the same for all immigrants groups. Bedolla (2015)

agreed that US immigration policies were more welcoming to Cuban

immigrants than they were to Haitian immigrants.

Participants to the study, moreover, noted that because of their

immigration status, Haitian immigrants lived in the fear of being caught

and deported and thus, they left their home only to go to work. “They do

not attend protests because they know they can be arrested if they were to

be asked to show their documents,” a participant indicated. The

participants’ responses fit the analysis of Pierre (2014), Rigueur (2012),

Telus (2011), Wah (2013), and Wiltz (2015) who stated that

undocumented Haitians were reluctant to show up in protests because of

fear of being arrested to be deported.

Language

Participants to the study clearly indicated that the lack of fluency in

the English language also prevented Haitian immigrants from becoming

actively involved in politics because Haitian immigrants had difficulties

understanding the U.S. political process. These responses were aligned

with the findings of Bevelander and Spang (2014) who noted that

immigrants, regardless of their immigration status, who were not fluent in

the language of their host country, took longer to incorporate politically

because they could understand their host country’s political system. The

knowledge of the host country’s language facilitates civic integration and

literacy training (Goodman & Wright, 2015 ; Ramakrishnan, 2013).

According to Wah (2013), the lack of English language keeps Haitian

immigrants away from politics.

The participants further noted that the first-generation of Haitian

immigrants had lower levels of English proficiency than those of the

second generation. The participants further expressed that Haitian

immigrants of the second generation were more likely to incorporate into

local politics than Haitian immigrants of the first generation because the

former grew up speaking English and learning U.S. politics in schools.

The findings fit the views of Ramakrishnan and Espenshade (2001) and

Shertzer (2013) who indicated a low ballot turnout of first generation of

immigrants compared to that of the second generation of immigrants

because of the former’s low English fluency.

Civic Education

Participants to the study expressed that the low turnout of Haitian

community in local ballots was due to their lack of civic education. The

participants indicated that Haitian immigrants knew little or had no

knowledge of U.S. politics. The lack of civic education restricted the ability

of Haitian immigrants to support immigrant-candidate or elected officials

who may be responsive to their needs and interests.

These facts fit the findings of Marschall and Mikulska (2013),

Stepick, Stepick, & Kretsedemas (2001), Wah (2013), and Wiltz (2015) who

advanced that the level of incorporation of minority groups into politics and

governments was related to their level of civic education. These facts also fit

the analysis of Bhojwani (2015), Hoschschild et al. (2013), Ramakrishnan

(2013) who indicated that civic engagement allowed immigrants to forge

their identities and provided them the base to shape their political voices to

make a political impact in their community. According to de Graauw

(2014), Terrazas (2011) and Wallace (2014), civic education prepares

immigrants for engagement, activism, and participation in local politics).

Leadership

Participants to the study indicated that the Haitian-American

community lacked leaders, advocates, and elected officials to teach Haitian

immigrants the skills needed to understand their rights and obligations as

well as to understand immigration benefits to which they were not entitled.

As immigration becomes, under the Trump administration, a hotly contested

political subject, immigrant civic education has become increasingly

important as the participants expressed that the Haitian leadership was not

involved in teaching literacy skills to Haitian immigrants.

Collaboration and Communication

Participants to the study expressed that the Haitian-American

community operated as an unnoticeable force due to poor community

engagement and political activism. The participants further expressed that if

the Haitian-American community, as a whole, were mobilized to participate

in politics, the community would have had a mature political value to U.S.

lawmakers. These facts are constant with the findings of Amna and Ekman

(2012) who contended a cohesive platform allowed immigrants or groups of

immigrants to build a political presence and to demonstrate a political

weight in local politics. According to Alba and Foner (2013), a political

presence and a political weight are generated through the active

participation of immigrants in electoral and non-electoral activities.

Underrepresentation

Participants to the study clearly mentioned that Haitian immigrants

were underrepresented in politics at all levels of the US governments in

comparison to the other immigrant groups. That was because of an

unstructured leadership, an unorganized community, and a lack of civic

education to mobilize and educate Haitian immigrants at the community

level. Participants’ responses were aligned with the views of Wah (2013)

and Wiltz (2015) who advanced that the Haitian-American community was

not active politically in their community to vote, to run for office, and to

vote for candidates who favored a path to residence or citizenship for

Haitian immigrants.

Limitations

The boundaries for my study were not intended to resolve or address

particular policy issues that Haitian American deemed to prevent them from

having a voice in local politics. Consistent with the scope for qualitative

analysis, a phenomenology design was selected to purposefully select ten

individuals to whom to administer an in depth interview composed of open-

ended questions. The first limitation to my study was sample size. It was

paramount for me to recruit Haitian-Americans who were sufficiently

knowledgeable of the phenomenon to provide meaningful responses that

would help me achieve saturation (Creswell, 2013). The second limitation

was participant access and participant stratification.

