Racial and Structural Discrimination Toward the Children of Indigenous Mexican Immigrants

My research examines the role of patron saint celebrations in how the children of indigenous Oaxacan immigrants living in Los Angeles, California form ethnic, community, and national identities. Religious practices among immigrants have been characterized as a reterritorialization of religious practices (McAlister in Gatherings in diaspora: Religious communities and the new immigration, 1998). Importantly, legal status may influence transborder movement for undocumented immigrants thereby affecting the extent and character of immigrants’ transnational activities, including their religious practices (Menjívar in J Ethn Migr Stud 28:531–552, 2002). In cases when immigrants may be unable to return their country of origin, rituals figuratively transport immigrants between the sending and receiving community (Tweed in J Am Acad Religion 70:253–277, 2002). Thus, religious identities and practices also enable immigrants to sustain membership in multiple locations, allowing them to affirm continued attachments to a particular sending community or nation even if they are unable to return to their home country (Levitt in Int Migr Rev 37:847–873, 2003). Playing in village-based bands, performing traditional dances, or attending patron saint festivities facilitate indigenous youths’ social integration into the U.S. by fostering a strong sense of ethnic pride in the face of anti-indigenous discrimination from within the Latino population or anti-immigrant hostility from mainstream society. This article explores the racism at structural and individuals levels the children of indigenous immigrants contend with, as well as the effects of these on patterns of identity formation for the children of undocumented indigenous immigrants and on their children’s transnational practices.