“Latin@s” making in American and European Migratory Spaces

Session Submission Type: Panel

Abstract

Pan-ethnic categories such as “Latin@s” or “Hispanic” have been hegemonic in the US since the late seventies, nourished through census categories, state policies, the media, and the sociocultural and political practices. These labels have been treated as the “coming of age” of a powerful minority in the US, and scholars varied in their interpretation of them as an avenue for “normalization”/subalternization or as a successful instrument for questioning and redefining hegemonic stereotyping of minorities. In the last two decades, these debates have reached across the Atlantic, in what it appears as a powerful emergent site of Latin American and Caribbean Diasporas.

This panel explores the commonalities and differences between the forging of a conglomerate identity of Latin American and Caribbean people in these two transnational migratory fields, trying to compare and contrast the development and effects of equivalent pan-ethnic labels across Europe and North America. Participants will explore the importance of ongoing internal differences between Latin American groups in the diaspora, depite and/or due to common transnational political and market forces in the Western hemisphere. They will also explore the extent to which the neocolonial context of Latin American and Caribbean migrants in southern Europe reproduce or change some of the main hegemonic constructions of race, nation, and culture encountered in the dominant Anglo-Protestant world.

Sub Track

• Transnationalism and Globalization

Chair

• Liliana Suárez-Navaz, Stanford/Universidad Autonoma Madrid

Individual Presentations

• Who’s On Top and Who’s Not in Latino South Florida? Negotiating Social Hierarchies among Latinos in Greater Miami - Sarah J Mahler, Florida International University

• Between Rivalries and Cooperation: Comparative Analysis of Latino Incorporation in Boston, Miami and Los Angeles - Marie Laure Mallet, University College London

• Latinizando Portugal? - Beatriz Padilla, Universidade do Minho

• Political Parties, Strategy, and Narrative in Ethnic Classification Struggles: Latino Panethnicity in Barcelona - Cristina Mora, University of California/Berkeley

• Poscolonial Constructions of “Latinidades” in Spain - Liliana Suárez-Navaz, Stanford/Universidad Autonoma Madrid

Discussant

• Arlene Dávila, New York University