In Ireland ‘Latin Americans are kind of cool’: Evaluating a national context of reception with a transnational lens

Abstract

In this article, I analyze how government policies and social reception shaped Latin Americans’ patterns of incorporation and identity formation in Ireland, a new immigrant destination country in Europe where Latin American migrants lack both historical presence and (neo)colonial linkages, in the early 2000s. I show that Latin Americans in Ireland perceived a weaker form of racialization, not only than several other immigrant, refugee and racial groups there, but also than Latin Americans going to the USA, Spain, and (for Brazilians) Portugal. I then argue that these results illustrate how many Latin American migrants are now embedded within a transnational social field that connects flows of people and ideas across several different receiving countries – both traditional and new – which in turn shapes their relative evaluations of individual national receiving ‘contexts of reception’. I conclude by examining the implications of these results for immigration and Latino Studies scholarship.

Keywords

Context of reception immigration Ireland Latin America Latino identity (neo)colonial racialization transnational social field

Generally I think there is a perception that Latin Americans are kind of cool. There has been a positive stereotype in that sense. (Mariana, Puerto Rican immigrant in Ireland, 2006)

Introduction

Latin Americans have historically migrated to the USA. However, deteriorating economic conditions throughout Latin America, increasingly restrictive US visa requirements and post-9/11 border control policies, and favorable visa exemption and dual citizenship policies in southern Europe have helped shift 21st-century flows elsewhere. These flows are moving notably toward Spain, Portugal and Italy, but also to other European states, and even to Canada, Japan, Australia and Israel. This geographic dispersal provides new opportunities for examining patterns of Latin American migrant reception, incorporation and identity formation in contexts that, unlike the USA, Spain and Portugal, lack strong colonial and neocolonial linkages to Latin America, or historical familiarity with the region’s migrants.

The new-immigrant destination case of Ireland is a case in point. In this article I ask: How did Latin Americans perceive their reception in Ireland at the turn of the 21^st century, both by Irish government policies and their Irish hosts, and how did such perceptions shape their ethnic and racial identities? I draw on the ‘context of reception’ approach developed by US sociologists Portes and Rumbaut (2006) which helps explain how a host country’s receiving context shapes the incorporation experiences, outcomes, and identity-formation processes of migrant groups in relation to: policies of the receiving government; conditions of the receiving labor market; characteristics of newcomers’ own receiving ethnic communities; and reactions of receiving ‘non-ethnic’ communities. While the approach is US-centric in origin, it has wide potential for application elsewhere, because the four factors differentially shape migrants’ experiences, patterns of incorporation, and resulting identity expressions across different times and places.

I show that a small sample of Latin Americans in Ireland reported being received in a neutral to positive manner. Respondents did perceive some discrimination and racialization as ‘non-EU immigrants’, in the realms of both Irish government policies and social reception. However, they also reported feeling ‘advantaged’ by neutral to positive stereotypes about Latin Americans in Ireland, as well as by low population numbers and a positively selected skills profile, which are the paradoxical results of increasingly strict Irish government policies geared toward – and that in essence ‘racialize’ – all non-EU immigrants. Respondents also compared their perceptions of being weakly racialized in Ireland with stronger forms of racialization endured by several other immigrant, refugee, and racial groups there, as well as by Latin American migrants in the USA, Spain, and (for Brazilians) Portugal. Such contrasts are illuminated in respondents’ ethnic and racial identifications, which did not articulate racial stigma.

I also consider how these results demonstrate the existence of a transnational social field that now connects flows of Latin American migrants as well as flows of ideas about Latin(o) identity across several different receiving countries – both traditional and new. I argue that respondents’ embeddedness within this field shapes their relative evaluations of the national Irish ‘context of reception’, thereby helping us to account for why many of them consider their sociocultural experiences in Ireland to be positive despite ongoing racialization as non-EU immigrants in both Irish immigration policy and labor market. I conclude by examining the implications of these results for immigration and Latino Studies scholarship.

Methods

Data come from semi-structured, in-depth interviews with a non-representative sample of 40 Latin Americans of varying nationalities, socioeconomic and immigration statuses, and ancestries in Ireland, recruited using a targeted snowball sampling method during January and February 2006. A representative survey was not feasible because of the small number of Latin Americans in Ireland and the lack of existing quantitative and qualitative data from which to develop a sampling frame (though see Holder and Lanao, 2001 and Leal, 2004 for two small case studies). I advertised my project through five Latin American organizations in Ireland, whose members referred me to additional respondents outside these organizations. I also attended a weekly Spanish-speaking Catholic mass in north Dublin and several salsa parties in central Dublin, where I met additional respondents, and I advertised my project through my own social networks. While the non-representative data cannot be generalized to all Latin Americans in Ireland, they nonetheless offer an intriguing snapshot of the lives and views of some, and are suggestive of broader trends.

Most respondents lived in the greater Dublin area, including in Clonee – a new dormitory town where many Brazilians work in meatpacking – although a handful resided in western Ireland. As Tables 1 and 2 show, a majority of respondents hailed from three of the five largest source countries of Latin Americans in Ireland: Argentina (N = 7), Brazil (N = 9) and Colombia (N = 9); the remainder hailed from Chile (N = 3), Peru (3), Ecuador (2), Cuba (2), Mexico (2), Guatemala (1), Nicaragua (1) and Puerto Rico (1). Among Brazilian respondents, I interviewed both lower-status workers in the meatpacking (N = 4) and housecleaning (N = 1) sectors, and higher-status members living, studying, and working independently in Dublin (N = 5). (Three members of the latter group worked previously in meatpacking.) Respondents’ gender ratio was roughly equal (19 men, 21 women), and their median age was 32 (range: 21–48).

