Latino Topographies and Ethnoracial Boundary-Making

• In Event: Racial and Ethnic Minorities Section Roundtables Session
  In Refereed Roundtable (90 minute): Table Eight: Racialized Constructions of Social Identities and Categories

Abstract

Conventional social science research presumes that individuals have a shared conception of the meaning and boundaries of ethnoracial categories. This paper interrogates this assumption with original survey data from a nationally representative, probability-based sample of the U.S. Latino population (N = 1,621). In the aggregate, I find that Latino Americans perceive a tradeoff between Latinoness and Americanness, one that equates markers of assimilation such as mixed-race ancestry, multigeneration family history, and English language preference with diminished authentic membership. However, additional analyses reveal that this tradeoff logic is one of four conceptions of Latinoness, alongside (2) a stereotype-based logic that adheres to stereotypical representations of Latino identity, (3) a pluralist logic that embraces an inclusive understanding of group membership, and (4) a restrictionist logic that challenges the symbolic elevation of undocumented immigrants. I further demonstrate the social consequences of these divergent boundary conceptions by showing how they condition responses to group threats and shape policy attitudes. These findings extend classic scholarship on social identity theory and boundary-making by foregrounding how conflicting topographies of group membership inform the ways in which ethnicity is contested and reconfigured in everyday life, with broader implications for demographic change, social inequality, and ethnoracial politics in the United States.

Author

• Keitaro Okura, Yale University