Tanya Golash-Boza

Latino racial choices: the effects of skin colour and discrimination on Latinos’ and Latinas’ racial self-identifications

Abstract Are predictions that Hispanics will make up 25 per cent of the US population in 2050 reliable? The authors of this paper argue that these and other predictions are problematic insofar as they do not account for the volatile nature of Latino racial and ethnic identifications. In this light, the authors propose a theoretical framework that can be used to predict Latinos’ and Latinas’ racial choices. This framework is tested using two distinct datasets – the 1989 Latino National Political Survey and the 2002 National Survey of Latinos. The results from the analyses of both of these surveys lend credence to the authors’ claims that Latinas’ and Latinos’ skin colour and experiences of discrimination affect whether people from Latin America and their descendants who live in the US will choose to identify racially as black, white or Latina/o.

Assessing the Advantages of Bilingualism for the Children of Immigrants

This article responds to the current academic debate on the advantages of bilingualism to the children of immigrants in the United States. The author utilizes data from the 1992–1993 and 1995–1996 Children of Immigrants Longitudinal Study to estimate the effects of bilingualism on educational outcomes. In contrast to a recent study, the author provides conclusive evidence that there are advantages to bilingualism beyond the functional ability to communicate with ones parents. The author also provides evidence that demonstrates that bilingualism is only advantageous in those communities with low levels of English proficiency and high levels of resources and networks.

A Critical and Comprehensive Sociological Theory of Race and Racism

This article contests the contention that sociology lacks a sound theoretical approach to the study of race and racism, instead arguing that a comprehensive and critical sociological theory of race and racism exists. This article outlines this theory of race and racism, drawing from the work of key scholars in and around the field. This consideration of the state of race theory in sociology leads to four contentions regarding what a critical and comprehensive theory of race and racism should do: (1) bring race and racism together into the same analytical framework; (2) articulate the connections between racist ideologies and racist structures; (3) lead us towards the elimination of racial oppression; and (4) include an intersectional analysis.

Rethinking race, racism, identity and ideology in Latin America

Abstract This special issue explores ideas of race and racial hierarchy in Latin America in the twenty-first century. By examining the intersection between racialization and processes of identity formation, political struggle, as well as intimate social and economic relations, these essays question how and to what extent traditional racial ideologies continue to hold true. In so doing, we consider the implications of such ideologies for anti-racism struggles. This collection of articles provides a unique insight into the everyday lived experiences of racism, how racial inequalities are reproduced, and the rise of ethnic-based social movements in Latin America. The qualitative nature of the projects allows the authors to advance our understanding of how racial ideologies operate on the ground level. The geographic diversity of the articles – focusing on Brazil, Colombia, Mexico, Peru, Costa Rica and Cuba – enables a greater understanding of the distinct ways that racial ideologies play out across different settings.

U.S. racial and ethnic relations in the twenty-first century

ABSTRACT The study of U.S. racial and ethnic relations is often reduced to the study of racial or ethnic relations. This article reveals the limitations of a focus on ethnicity or race, in isolation, and instead urges a new framework that brings them together. We consider three cases that have been conceptualized by the ethnicity paradigm as assimilation projects and by the race paradigm as structural racism projects, respectively: (1) African-American entrepreneurs; (2) the Mexican middle class; and (3) black immigrant deportees. We reveal the shortcomings of the ethnicity paradigm to consider race as a structural force or to acknowledge that structural racism conditions incorporation in marked ways; and the limitations of the race paradigm to take seriously group members’ agency in fostering social capital that can mediate racial inequality. Instead, we offer a unifying approach to reveals how ethnicity and race condition members’ life chances within the U.S. social structure.

Targeting Latino men: mass deportation from the USA, 1998–2012

The number of people being removed from the USA on an annual basis is far higher than ever before. The increases in removals since the passage of the 1996 laws have had a disproportionate impact on Mexican and Central American male immigrants. Moreover, the changes made to the laws in 1996 were draconian insofar as they removed judicial discretion in certain removal cases, and the laws were applied retroactively. The raced and gendered disparities in immigration law enforcement are one more instance of institutionalized racism in the USA insofar as these laws primarily harm black and Latino families.

Does racial formation theory lack the conceptual tools to understand racism

Joe Feagin and Sean Elias (2012) argue that we need to understand how racism works before we can theorize race. In contrast, Michael Omi and Howard Winant (1994) contend we must understand how race works before we can comprehend racism. Who is right? Theories of systemic, structural and institutional racism provide us with frameworks to understand the deep-seated nature of racial inequality in the USA. The emphasis in these analyses is on racism and Feagin and Elias (2012) argue that only through a consideration of racial oppression can we grasp the true nature of racial meanings. In contrast, racial formation theory focuses on how race is constructed, and uses these analyses to understand racism (Omi and Winant 1994). The debate boils down to a chicken and egg sort of question do we need to understand race to understand racism or vice versa? Rather than attempting to answer this question in the abstract, it is more useful to examine the practical utility of these frameworks. An understanding of why African Americans and Latinos are faring worse economically than whites in the aftermath of the Great Recession (2007 2011) would likely benefit from an analysis based on systemic or structural racism (Kochhar, Fry and Taylor 2011). A consideration of why Indonesian women use whitening creams yet insist they have no desire to be Caucasian might get a more nuanced treatment from a racial formation perspective (Saraswati 2010). These two studies are both grounded in the field of racial and ethnic studies, but have different research questions and goals, and thus would draw from different frameworks. I will use my own work as an example to further my point that the easiest way to gauge the utility of these frameworks is by considering how they can be applied to empirical studies of racial dynamics. In my work on African-descended Peruvians, I found that many Peruvians identified as black, yet did not associate their blackness with Ethnic and Racial Studies, 2013 Vol. 36, No. 6, 994 999, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/01419870.2013.767919

Towards an intersectionality of race and ethnicity

As we write this response to our piece, one group of sociologists is preparing to attend a Critical Race conference in Tennessee, while another is preparing to attend an Immigration conference in B...

Nested Contexts of Reception: Undocumented Students at the University of California, Central:

This article draws from five focus groups with 35 undocumented students who enrolled in the University of California–Central (UC Central), a Hispanic Serving Institution (HSI) located in a Latino-majority, working-class community in the heart of the Central Valley, after the passage of the California Dream Act. We develop a framework of nested contexts of reception to argue that students encounter distinct contexts at the local, state, and federal levels that shape their educational incorporation. By considering nested contexts, we reveal how local, state, and federal policies and societal reception combine to help or hinder undocumented students’ success in higher education.

Feeling Like a Citizen, Living As a Denizen Deportees’ Sense of Belonging

The implementation of restrictive immigration laws in 1997 in the United States has led to the deportation of hundreds of thousands of legal permanent residents—denizens who had made the United States their home. Mass deportations of denizens have given renewed importance to territorial belonging and legal citizenship for theories of citizenship, a relatively neglected area of scholarship in this field. This article draws from interviews with 30 deported Jamaicans who were once legal permanent residents of the United States to argue that denizens often feel “like citizens” based on their family and community ties to the United States, yet that their allegiance and sense of belonging is primarily to their family and community—not to the state. In this sense, there is a disconnect between the law—which privileges legal citizenship—and the daily lives of denizens—in which they can experience a profound sense of belonging in their communities.