Latinx Politics in the Neocolonial Era

Session Submission Type: Paper Session

Abstract

Latinxs today find themselves in a peculiar colonial context - as both hypervisible political targets on the left and the right and invisible constituencies whose conditions and needs are often understood to be redundant. How do Latinos experience, embody, and resist this violent phase of the U.S. empire? “Latinx Politics in the Neocolonial Era” brings together critical Latinx social science research to examine how the history of US settler colonialism and contemporary forms of racialization influence the way that understandings of civic engagement and belonging are developed and exercised. In doing so, the research interrogates how Latinx groups make sense of contemporary migration and shifts in the political economy, their modes of collective and individual resistance, and the ways minding the gap between violence in the present and possibilities of the future affect their everyday lives.

In “Who Blames the Immigrants?” Mora and Vargas draw from a unique dataset of registered voters to explore how anti-immigrant sentiment is shaped during this violent phase of empire, particularly in the context of felt economic insecurity. Their findings reveal a racialized and gendered codification of immigration sentiment. While Latinas’ experiences of economic precarity are not linked to attitudes about immigration, Latino men’s views align with patterns seen among White men and White women–specifically, personally felt economic hardship is tethered closely to the vilification of immigrants. Their findings illuminate how neocolonial immigration logics are internalized, perpetuated, and resisted along intersecting axes of Latinidad. In “#BoricuaVota or #VotoLatino?” Valle examines the making of Puerto Rican and Latino politics in Florida. The analysis draws on qualitative data collected during voter engagement projects during the 2016 presidential election. While shared experiences of racialized exclusion and political marginalization motivate Puerto Rican/Latino political collaboration, external actors (funders, organizations, political elites) contribute to organizing tensions and shape the contours of political projects. Findings highlight key dynamics of Puerto Rican/Latino politics-making in Florida’s political ecology.

In “Adolescent Arrivals,” Rodriguez relies on in-depth ethnographic observations and interviews to illuminate how adolescent arrivals–young people simultaneously navigating home country and life stage dislocations–confront and resist the discrimination and exclusion they encounter in their host communities. Applying a critical childhood studies lens to the lives of Latinx teens, perceived as en route full personhood, Rodriguez illuminates how young people create and claim spaces of safety and belonging in schools and community spaces to resist their everyday “othering.” Finally, in “Living Legal Trauma,” Canizales examines the toll of punitive immigration policy on human service providers, community helpers who support the well-being of migrant children. Applying prominent frameworks from law and society and the life course, Canizales shows that community helpers embody characteristics of state-sanctioned trauma. At times paralyzing, this “legal trauma” can be transformed to aspirations and actions of empathy for the children they serve and activism for future generations of migrants in the US. These papers show that Latinx Politics in a Neoliberal Era finds itself in both a “violent, terminal phase” and on fertile “ground for new intellectual and political possibilities.”

Sub Unit

• Annual Meeting of the American Studies Association

Individual Presentations

• “Who Blames the Immigrants? Internalizing and Resisting Neocolonial Immigration Logics of Economic Precarity” - Nicholas Vargas, University of California, Berkeley; G. Cristina Mora, UC Berkeley; Julio Salas

• #BoricuaVota or #VotoLatino?: Tensions & Negotiations in Voter Engagement Projects in Puerto Rican/Latino Orlando - Ariana J Valle, University of California, Davis

• “Adolescent Arrivals: Migrant Teenagers Navigating Belonging and Political Citizenship” Liliana Rodriguez - Charisse L Dyer, University of California, Berkeley

• “Living Legal Trauma; How Punitive Immigration Policies Affect Community Helpers” - Stephanie L Canizales, UC Berkeley

Chair

• G. Cristina Mora, UC Berkeley

Biographical Information

Nicholas Vargas, PhD, is an Associate Professor of Chicanx/Latinx Studies in the Department Ethnic Studies at UC Berkeley. He currently co-leads the Latinxs and Democracy Cluster and serves as Faculty Co-Director of the UCB Latino Social Science Pipeline Initiative (LSSPI), both of which aim to advance Latinx social science scholarship and strengthen academic pipelines. His research primarily resides within the social sciences, focusing on the complex processes of ethnoracial classification, identification, and stratification within Latinx communities. Drawing on nationally representative data, his scholarship explores critical questions surrounding the boundaries of ethnoracial categories, the patterns and implications of label use, the adherence to racial ideologies, and contested racial identities. He also examines the lived experiences of Latine individuals, with a particular focus on their experiences in higher education. Throughout Vargas’ work, he pays close attention to the individual and organizational markers of racialization that shape how Latinx individuals navigate social life.