Table 1.

Irish work permits issued to Latin Americans, by national origin, 2002–08.

National origin	New permits	Renewals	Total Issued
Brazil	2618	5798	8416
Argentina	256	229	485
Mexico	195	164	359
Colombia	54	92	146
Venezuela	66	69	135
Chile	62	72	134
Peru	39	79	118
Ecuador	25	29	54
Paraguay	17	18	35
Cuba	14	19	33
Uruguay	14	14	28
El Salvador	6	19	25
Guatemala	7	13	20
Bolivia	8	11	19
Costa Rica	8	11	19
Honduras	2	12	14
Nicaragua	6	0	6
Panama	4	1	5
Dominican Republic	3	0	3
Total	3404	6650	10,054

Source: Department of Enterprise, Trade, and Employment (DETE). Available at: http://www.entemp.ie/labour/workpermits/statistics.htm (accessed February 2009).

Table 2.

Migration and Socioeconomic Profile of Respondents, by National Origin, 2006.

	Argentina (N = 7)	Brazil (N = 9)	Colombia (N = 9)	Other (N = 15)	Total (N = 40)
Gender ratio
Male	2	7	4	6	19 (47.5%)
Female	5	2	5	9	21 (52.5%)
Education
Some post-graduate or more	1	1	5	4	11 (27.5%)
University graduate	6	2	4	3	15 (37.5%)
High school graduate	–	2	–	7	9 (22.5%)
Less than high school graduate	–	4	–	–	4 (10%)
Unknown	–	–	–	1	1 (2.5%)
Occupation
Call center or multinational organization	4	–	2	1	7 (17.5%)
(Other) professional	2	–	3	1	6 (15%)
Self-employed	–	2	–	3	5 (12.5%)
Intracompany/organization transferee	–	–	1	4	5 (12.5%)
Meatpacking	–	4	–	–	4 (10%)
(Other) production	–	1	–	1	2 (5%)
Construction	–	–	–	1	1 (2.5%)
Restaurant/service/sales	–	–	2	2	4 (10%)
Housecleaning	–	1	–	–	1 (2.5%)
Unemployed	1	–	–	2	3 (7.5%)
Not in labor force	–	1	1	–	2 (5%)
Length of time in Ireland
More than 6 years	–	3	–	1	4 (10%)
3–6 years	3	5	3	7	18 (45%)
1–3 years	3	–	3	4	10 (25%)
Less than 1 year	1	1	3	3	8 (20%)
Immigration status
EU Citizen (marriage)	2	–	1	2	5 (12.5%)
EU Citizen (ancestry)	2	–	1	–	3 (7.5%)
EU Citizen (naturalization)	–	–	–	1	1 (2.5%)
Irish residency	–	1	–	–	1 (2.5%)
Work permit	3	6	1	3	13 (32.5%)
Work visa/authorization	–	–	2	1	3 (7.5%)
Student visa	–	1	2	–	3 (7.5%)
Intra-company/organization transferee	–	–	1	2	3 (7.5%)
Asylum-seeker (asylum granted)	–	–	–	1	1 (2.5%)
Other	–	1	1	2	4 (10%)
Unauthorized	–	–	–	3	3 (7.5%)

Source: Author’s interviews.

As I am a US researcher applying an influential US framework for analyzing Latin American immigrant incorporation and identity development to Ireland, I employed two strategies to acknowledge my subjectivities during my fieldwork. First, I interviewed respondents personally in their preferred language – usually Spanish or Portuguese, though sometimes English (I am proficient in all three). Interviews lasted approximately two hours, and I asked respondents a battery of questions regarding their migration histories, family backgrounds, identifications, employment histories and experiences in Ireland. Second, I identified myself to respondents as a scholar of Latin American migration to the USA, asking them comparative questions intended to elicit their views on the differences between Irish, US, Spanish and Portuguese responses to Latin American migrants. I quickly discovered that many respondents had traveled or lived in other countries, and that most others had family members or friends who had, which enabled them to engage indirectly in cross-country comparisons. To ensure anonymity, I have changed all names and identifying characteristics of respondents.

Situating Latin Americans in Ireland

During the ‘Celtic Tiger’ boom period of the mid- to late-1990s, remarkable growth in the Irish economy (Allen, 2007; Garner, 2004) produced large labor shortages that could not be filled by domestic supply, and that new immigrants were recruited to fill (Hughes et al., 2007; Ruhs, 2005). In 1996, Ireland reached its official emigration-to-immigration ‘turning point’ (Quinn, 2009; Ruhs, 2005), and immigrants continued to fill positions in an expanding labor market during the ‘post-Celtic Tiger’ period after 2000, albeit at a slower rate. I conducted my research during this post-boom context, before the onset of the 2008 global recession.

