Because of this history, “color-blindness” will not erase the inequality which has accumulated from racial categorizations. It is only by looking at race that we can begin to address its negative legacy.
Gender: Latino Politics and Intersectionality
Gender19 identity also interacts with ethnoracial categories in ways that affect Latino incorporation patterns. Appreciating intersectionality – the idea that human beings possess multiple identifications simultaneously, and that the intersection of those identities has important implications for their beliefs, attitudes, and experiences – is important for understanding Latino political engagement. Studies have shown that female- and male-identified Latinos migrate for different reasons, and that cisgender women now make up a growing proportion of Latino migration streams. In the early twentieth century, Latin-American-origin migration was quite male-dominated; by the early twenty-first century, that trend had shifted, with growing numbers of Latin-American-origin women choosing to migrate to the United States. Gender ratios among the foreign-born vary in important ways by national origin and by legal status.20 The majority of Dominican migrants, for example, are female-identified, while there are more male-identified than female-identified Mexican migrants. Unauthorized migration flows, in addition, tend to be heavily male-identified, and more than three-quarters of the United States’ unauthorized migrants come from Mexico and Central America. These gender differences have their roots in social and economic forces within the home countries, and have an effect on immigrants’ integration experiences in the United States.
One key aspect of those experiences is how those who are male- or female-identified are treated by US immigration policy. Studies suggest that immigration policies that, on the surface, seem gender-neutral, in practice have very different consequences for male- and female-identified migrants.21 In 2004, 73.2 percent of female-identified migrants applying for employment-based visas did so as a dependent of a visa holder; only 26.8 percent were primary visa holders. Similarly, under family reunification, women often must apply for sponsorship by male family members, requiring long waits before they are allowed to migrate to the United States and making them dependent on male family members for their migration status. These differences, in turn, affect female-identified migrants’ ability to settle and work in the United States.
In response to their particular structural positions, female-identified migrants engage in social network activity differently from male-identified migrants, and experience socioeconomic trajectories that vary from those of men.22 Those differences in terms of labor market structures and network relationships have a direct impact on how female-identified migrants engage with the political system. Of course, these gender differences are not only present among immigrants: native-born Latinos also vary in terms of gender roles, social network relationships, and economic opportunity structures. Therefore, it is important to consider the role gender differences play in helping to frame how male- and female-identified Latinos choose to engage in political activity. Using an intersectional lens is important, then, for understanding the complexity of Latino political experiences in the United States.
That lens needs to include other factors as well. Sexuality and gender identity are also important lines of demarcation among Latino migrants. Many recent LGBTQ Central American migrants petitioning for asylum in the United States are doing so to flee the violence and discrimination they face in their home countries; transgender migrants are among the most vulnerable in this regard.23 Unfortunately, since the Trump Administration began requiring that these asylum seekers remain in Mexico while waiting for the adjudication of their asylum claims, many face similar discriminatory violence in Mexico as well.24 If they are allowed entry into the United States, they likely will face discrimination there, experiences that will, in turn, affect their life chances and how they are able to, and choose to, engage politically.
Latino Political Incorporation
But how do racialization, gender identity, and sexuality relate to Latino politics? Racialization processes and other differences are important because they have shaped the way Latinos are seen by non-Latinos, the opportunities Latinos have been afforded, and the kinds of restrictions that have been placed on their incorporation into political life. Some Latinos living in the United States have been present in their communities since before they became part of the United States. We will see in the following chapters the significance of that long-term relationship. Yet a large proportion of Latinos in the country have arrived there since 1970. So, even though not all Latinos are immigrants – recent or otherwise – the community contains a sufficient number such that thinking about how immigrant politics varies from the politics of those who were born domestically is an important part of learning about the Latino political experience in the United States. Immigrant political incorporation is different from non-immigrant political incorporation because of two factors:
1 Immigrants choose to be part of the United States, and therefore must overcome important structural hurdles before they can even consider engaging politically.
2 Immigrant inclusion is about defining the boundaries of the US polity, and therefore speaks in important ways to issues of race, inequality, and power within American society, in ways that are somewhat different from (but related to) what is happening with US-born racialized groups.
Immigrants do not arrive in their new country as a clean slate. They bring a set of resources and a historical experience that shape their decision to migrate and their opportunity structure once they arrive. Thus, the study of Latino immigrant incorporation needs to begin with the international structural context which embeds the decision to migrate. Immigrants’ decisions to migrate are rooted in macro-geopolitical processes over which their subjects have little control, such as economic recession or dislocation, war, or natural disaster. Once immigrants arrive in the United States, they must deal with an immigration bureaucracy that, as we will see in the following chapters, does not treat them all the same. The country an immigrant comes from, and the relationship the US government has with that country at the time of migration, strongly affect how easy or difficult the legal aspects of the migration process are going to be. Hence, not only the immigrants’ legal and economic status upon their arrival, but even their tendency to come from particular countries and their choice to migrate to the United States, are intimately related with US foreign and economic policy.
US Foreign and Economic Policy and Latino Politics
The United States’ relations with Latin America have been deeply affected by two important US principles: manifest destiny and the Monroe Doctrine. The idea of manifest destiny – that the United States was “destined” to be an Anglo-Saxon Protestant nation that stretched from coast to coast – had its roots in colonial political thought. In a letter to his father in 1811, John Quincy Adams wrote:
The whole continent of North America appears to be destined by Divine Providence to be peopled by one nation, speaking one language, professing one general system of religious and political principles, and accustomed to one general tenor of social usages and customs. For the common happiness of them all, for their peace and prosperity, I believe it is indispensable that they should be associated in one federal Union.25
Like Adams, many Americans believed that it was God’s will that the United States should control the North American territory, and that the nation needed to be based on a common set of political ideals, religious beliefs, and cultural practices. This creed was one of the main justifications underlying US territorial expansion through the US–Mexico War. We will see that it also had important consequences for how the US dealt with the incorporation of the Mexican population present in those territories when they were annexed into the United States. Over time, this idea that it was the United States’ destiny to control a particular geographic sphere would expand beyond the North American continent and extend across the western hemisphere through the Monroe
