The Global Economy and the Latino Populations in the United States: A World Systems Approach

There are broad, historical-structural linkages among the distinct Latino groups in the United States, on the basis of which a Latino national minority is forming. In analyzing the disproportional effects on Latinos of the global economy, this essay argues that there is a common Latino historic experience vis-à-vis the world system: incorporation into the U.S. political economy, with its characteristic pattern of racialized social relations, from the immediate U.S. periphery, the Greater Caribbean Basin, and through colonial conquest. This constitutes the structural underpinning for a Latino national minority. This analysis also provides new components of a theoretical framework for understanding minority group formation.