Issue Domains and The Context Dependency of Latino Identities

• In Event: The Complexity of Latinx Identity

Abstract

Social identities are valuable for several reasons: they provide membership to higher status groups, distinctiveness in large group settings, and simplify complex multicultural environments. Traditionally, research into the impact of race and ethnicity on political behavior and attitudes has ignored diversity within these communities bordering on narratives that suggest monolithic behavior. However, recent research on Latinos has highlighted that multiple identities coexist within individuals and that the reactions to group messages depends on the embedded identities available to people (García Ríos, Pedraza, Wilcox-Archuleta 2018). In this paper, I extend the idea that Latinos possess multiple identities and propose that these different identities help shape attitudes differently across issue domains. In particular, I look at how country of origin, panethnic, American, and religious identities condition political attitudes. Results show that the different identities have varying effects on political attitudes depending on the issue dimension at hand. I use the LNS2006 and the LINES 2012 to show that more socialized Latinos rely on identity heuristics more than newly arrived Latinos. Additionally, optimal distinctiveness suggests that subgroup status may reduce the role of panethnicity on issues such as immigration for Cubans and Puerto Ricans while heightening it for groups more tied to recent immigration. These findings challenge the idea that pathnethnic identity is the sole group-based heuristic for Latinos, this suggests Dawson’s (1994) theory does not generalize to Latinos. I conclude by proposing ways to conceptualize and measure the multiple ways in which the diverse set of identities available to Latinos impact political attitudes and behavior

Author

• Angel Saavedra Cisneros, St. Norbert College