The Color of Status: Dimension-Specific Racial Fluidity and the Limits of Symbolic Whitening in Argentina

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

Abstract

Is race fluid or structurally anchored? Research on racial fluidity documents status-linked shifts in identification and measurement sensitivity across institutional contexts. At the same time, scholarship on pigmentocracy demonstrates durable phenotypic hierarchies that structure inequality across Latin America. These literatures are often treated separately. I develop a multidimensional framework that integrates them by distinguishing between racial self-identification, institutional classification, and phenotypic perception. Using nationally representative Argentine surveys (2005–2023), I show that white identification is associated with education in baseline models, but this association disappears once interviewer-rated skin tone is modeled continuously. When education is treated as the outcome, the apparent advantage of whites similarly collapses after controlling for phenotype, while skin tone remains strongly predictive. These findings indicate that dominant racial identity is institutionally mediated yet structurally bounded by phenotype. Racial fluidity is therefore dimension-specific: identity may vary with status, but embodied hierarchy anchors the limits of symbolic mobility.

Author

• Sofia Jaime, University of California-Irvine