Latin Americans do not figure prominently among Ireland’s immigrants. Many immigrants are returning Irish emigrants (Howard, 2007), although their share of the inflow has been declining, from approximately two thirds in the late 1980s to roughly a quarter in 2008 (Hughes et al., 2007; Quinn, 2009). Most others come from EU member states, including the 10 accession countries that joined the enlarged EU on 1 May 2004. In fact, no Latin American country appeared among the largest groups comprising the ‘foreign-born stock’ in the 2006 Irish Census of Population, nor among the largest groups officially recognized as ‘refugees’ by the Irish Refugee Council in 2004. The only Latin Americans to appear anywhere in recent Irish population figures are Brazilians, yet only 0.5 percent (N = 1087) of non-Irish nationals reported ‘Brazilian’ in the 2002 Census of Population, and only 1.0 percent (N = 4388) did so in 2006.

As immigrants originating from outside the European Economic Area (EEA),¹ Latin Americans have been subject to increasingly strict Irish government policies that favor and ‘select’ for high skills (Quinn, 2009: 2). These management and selection policies were enacted to accommodate rising inflows of low-skilled labor into Ireland from within the EEA after EU enlargement in 2004. Their intensification began under the Employment Permits Act of 2003, which started closing off the Irish work permit program² to non-EEA unskilled workers (Allen, 2007; Garner, 2004: 52-60; Ruhs, 2005). It continued under the Employment Permits Act of 2006, which further reduced the number of work permits issued to non-EEA nationals while simultaneously increasing the number of skilled non-EEA nationals entering through an expanded employment permit (‘green card’) system³ and as temporary intracompany/transnational transferees (Allen, 2007; Hughes et al., 2007; Quinn, 2009). With additional tightening of the work permit system in 2009 (Quinn, 2009), what Allen (2007: 96) calls a ‘crude form of geography’ has developed, whereby Irish immigration and employment policies have increasingly favored higher skills among non-EEA nationals after 2004, while weeding out their lower-skilled compatriots.

Brazilians

The presence of Brazilians in Ireland has roots in an industry-specific program of direct labor recruitment. During the 1999 Brazilian meatpacking crisis, several slaughterhouses closed down, leaving workers unemployed and frustrated (Chaves, 2004; Leal, 2004). Several of my Brazilian respondents recounted how, at that point, an Irish man who had relocated to Brazil to work in a meatpacking plant near the city of Anápolis, Goiás learned of a labor shortage in the Irish meatpacking market. He and his Brazilian wife began acting as contracting liaisons, locating workers from Anápolis – especially from the neighborhood of Vila Fabril – who would be willing to travel on work permits to Ireland. The couple thus used their Irish and Brazilian meatpacking contacts to initiate a flow of skilled blue-collar Brazilian workers – many of them experienced butchers and boners in Brazil (Leal, 2004; Murray, 2006) – from Goiás state to a Kepak Group Ltd plant in Clonee, outside Dublin. In 1999, Kepak recruited more Brazilian workers to its Roscommon plant (in County Roscommon), and the now-closed Duffy Meat Exports Ltd., located on the outskirts of Gort (in County Galway), followed suit. Later, other meatpacking plants recruited Brazilian workers from the state of São Paulo (Healy, 2006a; Leal, 2004). During my research, these industry-specific recruiting efforts still connected Brazilian migrants to the Irish labor market via the temporary work permit system and were supported by a process of informal recruiting among the workers (also Leal, 2004: 72–73).

In 2006 there was also a growing Brazilian population in Dublin (Murray, 2006). These Brazilians tended to come from higher socioeconomic backgrounds and different regions and states in Brazil, were more evenly distributed by gender, and were either temporary students or visitors, or employed in service and administrative jobs. Brazilian respondent Cláudio described Brazilians’ polarization along socioeconomic lines:

The real big community here came from slaughterhouses in Brazil, and they have a real lack of education. They are not hungry people, but they are kind of poor in Brazil. So not having much education was a big problem for the Brazilians here [in 1999]. But now there’s a lot of people coming with college educations, to do a postgraduate program here, and to study and improve their English to go back to Brazil to use their English over there in order to get better jobs, better conditions in their companies.

Nonetheless, despite this class bifurcation (Leal, 2004), Brazilians were arguably the most organized of any Latin American-origin group in Ireland in 2006 because of their large numbers and their industry-specific patterns of geographic concentration, especially in meatpacking and, increasingly, housecleaning. Community leaders estimated their total number at around 8000–10000,⁴ and Brazilians comprised 25 to 30 percent of the total population in the town of Gort (Healy, 2006a) and 70 percent of the total foreign national population in that of Roscommon (Leal, 2004).

In my sample, the nine Brazilians were the most seasoned and least educated. Six were recruited into meatpacking through the work permit system in 1999 or 2000; several had been in Ireland long enough to have applied for five-year Irish residency permits (one had been granted it).⁵ Four had less than a high school education, while only three had a university degree. Though these respondents saw their stays in Ireland as temporary, many had brought their family members to Ireland, or were considering the benefits of investing in careers, homes and finances in both Ireland and Brazil.

Other national origin groups

Aside from Brazilians, Latin Americans are not particularly visible in Ireland. Ireland is home to some Chilean, Cuban, and Central American refugees, but their numbers are small (Galvin, 2000; Healy, 2006b). According to Irish work permit data, the largest groups, behind Brazilians and with the singular exception of Mexicans, are South Americans (see Table 1). However, even their numbers are dwarfed by other immigrant and refugee groups.