Cristina Mora, PhD, completed her B.A. in Sociology at UC Berkeley in 2003 and earned her PhD in Sociology from Princeton University in 2009. Before returning to Cal, she was a Provost Postdoctoral Scholar in Sociology at the University of Chicago. Professor Mora’s award-winning research focuses mainly on questions of racial and ethnic categorization, organizations, and immigration. Her book, Making Hispanics, was published in 2014 by the University of Chicago Press and provides a socio-historical account of the rise of the “Hispanic/Latino” panethnic category in the United States. This work, along with related articles, has received wide recognition, including the Best Dissertation Award and the 2018 Early Career Award (SREM) from the American Sociological Association. Her work has also been the subject of various national media segments in venues like the Atlantic, the New Yorker, NPR, and Latino USA. She is currently working on her next book, Dreaming in the Land of Inequality, which examines the rise of income and racial inequality in California.

Ariana Valle, PhD, is an Assistant Professor of Sociology at UC Davis. She is a scholar of migration, race and ethnicity, and political sociology focusing on the experiences of Latina/os in the United States. Her current book project, Citizenship in Contexts: How Puerto Ricans are Transforming Race, Latinidad, and Politics in Florida, draws on 112 in-depth interviews with Puerto Ricans and 12 months of participant observation in Orlando, Florida to explain contemporary Puerto Rican migration and incorporation, intra-Puerto Rican and inter-Latino relations, and the making of Puerto Rican/Latino politics in Florida. Her research is published in Sociology of Race and Ethnicity, Ethnic and Racial Studies, Identities: Global Studies in Culture and Power, Oxford Bibliographies, and Quick Response Reports. Her work has been awarded generous grant and fellowship support from several institutions including: UCLA, New York University, UC Davis, the Latina Futures 2050 Lab, The LATINX Project, and the Natural Hazards Center.

Liliana V. Rodriguez, PhD, is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Psychology and Sociology at Texas A&M University-Kingsville. She is also the Southwest Borderlands and Mexican American Studies program coordinator. Dr. Liliana Rodriguez earned her undergraduate and master’s degrees from the University of Texas at Austin and her doctoral degree from the University of California, Santa Barbara. Her areas of interest include Latina/o sociology, international migration, immigrant youth, ethnographic research methods, and race and ethnicity studies. Her current work centers on the experiences of adolescent arrivals as they navigate life in the United States during contested political times. Her work has been published in journals, including the Journal of Ethnic and Racial Studies and Migration Studies. She is a recipient of a Career Enhancement Fellowship for Junior Faculty from the Institute for Citizens & Scholars.

Stephanie L. Canizales, PhD, is a researcher, author, and professor in the Department of Sociology at the University of California, Berkeley, where she is Faculty Director of the Berkeley Interdisciplinary Migration Initiative. She earned her PhD in Sociology from the University of Southern California (2018). Stephanie specializes in the study of international migration and immigrant integration, with particular interest in the experiences of Latin American-origin immigrants and their descendants in the United States. Over the last decade, she has focused her work on the migration and coming-of-age of unaccompanied children from Central America and Mexico in California and Texas. Throughout her research and writing, Stephanie explores the role of immigration policy in shaping the everyday lives of migrant children and their families, how immigrants and the communities they arrive to transform one another, and immigrants’ articulations of success and well-being within an increasingly unequal US society. Stephanie’s first book, Sin Padres, Ni Papeles, takes on many of these issues.