Organizing Identities: Immigrant New Yorkers Negotiating Latinidad1

Across the United States, immigrants’ rights protests, marches, and demonstrations captured the attention of the public and of lawmakers in the spring of 2006. Much of the rhetoric that emerged from these mobilizations included an assertion of Latino/a immigrant identity. Based on ethnographic fieldwork and interviews conducted in New York City in 2006 and 2007, this article argues that, confronted with a strong and clear organizational discourse of pan‐ethnic Latino/a unity, Latin American immigrants articulated a variety of identities. I found no clear link between self‐identification as Latino/a and participation in political mobilizations for immigration reform; this is in contrast to previous studies of Latino/a political activity. Examining the interactions, perspectives, and practices of Latin American immigrants involved with one community‐based organization, this study attempts to address the lack of micro‐level studies of immigrants’ everyday lives.     

Competing Identities? Race,Ethnicity and Panethnicity Among Dominicans in the United States

In this paper we explore the racial and ethnic self-identification of Dominican immigrants in the United States. This issue is central in understanding how immigrants experience the process of incorporation into American society. We argue that as Dominican immigrants incorporate to American life, they adopt a Hispanic or Latino identity. This identity serves both as a form of racial identification within the American racial stratification system and as a form of assertive panethnic identity. This identity, however, does not supersede national identification, which remains the anchoring identity.     

Indigenous Immigrants from Latin America (IILA): Racial/Ethnic Identity in the U.S.

In recent decades, migration from all corners of the world has created one of the most racially/ethnically diverse immigrant populations in the history of the United States. While today migratory flows are predominantly from Asia, immigrants from Latin America continue to make up the largest immigrant group in the United States. The influx of this group reflects the heterogeneity of the Latin American region, including Latin American immigrants who identify as indigenous in their countries of origin. Through a brief overview of how indigeneity, race, and ethnicity have been historically framed in Latin America, I discuss how Indigenous Immigrants from Latin American (IILA) position their indigeneity within their racial/ethnic identity in the United States. I consider how migration shapes indigenous identity and propose the use of Social Identity Theory (SIT) to explore how IILA negotiate a racial/ethnic identity while maintaining their indigeneity in a U.S. context.     

Bridging identity divides in current rural social mobilisation

The shift from a corporatist citizenship regime to a neoliberal one has adversely affected Latin American rural communities and led to widespread social mobilisation and organisation in the countryside. The struggle of such marginalised communities has been often framed by stressing their indigenous collective identity over the previously prevalent class-based peasant identity. This article focuses on the role of identity and the negotiation of different identities in the struggle of two rural organisations in Northwest Argentina for securing land tenure and improving their standards of living. Argentinean society, in contrast to some other Latin American societies, is often imagined as ‘white,’ but in recent decades many peasant, or campesino, communities have rediscovered or reaffirmed their indigenous origin. This article therefore deconstructs rural collective identities in Argentina and analyses how class and ethnic identities are negotiated in struggles of grassroots social organisations in the countryside of this predominantly urban country.     

Becoming Irish: Personal Identity Construction among First-generation Irish Immigrants

This article elaborates the attempts by Irish immigrants to meet the contradiction between social and self-definitions initiated by their confrontation with a problematic social identity. Selectively interpreting their situation, the immigrants create and present personal identities reflecting self-definitions by engaging the identity construction strategies of exclusivity, pragmatic identification, or autonomy. Challenging their social placement generates swings toward affiliations with others who similarly interpret and act on the environment. The construction of personal identities thus provides insight into people's struggles to maintain a positive sense of self in problematic situations and the social worlds and others with whom they identify. Shared outlooks, moreover, relate to the importance attributed to ethnicity as a relevant factor in interactions. In contrast to analyses that treat ethnic identity as an ascribed constant, the view developed here argues that ethnic identity is emergent and involves within-group variations.     

Decoupling Religion and Ethnicity: Second-Generation Indian American Christians

Classic assimilation theory was based on the assumption of individualistic adaptation, with immigrants and their children expected to shed their ethnic identities to become Americans. In the sphere of religion, however, they could maintain their communitarian traditions through American denominations. In contemporary society, multiculturalism, spiritual seeking, and postdenominationalism have reversed this paradigm. First- and second-generation immigrants integrate by remaining ethnic and group-identified, but religion is viewed as a personal quest. This paper examines how this paradigm shift affects the ethnic and religious behavior of second-generation Americans. It is based on research among Malankara Syrian Christians belonging to an ancient South Indian community.     

Homosexually Active Latino Men:

This paper presents a critical overview of the literature on homosexual conduct and identity among Latino men both in Latin America and in the United States. The relationships between homosexually active Latino men and their families, the various Latino national origin communities, and gay communities are also considered. Latino perspectives are contrasted with the dominant North American gay understandings of homosexuality in terms of individual identity and political activism. The unique problems of this population are also discussed with an emphasis on the social and cultural resources available to homosexually active Latinos and social work practitioners who serve them. Recommendations for social work practice and further research are offered.     