Among respondents, the seven Argentines had entered Ireland more recently than the Brazilians, generally after the 2001 Argentine financial crisis (Jachimowicz, 2003; Marrow, 2007). Most saw their presence in Ireland as temporary – a four- to five-year venture, in Argentine respondent Alejandra’s estimation, that offers a chance to gain international work experience, earn money in euros, pursue education, and/or travel abroad in an increasingly dynamic EU until economic conditions in Argentina improve. Conforming with their profile as middle-class professionals, all had a university degree, and their immigration statuses ranged from some who had work permits to others who had gained EU citizenship either by marrying an Irish citizen or having a European citizen ancestor.

The nine Colombian and 15 other Latin American respondents arrived more recently, generally between 2000 and 2006. They, too, had high levels of education, a characteristic they frequently contrasted with Latin Americans in the USA or Spain. Mexican respondent Javier reported that there are very few Mexicans in Ireland, and that ‘most of them are people who have education, come here to learn English, and I would say are the middle class or rich class from Mexico, so their education is different than the Mexicans who are in the USA’. Similarly, Guatemalan respondent Diana reported that Guatemalans and Colombians in Ireland ‘are very, very well-educated people. Especially the Colombians’, whereas in the USA, ‘most of them are illiterate and uneducated people’.

Indeed, the nine Colombians had the highest levels of education of all respondents. Several attributed this to the selective effects of Irish immigration policy, explaining that Dominicans, Colombians, Ecuadorians and Peruvians must go to added lengths to obtain tourist visas to enter Ireland (Department of Foreign Affairs, 2010). In their views, this hurdle ‘weeds out’ all but the most committed of migrants, which in turn increases their skill levels even more than does the general selectivity of Irish immigration and employment policies toward all non-EEA nationals. Interestingly, respondents argued this most strongly in reference to Colombians, for whom obtaining tourist visas was the most difficult; because there was no Irish consulate in Colombia in the mid-2000s, Colombians had to apply via the Irish consulate in Mexico, a process involving several layers of long-distance, bureaucratic correspondence. Finally, the Colombian and other Latin American respondents’ immigration statuses were also the most varied. In addition to those with work permits and EU citizenship, others were in Ireland on work visas/authorizations, as intra-company/organization transferees, as an asylum-seeker, and even illegally (having overstayed tourist visas or expired work permits).

Aside from those in meatpacking, the 40 respondents were dispersed throughout the Irish labor market. Some of the more advantaged were professionally employed or worked in major multinational organizations (MNOs), including as bilingual or multilingual translators in call centers catering to EU and North American markets. Others were temporarily or self-employed, and still others worked in production jobs or construction. Finally, a number of the less advantaged worked both on- and off-the-books in various sectors of the restaurant, service and sales industries, including in domestic housecleaning, where Brazilians have established a stronger presence in recent years, and where not all employers request a valid work permit as officially required. A handful were unemployed or not in the labor force.

Thus, these data confirm that Latin Americans are a small, recently established migrant population in Ireland. Only two respondents had been in Ireland for more than eight years, and the Brazilians were just beginning to apply for five-year Irish residency permits. Moreover, they suggest that many Latin Americans are relatively privileged in terms of educational attainment, occupational skills, and immigration statuses. While some respondents came to Ireland as tourists, students and dependents, and though others had overstayed tourist visas, work permits, or work authorizations/visas and were working precariously in what Ecuadorian respondent Roberto called ‘the other side of Irish life’, most had legal permission to live and work in Ireland; were young, well-educated, and from upper working- to upper middle-class backgrounds; exhibited economic rather than political motivations for migrating; and desired upward mobility rather than economic survival. Colombian and Argentine respondents were particularly well-educated and despite their lower educational qualifications, Brazilians working in meatpacking were skilled workers, which also brought advantages, as respondent Mauricio noted:

Mauricio: Brazilian immigrants get better jobs [in Kepak than other immigrants get]. We say that at least.

Interviewer: How come?

Mauricio: Because of the quality of the work that Brazilians do, it’s superior than what the other immigrants do. Maybe because the others have never done this kind of work in their countries.

Third, the data suggest that Latin Americans are dispersed throughout the Irish labor market. Irrespective of industry or occupation, most worked in ‘diverse’ environments, among Irish nationals and immigrants from a variety of countries. Even Brazilians in meatpacking reported a variety of coworkers:

Interviewer: Is it all Brazilians working in the Kepak plant?

Antônio: No, oh no. All people. Brazilians, Chinese, Polish, French, Italian.

Interviewer: So from everywhere?

Antônio: Yeah. Prague, Slovakia. Everywhere.

Respondents in other industries and occupations (especially multinational call centers) reported working among non-Irish peers even if not managers, and/or coming into frequent contact with Irish managers and clients. Thus, respondents reported that, as Latin Americans, they tended neither to predominate in their work settings nor attract much public attention, especially when compared to other larger immigrant, refugee, and racial groups in Ireland, or to Latin Americans in the USA and Spain.

