Cara J Wong

About

Cara J Wong is a Professor of Political Science at the University of Illinois, where she also serves as Associate Head for Graduate Programs and Director of Graduate Studies in Political Science. She holds a Ph.D. in Political Science from the University of California, Berkeley. Professor Wong's academic appointments extend across multiple interdisciplinary centers, including Asian American Studies, the Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies, the Center for Global Studies, the Social & Behavioral Sciences Institute, and the European Union Center. Her research focuses on the intersections of race, ethnicity, immigration, and political behavior, with a particular emphasis on racial and national identity, multiculturalism, and the political incorporation of immigrants in the United States. She has authored the book "Boundaries of Obligation: Geographic, Racial, and National Communities," published by Cambridge University Press in 2010, and contributed to several edited volumes and journals exploring topics such as racial threat, citizenship, assimilation, and public opinion toward immigration reform. Professor Wong's scholarly work is recognized for its nuanced analysis of racial context and political participation, and she has been honored with a Fulbright Scholar Award in 2014. She is also active in the academic community through invited talks and editorial work, including serving on the editorial board of the Journal of Race, Ethnicity, and Politics.

Research topics

• Political Science
• Sociology
• Law
• Psychology
• Public administration
• Demographic economics
• Social psychology
• Economics
• Computer Science
• Geography

Selected publications

• Maps in People’s Heads: Assessing a New Measure of Context

  Political Science Research and Methods · 2018-11-15 · 21 citations

  article1st authorCorresponding

  Abstract To understand the relationship between place and politics, we must measure both political attitudes and the ways in which place is represented in the minds of individuals. In this paper, we assess a new measure of mental representation of geography, in which survey respondents draw their own local communities on maps and describe them. We use a panel study in Canada to present evidence that these maps are both valid and reliable measures of a personally relevant geographic area, laying…

  PublisherDOI

• Politics and the English Language in California: Bilingual Education at the Polls

  California Journal of Politics and Policy · 2017-01-01 · 20 citations

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  By a large margin, Californians passed the English Proficiency, Multilingual Education Initiativein November 2016, despite the fact that Proposition 58 gutted Proposition 227, which effectivelyended bilingual education in 1998. We conclude that it would be simplistic to call thismassive change in policy a result that the “times had changed,” either demographically or evenin terms of underlying attitudes toward language. Instead, the victory of Prop 58 seems due inlarge part to political strategy…

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Quirks of cognition explain why we dramatically overestimate the size of minority groups

  Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences · 2025-03-31 · 13 citations

  articleOpen access

  Americans dramatically overestimate the size of African American, Latino, Muslim, Asian, Jewish, immigrant, and LGBTQ populations, leading to concerns about downstream racial attitudes and policy preferences. Such errors are common whenever the public is asked to estimate proportions relevant to political issues, from refugee crises and polarization to climate change and COVID-19. Researchers across the social sciences interpret these errors as evidence of widespread misinformation that is topic…

  PublisherDOI

• National Politics Study, 2004

  ICPSR Data Holdings · 2014-01-11 · 10 citations

  datasetOpen accessSenior author

  The primary goal of the National Politics Study (NPS) was to gather comparative data about individuals' political attitudes, beliefs, aspirations, and behaviors at the beginning of the 21st century. Exploring the nature of political involvement and participation among individuals from different racial and ethnic groups, the survey included questions about voting preferences, party affiliation, organizational membership, immigration, racial consciousness, acculturation, and views of government po…

  PublisherDOI

• Elected Officials, Empowered Voters: The Impact of Descriptive Representation on Voter Turnout

  Political Behavior · 2022 · 9 citations

  PublisherDOI

Frequent coauthors

• Sarah Messiah

  The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston

  303 shared

• J. Rick Turner

  IQVIA (United States)

  300 shared

• Annie T. Ginty

  Baylor University

  300 shared

• Linda C. Baumann

  University of Cologne

  206 shared

• Elliott A. Beaton

  University of New Orleans

  206 shared

• Misuzu Nakashima

  Kyushu University

  204 shared

• Ding Ding

  University of Sydney

  201 shared

• Alyssa Karel

  200 shared

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