Nordic cultural studies — An introduction

ABSTRACT

Histories of representation of Blackness are quite distinct in Australia and in America. Indigenous Australian identities have been consistently ‘fatal’, in Baudrillard's use of that term. So, while Black American representation includes intensely banal images of middle-class, materialistic individuals, such histories are largely absent in the Australian context. This implies that the few such representations which do occur — and particularly those of everyday game shows such as Sale of the Century and Family Feud — are particularly important for presenting a trivial, unexciting version of Aboriginality. This also clarifies the distinction between American and Australian versions of Blackness, and suggests that the latter set of representations might be more usefully viewed in relation to Native American rather than Black American images. The status of indigeneity might prove to be more relevant to Australian Aboriginal representation than the previously favoured identity of skin colour (Blackness).     

“Coloniality of power” and racial dynamics: Notes toward a reinterpretation of Latino Caribbeans in New York City 1

The category of “Latino” collapses the differences among populations with diverse historical experiences of oppression. We establish in this article a distinction within the Latino Caribbean diaspora among “immigrants/’ “colonial immigrants,” and “colonial/racial subjects” of the U.S. empire. Using the notion of “coloniality of power” developed by Peruvian sociologist Aníbal Quijano, we argue that the social position and racialization of several different populations in the U.S. today has its roots in the racial hierarchies produced by centuries of European colonial expansion and that this essentially colonial set of relationships continues. We use this notion of coloniality to reconceptualize three social processes: (1) the construction of Puerto Ricans as colonial racialized subjects in the Euro‐American imaginary; (2) the transformation of Dominicans into colonial immigrants in the New York Metropolitan Area, that is, the way Dominicans became “Puerto Ricanized” and (3) the disassociation of pre‐1980s Cuban migrants from the “Puerto Ricanization” experienced by the Dominicans.     

“I Am Not Who I Thought I Was”: Use of Grief Work to Address Disrupted Identity Among Hispanic Adolescent Immigrants

Immigration from Latin America to the United States is often an escape from difficult circumstances, but with this gain comes a loss of identity. This can be a special burden for adolescents, who are thrown into a new culture and environment while in the process of identity formation. Using case studies from my work as a psychotherapist in a community mental health clinic, I will describe this special turmoil and a way in which Latino immigrant teenagers can be helped to resolve it. Psychodynamic grief work aimed at helping them mourn the loss of identities and valued capacities through emigration can reduce self-destructive enactments and support them in the adolescent task of forming an identity.     

Economic Outcomes among Latino Migrants to Spain and the United States: Differences by Source Region and Legal Status

Using representative national surveys, this paper compares economic outcomes among Latin American migrants to Spain and the United States in the first cross-national comparison using quantitative data. Considering the geographic location and social proximity of each country with respect to Latin America, we detect a critical selection effect whereby the majority of Latin American migrants to Spain originate in South America from middle class backgrounds, whereas most migrants to the United States are Central Americans of lower class origins. This selection effect accounts for cross-national differences in the probability of employment, occupational attainment, and wages earned. Despite differences in the origins and characteristics of Latino immigrants to each country, demographic and human and social capital factors appear to operate similarly in both places; and when models are estimated separately by legal status, we find that effects are more accentuated for undocumented compared with documented migrants, especially in the United States.     

Adolescents and AIDS

This study examined midwestern, African-American, Latino, and Caucasian male adolescents' knowledge and beliefs regarding AIDS. The relationship between attitudes towards homosexuals and AlDS knowledge was also investigated. Subjects were 140 Caucasian, 68 African-American, and 50 Latino high school seniors. All participants were randomly assigned to one of three experimental conditions. Subjects in Condition One viewed an AlDS prevention video. Subjects in condition Two viewed the AlDS prevention video plus videos concerning sexually transmitted diseases and drug abuse. Subjects in Condition Three were controls. Significant differences did not emerge across conditions. African- American and Latino adolescents were significantly less homophobic than their Caucasian counterparts across the three conditions. Level of homophobia was not predictive of AlDS knowledge. African- American and Latino adolescents, in contrast to their Caucasian peers, indicated a greater concern in contracting the AlDS virus and desired further information about AIDS. Latino adolescents were less knowledgeable about AlDS than their African-American and Caucasian counterparts.     

Who “They” Are Matters: Immigrant Stereotypes and Assessments of the Impact of Immigration

We investigate the relationship between stereotypes of immigrants and assessments of the impact of immigration on U.S. society. Our analysis exploits a split‐ballot survey of registered voters in Ohio, who were asked to evaluate both the characteristics of one of four randomly assigned immigrant groups and perceived impacts of immigration. We find that associations between impact assessments and stereotypes of Middle Eastern, Asian, and European immigrants are weak and fully attenuated by control covariates. By contrast, this relationship for Latin American immigrants is strong and robust to controls, particularly in the areas of unemployment, schools, and crime. Our findings suggest that public views of the impacts of immigration are strongly connected to beliefs about the traits of Latin American immigrants in particular.     

