Heterogeneous Ethnicities in the New Latino Diaspora

• In Event: 32.063 - Undertaking and Remaking Identity Politics in Educational Institutional Practice

Abstract

This paper complicates relationships between “immigrants” and “hosts” in a multiracial context, where processes of inclusion and exclusion take place on multiple axes and involve heterogeneous assemblages of resources. As Latour (2005) describes, the social world is constituted by networks composed of heterogeneous elements, assembled into contingent configurations. Scollon and Scollon (2004) take a similar approach, tracing the varied components and processes that intersect in and make possible objects and events. And Lemke (2000) describes how processes at various timescales can intersect to make possible focal phenomena. For a study of immigrants, these approaches mean that we cannot generalize about static structures where monolithic hosts stereotype monolithic groups of immigrants. Our analysis draws on ten years of ethnographic and sociolinguistic research in the Mid-Atlantic suburban community of Marshall. The town has not historically been home to Latino immigrants, but because of the rapid influx of Mexicans over the past two decades Latinos, Whites and Blacks now each represent about a third of the population. Historically, the relations between Black and White Marshall residents have involved some friction. These preexisting racial dynamics, in addition to community and individual histories of migration and discrimination, shape how community members make sense of the recently arrived Mexican population. In this town, then, we find more than “hosts” and “others,” because various kinds of difference are construed to involve otherness. This paper examines how Black and Mexican residents’ relationships complicate simple binaries in some ways, while reinforcing them in others.

The empirical analysis focuses on an election campaign in which the first Mexican candidate for city council loses to an organized effort from the African American community, which has for many years controlled a number of council seats. The presentation is partly visual, using ethnographic film to present the story of how a slate of Mexican candidates tried to identify themselves as quasi-native residents who love the town and how African American leaders rallied to their opponents’ defense and retained the position for true “natives.” We analyze how Blacks position Mexican residents on the one hand as potential allies with similar histories of discrimination, a common dedication to family and desire to work, and on the other as sources of displacement because of linguistic exclusion and the rapid growth of Mexican businesses. We show how identity politics played a central role in the campaign, with candidates mobilizing demographic ideologies to advance their political agendas.

Authors

• Stanton E F Wortham, Boston College

• Briana Nichols, University of Pennsylvania