The paradoxical effects of Irish government policies

The structure of Irish immigration and employment policies described earlier created dual structural disadvantages for Latin Americans by virtue of being, first, immigrants rather than Irish natives, and second, non-EU rather than EU nationals. Consequently, respondents described their experiences integrating into the Irish labor market as similar to those of all immigrants, noting difficulties in overcoming language barriers, foreign credentialing hurdles, a lack of Irish work experience, a willingness to work temporarily for less money abroad than at home, a lack of the ‘right’ Irish social connections, and discrimination – including preferences by Irish employers to ‘hire Irish’, to ‘hire Irish’ for managerial positions, and to pay non-Irish less than Irish workers in the same jobs (Barrett and Duffy, 2008; McGinnity et al., 2009). Yet many described additional difficulties common to all non-EU immigrants; in Cuban respondent Elsa’s words, getting a job is ‘harder for everyone if they don’t come from the EU’. This amplified respondents’ powerlessness in Irish workplaces, as various studies have documented, and could even lead to irregularization.

In these ways, respondents perceived some discrimination and racialization in Irish immigration and employment policies, yet they expressed them as a function of being non-EU nationals, not Latin Americans in particular. Given that racialization refers to the social processes that create and maintain systematic, unequal life chances between hierarchically ordered populations – including descent-based categories that majority groups often invest with ideological content (e.g. stereotypes) to explain the inferiority of minority groups and to justify their disparate treatment and outcomes (Bonilla-Silva, 1997; Garner, 2004; Winant, 2000) – such perceptions of a stark ‘EU/non-EU’ dividing line in life chances in Ireland are telling. Yet despite such structural disadvantages, respondents also reported that the requirements for non-EU nationals to enter and work in Ireland are stringent enough to have selected most Latin Americans for strong educational, occupational, and English language skills, which provides them with advantages over many other immigrant, refugee, and racial groups in Ireland, as well as over Latin Americans in the USA, Spain, and (for Brazilians) Portugal.⁶ Respondents argued that two positive consequences of their selection are, first, improved chances to obtain good jobs within the mainstream Irish labor market and, second, in combination with their low population numbers, improved opportunities to come into contact with, and develop congenial relationships with, people of other nationalities, including Irish natives. In comparison, they argued, Latin Americans going to the USA, Spain, and Portugal have larger population sizes and lower skill profiles as a result of deep historical ties, and so are relegated farther down those countries’ economic and social hierarchies than they are in Ireland.⁷

Respondents also noted greater tightening in border control and interior enforcement policies toward Latin American immigrants in the USA and Spain than in Ireland. In the USA, post-9/11 restrictions have increasingly targeted unauthorized immigrants, overwhelmingly Latin American in origin, threatening their access to private and public employment, driver’s licenses, higher education, and social services and benefits. In Spain, despite several regularization programs as well as administrative preferences privileging Latin Americans, especially those of Spanish descent, over other migrant groups in immigration and nationality policies (Cook-Martín and Viladrich, 2009; Gil Araújo, 2010), new restrictionist measures have subjected unauthorized immigrants, one quarter of whom are Latin Americans (Cornelius, 2004: 394), to increased surveillance in employment and everyday life (Agrela and Gil Araújo, 2005; Arango and Jachimowicz, 2005; Calavita, 2005: 33-37; Connor and Massey, 2010; Jokisch and Pribilsky, 2002: 87, 92). Even Latin Americans entering Spain after imposition of new tourist visa entry requirements⁸ continue to be clustered in agriculture, construction, and domestic service by the Spanish temporary work permit system, which offers non-EU nationals little upward mobility in an extremely segmented labor market (Gratton, 2007; Martin Díaz et al., 2006; Solé and Parella, 2003). Having either traveled to or lived in both countries themselves, or spoken with other family members or friends who have done so, respondents judged their experiences in Ireland to be more positive, as Colombian respondent Clara illustrated:

Colombians in Spain do not have a good reputation, and you end up living in an old house with 10 other people, sharing a toilet and the kitchen and the washing machine. And then finding a job [in Spain] and earning much less money than I had been in Ireland, working six days a week with just one day free, working like 10-hour shifts. And if you didn’t want to do that, there would be lots of South Americans or Filipinos or whoever to do it. I was working in a coffee shop for two months, and I couldn’t keep going any longer. It was bad. It was a huge difference for me living like that, because I live well here in Ireland.

Indeed, many respondents believed that recent policy tightening has offset such positive aspects of the US and Spanish contexts as larger co-ethnic communities (argued to ease migrants’ initial transition into employment), greater economic opportunities (in the larger US economy), and cultural and linguistic commonalities (especially helpful in the Spanish higher educational system).

Of course, most respondents noted that Irish government policies have become more restrictive in their granting of student visas and work permits to non-EU nationals; that Irish natives have become less ‘open’ to new arrivals; and, most importantly, that the Irish Nationality and Citizenship (Amendment) Act of 2004 eliminated the automatic jus soli right to citizenship for children born to non-Irish nationals (Fanning and Mutwarasibo, 2007; Mullaly, 2007; Quinn, 2009). Still, they distinguished this tightening from worse in the USA and Spain. And while respondents perceived some discrimination and racialization to be affecting them in the Irish labor market, as both immigrants and non-EU nationals, they described it as comparatively weaker than that endured by Latin Americans in the USA, Spain and Portugal.