The Norm among the Exceptional? Experiences of Latino Students in Elite Institutions

This article examines Latino students’ experiences within two elite educational contexts: an elite liberal arts college and an elite law school. Drawing on combined data of 42 in‐depth interviews, we interrogate how elite institutional spaces reify and shape panethnic identities. In the face of marginalization in predominantly white, elite spaces Latino students strategically search for new community and comfort, which in turn influence how they perceive their identities, encouraging a broadening of boundaries to include both panethnic and minority alliances. By documenting the experiences of Latino students in two stages of the educational pipeline, we show how elite institutions influence identity talk lead students to cultivate a sense of shared fate with other Latino‐origin individuals and at times, people of color in general.     

LIVED HYBRIDITY: SECOND-GENERATION IDENTITY CONSTRUCTION THROUGH COLLEGE FESTIVAL

Recent research suggests that the children of recent immigrants, the so-called second generation, no longer choose to emphasize one identity over the other but that their identities are more fluid and multifaceted. College campuses are often the arenas in which a new hybrid identity develops. This article addresses how South Asian American college students make sense of and control their various identities through the celebration of Diwali, an event sponsored each year by the Indian Students Association (ISA) on a college campus in the Dallas-Fort Worth metropolitan area. South Asian students use performative space to help them make sense of their backgrounds in ways that both differentiate them from and allow for association with the majority student population. They also use this space as a safe place for “coming out,” that is, for communicating their hybrid identity to their parents. This hybrid identity is expressed through a discourse of “brownness” that marks something distinctive and that reflects the process by which the children of immigrants choose among a range of identities to create integrated selves. The campus Diwali festival is the expression of those selves.     

Television and identities: analysis of the consumption of ‘telenovelas’ by the Latin American community in Spain

This article analyses the consumption of ‘telenovelas’ by Latin American residents in Spain. Our hypothesis is that ‘telenovelas’ are a way of constructing identities especially in communities that have emigrated to other countries and which can be seen in their specific viewing preferences for fiction. We have carried out a survey following the methodology applied in these kinds of studies. The survey was applied to 219 Latin American subjects who reside in Spain. We demonstrate that the main factors influencing the consumption of ‘telenovelas’ by the Latin American community residing in Spain are related to the cultural identities of the countries of production and which are represented in the context of the different storylines, such as natural locations, costumes and language. The results show that further research in this field is needed in order to identify the derivations of perceptions by the immigrant collectives through successful products such as ‘telenovelas’.     

Becoming a (Pan)ethnic Attorney: How Asian American and Latino Law Students Manage Dual Identities

Managing professional and personal identities often belabor upwardly mobile racialized individuals. I examine in this article how Asian American and Latino law students negotiate (pan)ethnic identities while learning to become lawyers. I contend that managing dual identities creates (pan)ethnic duty among Asian American and Latino law students. I focus on those planning to work in law firms, at least initially. While there are many career options for law students, most, irrespective of race, pursue initial careers at law firms. What leads them there? How do racialization and expectations play a role in this career aspiration? And how do students negotiate the pressure to give back, or manage the internally/externally imposed duty they feel to serve respective communities? I find that Asian American and Latino law students draw on a repertoire of strategies (marginal panethnicity, tempered altruism, and instrumental ethnicity) that encompass different accounts, identities, and roles enabling creativity and elasticity for professional and personal identities. The findings suggest that panethnicity remains salient for upwardly mobile individuals of color, even those who do not ostensibly appear to be concerned with panethnic communities and causes.     

Assimilating to a White Identity: The Case of Arab Americans1

Racial identity is one of the primary means by which immigrants assimilate to the United States. Drawing from the tenets of segmented assimilation, this study examines how the ethnic traits of immigrant status, national origin, religious affiliation, and Arab Americaness contribute to the announcement of a white racial identity using a regionally representative sample of Arab Americans. Results illustrate that those who were Lebanese/Syrian or Christian, and those who felt that the term “Arab American” does not describe them, were more likely to identify as white. In addition, among those who affirmed that the pan‐ethnic term “Arab American” does describe them, results illustrated that strongly held feelings about being Arab American and associated actions were also linked with a higher likelihood of identifying as white. Findings point to different patterns of assimilation among Arab Americans. Some segments of Arab Americans appear to report both strong ethnic and white identities, while others report a strong white identity, yet distance themselves from the pan‐ethnic “Arab American” label.     

Different paths: gender,immigration and political participation

"Building on arguments made by Grasmuck and Pessar (1991), Hardy-Fanta (1993), and Hondagneu-Sotelo (1994), among others, this article makes the case for a gendered understanding of immigrant political socialization. Looking at recent Latin American immigrants to New York City, the article argues that immigrant Latino men are more likely to favor continuity in patterns of socialization and organization, and immigrant Latinas are more likely to favor change. This finding helps bridge theoretical and empirical literatures in immigration studies, applying the logic of gender-differentiated decisionmaking to the area of immigrant political socialization and behavior."