The criterion for recruiting and selecting participants to address the

research questions and the subquestions and whose meaningful responses

was that the participant be a Haitian American living in Miami, Florida for

at least three years. To ensure balanced participation from different sectors, I

recruited from all the segments of the Haitian-American community.

Another criterion was that the participant be either a community member, an

organizational leader or a professional and that they had knowledge or had

experienced of the phenomenon of the incorporation of Haitian immigrants

into local politics and governments.

Considering that the study was intended to capture the political

behaviors of Haitian Americans as they related to political mobilization, I

focused the interviews on interactions between the Haitian-American

leadership and the community members to explore their perceptions based

on their vantage points of the phenomenon. To ensure they were

knowledgeable of the phenomenon, I browsed their profile on social

network websites, especially that of the 11th department, to determine how

their activities were related to community engagement and political

activism. In addition, the interviews focused on experiences and activities

launched by the Haitian leadership to mobilize

Haitian immigrants at the local, national, and federal levels of Florida

politics.

In addition, it should be noted that my knowledge and experience of

the phenomenon did not influence my interpretations of the findings because

I employed the concept of member checking through which the participants

verified and validated my interpretation of what they reported at the times of

the interviews. Member checking allowed me to avoid that my experience

and knowledge influenced participants’ responses, and potentially placing

the trustworthiness, credibility, and reliability of the results into question

(Birt, Scott, Cavers, Campbell, & Walter, 2016).

I faced substantial challenges recruiting participants to be interviewed

for the study. Many Haitian Americans I contacted refused to participate

because they thought they would have to provide their citizenship status or

other pertinent personal information. I ensured them that names and

citizenship statuses would not be in the study, and information collected

would be kept in strictest privacy. Fortunately, I was ultimately able to

recruit a sufficient number of individuals from each sector to interview for

my data collection.

Recommendations

I recommend that the Haitian-American leadership, especially

community organizers promote naturalization. In the view of Hainmueller,

Hangartner, & Pietrantuono (2015) naturalization allows immigrants to

attain considerably higher levels of political efficacy and political

knowledge. The findings of this study and further recommendations for

building a mature and attractive Haitian-American community support the

idea that Haitian immigrants must develop a bottom-up approach to build

leaders at the community levels. Community leaders will launch community

activities to improve civic literacy, voter registration, voter turnout, and

ultimately candidate emergence to achieve electoral success and substantive

representation.

Community leaders are close to the people and, in various instances, face

the same obstacles as the general population. The findings further support

that community leadership is more likely to address citizen concerns in

comparison to the Haitian-American regional leadership where the leaders

are currently unorganized, out of touch, and are fighting for power and

popularity.

To improve the likelihood of civic literacy and civic engagement, this

study recommends the utilization of existing channels to make alliances

with other immigrant groups to learn how they succeeded in becoming an

attractive political force. These recommendations fit the analysis of Trivino

Salazar (2017) who advanced that alliances and coalitions with other

immigrant groups were the most effective strategies to bolster the voice of

immigrant groups for coalitions and alliances allow diverse immigrants

groups to speak with one voice.

Moreover, using these findings, Haitian leaders, at both community and

regional levels, may develop strategies to communicate civic engagement

information to the communities through weekly radio shows and social

networks.

The results of study showed a divided and unfocused Haitian-American

leadership. This study recommends a comprehensive platform to unite

Haitian-American leaders around the same table to discuss issues that are

important to the future of Haitian immigrants in the United States. I

recommend a united Haitian-American community where Haitian-American

leaders will come together to request meetings and develop relationships

with local representatives and to identify representatives who are involved in

United States Senate and House Committees on Foreign Relations and show

or show support to them.

I further recommend literacy classes to teach Haitian immigrants the

power of their vote, to motivate Haitian immigrants to be involved in

community events and to energize the Haitian-American electoral base to

get out to vote in bloc because it is time that Haitian immigrants, regardless

of immigration status and political affiliation, make the Haitian vote matters.

Moreover, other scholars and researchers could conduct further

studies to examine and evaluate the political and social implications of the

Haitian-American leadership on their abilities to provide the necessary civic

education to Haitian immigrants. Using available technologies, further

studies might explore how social networks might be used as a tool to

establish communication among immigrants groups across the United

States. Further studies could explore the viewpoints and perspectives of the

Haitian-American community regarding interaction and engagement with

U.S. elected officials of Haitian descent.

Implications for Positive Social Change

In South Florida alone, there are 333,000 Haitian immigrants, of

whom 244.000 were born in the U.S. or are naturalized (Romero, 2018).