The positive effects of Irish social reception

The 40 Latin American respondents also perceived some similar patterns of discrimination and racialization – that is, systematic and hierarchically ordered distinction – in terms of their social reception as non-EU immigrants. However, most reported feeling ‘advantaged’ by neutral to positive Irish stereotypes about Latin Americans. They felt that such stereotypes give them an edge not only over many other immigrant, refugee, and racial groups who are deemed ‘less desirable’ in Ireland – Travellers, Roma, Nigerians, refugees and asylum-seekers, Chinese, and Eastern Europeans⁹ (Amnesty International, 2001; Hughes et al., 2007; McGréil, 1996; McVeigh and Lentin, 2002; O’Connell and Winston, 2006) – but also over Latin Americans in the USA, Spain, and Portugal, where respondents saw Latin American-origin communities deemed ‘less desirable’ and located farther down those countries’ social hierarchies. In fact, even respondents who saw Irish government policies disadvantaging Latin Americans as non-EU immigrants also noted that Irish natives treat Latin Americans well, frequently acknowledging cultural commonalities or drawing links between Irish and Latin American struggles against (neo)colonial domination, as Argentine respondent Erika stated:

The work permit policies and EU laws here make it harder on us to find jobs. Because you have to employ people from all the 25 EU countries first, that’s the law. But the people are very open. I’ve heard some people say the Irish are racist, but I have never felt that. There are a lot of things the Irish and the Argentines have in common. We both love soccer. And we both have some issues with the English. Like the Irish have their history [with England] and we have our Falkland Islands. We have a lot in common, so it’s okay.

Such descriptions suggest that, despite sharing a non-EU experience of racialization in some regards, many Latin Americans perceived a separate and weaker form of racialization in everyday Irish life compared to what many other groups – including Nigerians, who have also struggled against English (neo)colonial domination! – experience. Illustrating this are quotes from the three respondents (Cubans Elsa and Augustín, and Ecuadorian Consuelo) who identified racially as black. Each described significant discrimination based on assumptions that they are ‘Nigerian’ or ‘African’, followed by a positive change once Irish natives learn they are Latin American:

I don’t know why, but sometimes I go up to a person and they are a little hesitant because I am black. And when they ask, ‘Where are you from?’ and I say Cuba, it changes for the better. ‘Oh!’ Because they thought that I am Nigerian or from some other country in Africa. (Augustín)

Elsa and Consuelo agreed that their Latin American origins distinguish and buffer them from pernicious anti-black racism in Ireland, which overlaps with anti-asylum-seeker sentiment.

Likewise, interview data suggest that Latin Americans (especially among respondents from Chile and the Andean countries) perceived a weaker form of racialization in Ireland compared to the USA, Spain, and (for Brazilians) Portugal. For example, drawing on her former experience living in Spain, as well as her current connections to other Latin American migrants who still live there, Colombian respondent Susana thought that Spaniards’ responses, developed through centuries of colonial domination and exacerbated by rising Latin American immigration, are far worse than Irish natives’ responses:

Susana: Spain is probably the hardest of the countries actually. In Spain you’re either Moroccan or you’re Colombian or you’re Nigerian. So all the associations of Colombians there are very, very low, and it’s difficult to identify yourself with something that could make you feel proud about yourself there. Even though you speak the same language and whatever, and supposedly you can communicate with people. It’s more accentuated there – there is a bigger difference between a Spaniard and a Colombian in Spain than there is between a Colombian and an Irish person in Ireland.

Interviewer: How do you feel like you get along with Spaniards here in Ireland?

Susana: Well, I have a few Spanish friends. And I had friends when I was living in Spain, too. It’s fine, but maybe deep in my heart it was too much pain, too much hurt by Spanish people. It’s like there is so much discrimination in every sense for Colombians in Spain. Or abuses by Spanish multinational companies in Latin America. Or the whole idea of Spanish colonization – it just goes back and it’s a very painful story.

According to these respondents – one of whom ‘literally hates Spaniards’ and cried remembering her denigration in Spain – Latin American migrants going to Spain are not as highly selected as those in Ireland, which negatively affects Spaniards’ perceptions of them. But even more importantly, deep historical linkages have produced high levels of resentment among Spaniards, who look down on many Latin American groups (especially Colombians at present) as a racially inferior and criminal underclass. Chilean respondent Eduardo echoed this perception of facing stronger barriers to upward economic mobility and social integration in Spain than Ireland:

At least with Chileans, Spaniards are very racist in my opinion. Like there are a lot of Chileans who go to Spain and start speaking Spanish, and Spaniards say, ‘Oh, you are sudaca. You are hispano. You are indígena.’ They discriminate against you, they look at you differently when you ought to be equal. Spaniards even do it here in Ireland. They did it to my friend Lisandro. They told him his Spanish is not Spanish, that it’s indígena.

For these respondents, life in Ireland is better ‘because you are [seen as] just one of the rest of the foreign people’ (in Colombian respondent Gabriel’s words), rather than being racialized farther down the Spanish social hierarchy.¹⁰ Other respondents described similar colonial and neocolonial attitudes in the USA, especially toward Mexicans and Puerto Ricans, and in Portugal toward Brazilians, against which they judged Latin Americans’ experiences in Ireland more positively, as Brazilian respondent Cláudio demonstrated:

I’ve been in 15 countries in Europe. The only one where I was not welcome was Portugal. You know why? The Brazilians in Portugal are a very old community. There were Brazilians in Portugal 500 years ago. So the more you deal with someone, the more damage you get in your relationship. Everywhere else I go, I usually bring my Brazilian flag to open it to take photos. And people always say, ‘Oh! Are you Brazilian?’, and they want to talk about something with me. But the Portuguese think we go there just to take their jobs, take their money, to apply for some money.

