Latinas, Migration, Census Race: How Immigrant Women Interpret and Respond to Ethnoracial Census Questions Across Borders

• In Event: 40459 - Identity, Work, and Family: Latinos in the US and Beyond

Abstract

Despite an extensive and methodologically mixed sociological literature on Latine self-classification in the US census, we know little about how the same person of Hispanic, Latino, or Spanish origin responds to census-type survey questions about their race and ethnicity in the US versus in their country of origin. In this study, I address this gap by comparing how 19 immigrant women from six Spanish-speaking countries located in Latin America (i.e., Mexico, Colombia, Guatemala, Puerto Rico, the Dominican Republic, and Cuba) understand and respond to race/ethnicity questions in census forms from their countries of origin and their country of destination. Drawing on data from life history and cognitive interviews, I show that while it was easier for some participants to respond to ethnoracial self-classifications in their countries of origin than in their country of destination, the task was equally difficult in both contexts for other participants. Concerning the categories people used to ethnoracially self-classify in each country, I show that most respondents changed the category they use after migration, in part because the category they used in their country of origin is not legible to the racial classification scheme in the US The majority of my participants also ended up choosing to racially self-classify in the US as “Some Other Race,” perceiving their experience of race in the US to be shaped by more than just their skin color. I conclude with a discussion of the implications of these findings for how we measure race and ethnicity in census forms.

Author

• Juanita Vivas Bastidas, Loyola University-Chicago