(Romero (2018) stated that with an approximation of 75.000 Haitian

immigrants, North Miami is the largest voting bloc of the State of Florida.

Despite these numbers, the Haitian-American community has not made their

mark in local politics. Instead of being valued as a political minority group,

Haitian Americans are referred as HIV carriers and from a shit-hole country

who needs to be kicked out of the United States (Romero, 2018).

After they were insulted by the president, Haitian immigrants took the

streets of Florida, New Jersey and New York to demonstrate and protest as a

mean of retaliation against the disparaging comments. These protests

showed that the Haitian-American community was disorganized and

unstructured because different Haitian-American leaders and Haitian

community-based organizations scheduled their protests the same day and at

the same place protest. These protests also proved that the Haitian-American

community has achieved, although individually, in the education field

because those protests were led by lawyers, doctors, nurses, and engineers.

However, when it comes to the political arena, the Haitian-American

community suffered tremendously because there were no leaders with a plan

to transform the Haitian anger into votes for the next elections. The protests

also showed that the Haitian leadership was not taking advantage of social

media. Haitian immigrants who did not tune in to Haitian radio stations did

not get the invitation to protest. The Haitian leadership use radio stations

and word-of-mouth to transmit their message. That was the reason a meager

number showed up at the protests. The Haitian-American community knew

of the protests after their friends posted pictures of the events on Facebook.

Taking into account these estimates and considering that in Florida, neither

the Republican Party nor the Democratic holds onto a strong majority,

Haitian immigrants, if mobilized properly, would be able to affect the

outcomes of presidential elections.

My study presents possible implications for positive social change if

HaitianAmerican political leaders use the findings as a motivation tool to

bolster citizen drives and voter turnout in Florida where a handful votes can

sway presidential elections (Menchaca, 2012). Haitian-American

community leaders may use the findings to energize the Haitian electoral

base toward demonstrating progressive political ambition to run for office

and to mobilize the Haitian-American community to head to the polls in

larger numbers. They may have good reason to join a backlash against the

Trump

Administration in coming elections in 2018 and 2020.

The Haitian-American community may use the findings to work

toward making an electoral stride to garner a substantive representation in

the Florida legislature, the mayoralty of key cities, and in the judgeships.

The Haitian-American community may use the findings fight to find their

footing to even the playing field they share with other immigrant groups,

especially the Latinos who have strong advocates and responsive

representatives with the power to influence policies that benefit their own

(Bedolla, 2015). The results of my study may encourage Haitian-American

leaders to come together to explore opportunities for engaging Haitian

immigrants in the U.S. political process as well as developing creative and

innovative approaches to increase civic education in the community.

Haitian-American leaders may use these results to initiate dialogues

over abandoning their personal agendas and standing united around seeking

solutions to transform the Haitian-American community into a political

mature base with the influence, the skills, and the competencies for useful

and influential input in the U.S. legislation. The results may also provide

opportunities for a formalized and unified structure of the Haitian-American

leadership to strengthen its ability to build a political presence in the

community and demonstrate some political muscle in the U.S. political

mainstream.

Moreover, these results may encourage on-going dialogues among the

leaders of the community to foster collaboration and partnerships to amplify

and leverage the collective and unified voices of Haitian-American

communities across the country. A collaboration among Haitian leaders

would serve as a resourceful repository of talents, competencies and skills to

communicate issues and develop procedural approaches for a cohesive

mobilization strategy.

In regards to the establishment of an effective line of communication

among Haitian immigrants, the Haitian leadership and local representatives,

with the increasing of technology platforms such as Facebook, What’s’ app,

and Twitter, positive social change may result from using the social media

to further dialogues and to engage on matters and impediments to an

unorganized and structured Haitian-American community.

Summary and Conclusions

In the final analysis, ten Haitian Americans, stratified into three

professionals, three community leaders, and four community members,

shared their knowledge and perceptions on factors that hindered Haitian

immigrants from getting mobilized at the local, national, and federal levels

of the US politics and government. Their responses revealed broad

interrelating themes like immigration, language, lack of civic education, and

lack of leadership with a need for increased outreach, communication, and

collaboration toward a substantive and responsive representation.

The responses were analyzed and findings were summarized in

relation to theoretical framework and to prior literature. I recommended the

use of social media to initiate and further dialogues and to engage Haitian

immigrants on matters and impediments to an unorganized and structured

Haitian-American community.

My study provided implication for positive social change in the sense

the results of my study may encourage Haitian-American leaders to come

together to explore opportunities for engaging Haitian immigrants in the

U.S. political process as well as developing creative and innovative

approaches to increase civic education and communication in the

community.

Haitian Votes Matter Haitian Immigrants in Florida in Local Politics and Government

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