In other words, respondents viewed Ireland’s lack of (neo)colonial relationship to Latin America as making Irish natives (in Argentine immigrant Erika’s words) ‘less tired of’ or likely to ‘humiliate’ Latin Americans, less stereotypical of Latin Americans as the ‘bad guys’ in their media, and more likely to see Latin Americans as ‘cool and interesting and novel’. They saw a neutral to positive Irish social reception – which some argued derives from commonalities in religious heritage (for the majority of respondents who are Catholics¹¹), from small Irish diasporas in Latin America,¹² from presumed commonalities between Irish and Latin Americans’ ‘lively’ and ‘fun-loving’ characters, or from common histories as former (neo)colonial subjects – as facilitating Latin Americans’ incorporation into Ireland versus the USA, Spain, and Portugal.

Racial and ethnic identification

Migrants’ racial and ethnic identities in any given host country depend, in part, on how they are received, and thus become key measures of that country’s ‘context of reception’ (Portes and Rumbaut, 2006). Members of my sample identified themselves primarily using national origin identifiers or some form of ‘Latin’ (Latin, Latin American or Latino), and less so ‘Hispanic’. Moreover, in Ireland, they explained, such panethnic terms do not carry the same racialized stigma that Hispanic and Latino do in the USA, nor that latino and sudaca do in Spain. In this way, their identifications signaled neutral to positive incorporation into Irish society, not early development of what Portes and Rumbaut call a ‘reactive ethnicity’.

To illustrate, many respondents reported no knowledge of ‘Hispanics’ in the USA, or of the term being used in Ireland. Others were familiar with the term and group to which it refers in the USA, either via North American media sources (which are broadcast in their Latin American home countries as well as in Ireland); their own experiences living in the USA; or stories conveyed to them by family members or friends who have lived in the USA. All contrasted the Irish use of the terms Hispanic and Latino to signify ‘Spanish-speakers’ with stronger US attempts to stigmatize Latin Americans along race, class, and legal status lines. For instance, Chilean respondent Lisandro thought the term Hispanic was ‘awful’ and ‘pejorative’. He ‘hated’ the word and associated it with the USA, where he saw it had an equivalent capacity to ‘nigger’ for racializing people associated with poverty and crime. In contrast, according to Puerto Rican respondent Mariana, Irish natives do not share ‘that same kind of notion’, and instead rely on national origins or some form of the term Latin when grouping Latin Americans among other Spanish-speakers (and sometimes all romance-language-speakers).

In this way, identification as Latinos in Ireland implied a neutral association with Spaniards or other southern Europeans, versus a more derogatory association with low-class racial minorities in the USA or racialized ex-colonial subjects in Spain. Whereas Argentine respondent Erika reported that ‘when a person from the USA says the word Hispanic, it’s to discriminate’, Peruvian respondent Carolina clarified that, for the Irish, they simply ‘mean you speak Spanish’. Colombian respondent Lourdes echoed this distinction:

Interviewer: Do the Irish use either Hispanic or Latino here?

Lourdes: They don’t use anything here. You’re Colombian or Brazilian or South American or Latin American … And us speaking Spanish here is different from sudaca in Spain. Sudaca means you come from South America, but that is like to call a black person black in the USA. Or nigger. Sudaca is really derogatory. A bad word, racist connotations and everything.

Even Brazilian respondents in Ireland did not notably distance themselves from other Latin American migrants, as is well documented in the USA where Brazilians quickly learn that Hispanics and Latinos are looked down upon (Margolis, 1994; Marrow, 2007).

Discussion

In this article, I have utilized a context of reception approach to analyze how a small sample of Latin Americans experience life in a new immigrant destination country with no significant (neo)colonial history in Latin America. This approach helps explain why respondents perceived only weak racialization as ‘just another immigrant group’ rather than as a severely stigmatized racial minority. On one hand, these Latin Americans, as non-EU immigrants, faced strong barriers to entering Ireland and to obtaining and maintaining employment after arrival. Such structural disadvantages sometimes problematized their searches for employment and mobility, depressed their earnings compared to similarly qualified Irish and EU nationals, and located them toward the bottom of the Irish socio-legal hierarchy where irregularization is a constant threat. Yet, paradoxically, Irish policies also selected for their high skills and kept their numbers low, two things respondents regarded as advantageous in Ireland, particularly compared to the USA, Spain, and Portugal, where Latin Americans are clearer targets of those countries’ increasingly restrictive policies, and also rank lower down the social hierarchies.

In short, respondents argued that strict Irish government policies – which certainly racialize all non-EU nationals in their effort to bar poor and third-world ‘outsiders’ from entry (Garner, 2004) – also select for high skills. Combined with neutral to positive stereotypes about Latin Americans circulating in Ireland, such selection lessened the sense of racial discrimination respondents felt. Even respondents who self-identified or reported external identification as ‘black’ noted a positive reception once their Latin American origin became known, and use of panethnic identifications such as Latino elicited little if any of the racialized stigma found in the USA or Spain.

These conclusions, it should be noted, derive from a small and non-representative sample of Latin Americans in one new-immigrant destination country, and constitute only a preliminary comparison of Latin American experiences across Ireland, the USA, Spain, and Portugal. The conclusions are also capable of future change, because racialization is a constantly evolving process (Garner, 2004). Racial distinctions can not only harden, but also decline and in some cases even disappear over time (Alba and Nee, 2003).

