Socioeconomic Mobility, Racialized Surveillance, and the Politics of Belonging in White Oregon

• In Event: Latina/o Sociology Section Open Call Paper Session

Abstract

This paper examines how the affective dimensions of socioeconomic mobility shape belonging in the lives of Latina/e professionals in Oregon during a period marked by escalating anti-immigrant rhetoric, intensified immigration enforcement, and the rollback of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion policies. Drawing on 78 in-depth interviews with college-educated Latina/es who identify as upwardly mobile, I decolonize models that define mobility through education, income, or occupation. Instead, informed by Lugones’s analysis of the “colonial/modern gender system” and Vasquez-Tokos’s “burdened belonging,” I examine how participants define mobility themselves and how those meanings reshape belonging in a majority white state with a long history of racial exclusion. Although most participants hold documented status, mobility does not eliminate fear. Participants describe carrying passports, limiting travel for work and leisure, monitoring ICE activity, and regulating public expression. Many link their hiring and advancement to DEI initiatives that are now being restructured or defunded, making them question the durability of their positions. They describe mentoring, translation, and diversity work as expected labor while feeling expendable as institutions retreat from public commitments. In response, many narrow their public presence and invest in smaller networks of trust. Upward mobility expands access to professional institutions, yet belonging remains conditional and unsettled.

Author

• Alejandra Pedraza, University of Oregon