“I began to think more like a Canadian”: how second-generation south Asian and Chinese Canadians confront racism by becoming conservative voters

ABSTRACT
This study demonstrates how voting for a right-wing party that represents the interests of white, wealthy citizens can be a way for second-generation South Asian and Chinese Canadians to seek acceptance in a society where power is linked to race. Drawing on 50 in-depth interviews with the children of immigrants, I show how white-adjacent groups contending with the model minority stereotype may support right-wing politics in an effort to embody the traits and behaviours of the privileged. Paradoxically, then, excluded groups may seek inclusion not by favouring but by rejecting inclusionary political platforms because this rejection signals proximity to whiteness and, concomitantly, distance from racialized foreignness. The study thus illustrates a powerful mechanism contributing to the political reproduction of inequality.