Nonetheless, these conclusions have several implications for existing immigration and Latino Studies scholarship. First, they encourage both of these scholarships to move outwards from their national roots – largely in the USA, but also in Spain and (for Brazilians) Portugal – into new national territories and new transnational spaces. Scholars of transnationalism have long encouraged such a turn in immigration studies (see Levitt and Glick Schiller, 2004; Levitt and Jaworsky, 2007). Indeed, the present study suggests that new emigration patterns out of Latin America may not be best conceived of as discrete streams connecting just a sending and a receiving country alone. Rather, respondents appear to be ‘flowing’ in more complex and multi-stranded ways – for instance, traveling to or living in a first receiving country and then moving onto others, and maintaining multi-stranded relationships with other Latin American migrants across various receiving countries along the way. Such embeddedness in a ‘transnational social field’ (Levitt and Glick Schiller, 2004) allows for the exchange of ideas, practices, and resources via social relationships now anchored in multiple national sites, not just in one receiving one.

Results of this study show that among such ideas are information and judgments about various national ‘contexts of reception’, which help migrants to engage in processes of relative evaluations of each. As Andall phrases it, many migrants embedded in a transnational social field now ‘shop for opportunities of work, income, and social advantages in different destination countries’ (1999: 241–242, my emphasis) – something scholars once envisioned to be the exclusive domain of receiving countries who ‘shop’ for incoming immigrants. Just as several Cape Verdean respondents in Andall’s study made the decision to migrate to Italy instead of Portugal because of lower wages in Portugal and a more negative social context of reception that has developed out of the colonial Portugal–Cape Verde relationship, many of my Latin American respondents have come to evaluate their opportunities and experiences in Ireland as better than those in the USA or Spain, despite the significant structural disadvantages they know they are witness to as non-EU immigrants in Ireland. Some even used such information to inform their initial migratory decisions, such as when Argentine respondent Mariela reported that she explicitly rejected ever going to the USA, and came to Ireland instead, because of ‘all this mess [the USA] made in Argentina’. Others have used it to pursue secondary migrations, such as when several Brazilian respondents spoke of friends in the USA who wanted to come to Ireland, where they might be able to ‘live legally’, or when several Colombian respondents reported leaving ‘horrible’ situations in Spain and France for Ireland instead.

In other words, even though Portes and Rumbaut’s (2006) ‘context of reception’ approach was not originally built with a transnational dimension in mind, building one in is highly constructive. In the present study, we cannot gain a full picture of the Irish ‘context of reception’ toward Latin American migrants solely by using a domestic lens internal to that society. Instead, we must also consider flows of information and judgments about other receiving country contexts as they manifest directly among Latin American migrants who have lived in several different countries before coming to Ireland, and also as they travel indirectly between Latin American migrants and friends and family members who are still located across a variety of national settings. Such flows of information, moving through transnational social fields, are an external factor that shapes these respondents’ relative evaluations of the national Irish context of reception.

But so too can other non-material ideas and culture ‘flow’ within transnational social fields (Levitt, forthcoming). Indeed, the present study suggests that established ideas about Latin(o) identity are now flowing outward from their geographic roots, in new and interesting ways. Respondents noted how derogatory US and Spanish racial categories have diffused into third-country contexts such as Ireland via globalized media sources and migrants’ own transnational social networks (see also Roth, 2009, who tracks a similar movement of racial categories from the USA into Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic). In these third-country contexts, however, such ideas might be accepted, reconfigured, or even ignored altogether as they ‘interface’ in new spaces with new populations of natives and migrants, who may or may not share a full understanding of their meanings, at least as they have developed in their original locations.

The results of these kinds of novel intersections may appear paradoxical. On one hand, most respondents in Ireland were acutely aware of how Latin American-origin people are treated and categorized in the USA, Spain, and Portugal – many of them reacting at length to the racialized terms developed in those countries that they sadly admit have now entered the Irish lexicon, albeit with different associations and less stigmatized meanings. Such linkages confirm that existing Latino Studies scholarship will continue to provide a basis for understanding how Latin Americans’ experiences in new destination countries might differ from, yet still remain fundamentally connected to, those of Latino groups in the USA and in the ex-colonial centers of Spain and Portugal. At the same time, the Irish case also demonstrates that Latin American migrants’ experiences of reception, incorporation, and identity formation may well be distinct – and likely much more positive – in third-country contexts such as Ireland, given that these countries lack the same (neo)colonial relationships with Latin America and its diaspora. This distinction begs Latino Studies scholarship to move outward immediately, should it want to incorporate new, more complex, and potentially more positive cases into its current theorizing on an increasingly global Latin(o) identity and experience.

Footnotes

Acknowledgements

Support for this article was provided by a European Network on Inequality Research Fellowship from the Multidisciplinary Program on Inequality and Social Policy at Harvard University, in collaboration with the Geary Institute at University College Dublin, and a grant from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation®. Thanks to Raffa Abarca, Cris Aguilera, Márcio Chaves, María-Alejandra González, Eduardo Juárez, LASC, Cal Lopes, and Liliana Morales for assistance in the field, and to Paul Allatson, Sofya Aptekar, Ming Chen, Rebecca King-O’Riain, Dorren McMahon, Cecilia Menjívar, Rick Smith, Cinzia Solari, Peggy Levitt, Zoua Vang, Aristide Zolberg, and several anonymous reviewers for insightful commentary.

Notes

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