proposed alternative framework. Finally, I provide a brief discussion on the preliminary results that my
pilot research has produced.
Section 1: De-racialized Notions of Latino Identity
Assimilation Theories: Latinos as Ethnic, Immigrant Groups
Assimilation theories maintain that migrants who arrive in the US shed most of their ethnic and
cultural backgrounds to become incorporated into mainstream American life (Alba and Nee 2006: 125).
In this section, I argue that assimilation theories 1) attempt to fit Latinos into a model created to
understand the incorporation of European immigrants, one that allows for the eventual disappearance of
ethnic markers and subsequent easy entry into the host society. 2) This often leads assimilationists to
describe Latinos as a grouping of ethnicities, rather than a racial group. Doing so allows Latinos to be
seen as neo-European immigrants who have not assimilated because of their own cultural deficiencies and
not because of the host society s treatment of them. Finally, 3) assimilationists do not question panethnic
sentiments as all Latino groups are seen as essentially the same
as immigrants. Further, assimilationists
are unable to understand the difference in the treatment of Latinos from European immigrants because
their analysis does not account for racialization.
Assimilation theories assumed that European immigrants would eventually form a unified part of
the white racial identity. Gordon s notion of acculturation, as the minority group s adoption of cultural
patterns of the host society and structural assimilation into Anglo-American society, as well as Gans
straight-line assimilation of progressive generational adjustment and incorporation represent the
diversity of mechanisms by which assimilation is thought to occur (Alba and Nee 2006: 127). In
addition, segmented assimilation attempts to recognize that discrimination may taint the assimilation
progression of immigrants, but still largely accepts the normative and conceptual premise of assimilation
that immigrants should choose upward mobility by attaining American cultural fluency (Bean and
Stevens 2003: 101). Despite Alba and Nee s attempt to restore the notion of assimilation as
complimentary to ethnicity and imperative for children of immigrants to avoid the temptation to drop out
of school and join the inner-city underclass, (2003: 129) assimilation theories remain rooted in white
hegemonic perspectives that cannot account for processes of racialization towards non-European
immigrants. The majority of early European immigrants enjoyed phenotypic privilege, or light skin, and
thus had less difficulty proving their whiteness than other groups with darker skin tones. Nevertheless,
assimilationist theories have been unproblematically applied to Latino ethnic groups.
Therefore, assimilation theories approach Latino groups as ethnic groups
rather than racial
ones that would align them with African-American identities
to maintain both the conceptual
segregation of blacks and whites, as well as the normative assumption that Latinos are capable of
achieving whiteness. Nevertheless, US-born Latinos and Latino immigrants experience racialization in a
way that distinguishes them from whites and European immigrants. Rocco argues that Latinos are
consistently perceived as perpetual foreigners despite their longstanding history in the US (2004: 21).
Assimilationists almost always place the impetus of belonging as the responsibility of the migrant, and do
not recognize xenophobia and racialization as factors negatively influencing incorporation (Waldinger
1999, 2007, Alba and Nee 2007). Thus, assimilation theories do not take into account the institutional
limitations to full membership and citizenship. The question at the root of assimilationist research is
important: how do immigrants come to belong in their new nation and society? However, assimilationist
6
Assimilationist positions maintain that Latinos will eventually assimilate into broader US society and that all immigrants,
regardless of national origin, will undergo the homogenous and fluid process of integration (Grosfoguel 2004:316).
5
Convention