Latina/o formations in the United States: Laboring classes,migration,and identities

Abstract

Introduction

The neat separation that shows on the political map ignores bulges, breaks, pressures and displacements of rootless fugitives from want. They have produced a mass of workers crowded into potholes of poverty second to none, in numbers and deprivation, in the Western hemisphere.

Ernesto Galarza (1978)¹

The last four decades have marked an epochal socio-economic transformation in the nature of US society. Nowhere is this more obvious than the precipitous growth of US-born Latino and Mexican/Latino immigrant populations. According to the US census, the previous decade (2000–2010) alone accounted for a 43% increase, with the majority residing in states like California, Illinois, Florida, and New York. However, more recently, new Latino (primarily of Mexican origin) destinations include Georgia, Kentucky, South Carolina, North Carolina, Arkansas, and Tennessee. These states are experiencing growth rates exceeding that of the larger Latino Metropolitan areas, where growth exceeds 300%. And a 2014 PEW Hispanic Research² report on Puerto Rican migration showed that the population there is declining dramatically, primarily due to the financial instability of the island (Cohn et al., 2014). Latino population is now estimated to be nearly 54 million and with the dubious distinction of being the largest ethnic minority in the United States. More significant than sheer numbers is the fact that Latinos and Latinas are a significant and growing sector of the working and “lower middle classes.” This clearly signals that Latinos have become more than an electoral voting bloc, emerging as strategic actors in major processes of democratic social transformation.

In step with these demographic changes, the number of Latinos is projected to triple in size, in the next three decades. By 2050, Latinos are projected to become 29% of the US population. Among the 30 million young people, ages 18 to 24, living in the United States today, 6 million (20%) are Latino youth. By the sheer force of numbers, the kinds of adults that Latino students become will dramatically shape the future history of this country, as the former white majority becomes a minority population, at least in terms of number. For, as would be expected, this “new minority” population will still control the lion’s share of the nation’s wealth, power, and privilege, which is likely to result in new waves of political mobilization in the coming years. In fact, the current struggle that persists in Arizona may well be a bell-weather for the potential backlash that is bound to ensue in others parts of the nation, as the White Anglo-Saxon Protestant population no longer enjoys the political security associated with their past majority status.

The current wave of immigrants from Latin America (predominantly from Mexico) is entering a society that is vastly different from that entered by their predecessors. There is little doubt that economic restructuring since the 1970s has transformed the social and economic landscape. The incorporation of Latino immigrants into the US economy and class location of Latino immigrants and US-born Latinos and Mexican Americans of several generations are closely intertwined, with the very forces that are causing the ongoing economic restructuring and reshaping of once-familiar global, national, regional, and local landscapes. For over four decades, these socio-economic changes have contributed to increasing wealth and income inequality and growing class divide. From neoclassical to Marxist informed economists, theorists have documented the growing inequality. Most recently, in Capital in the 21st Century, Thomas Piketty, a liberal economic historian, demonstrated that inequality is, in fact, an intrinsic feature of capitalism.

Cities like Los Angeles, San Francisco, Chicago, New York, and Atlanta have used resources to strategically paint themselves as being rich mosaics made up of multinational cultures and identities where opportunity for upward mobility is abundant. But just below this thin veneer of carefully constructed reality is a grittier truth that is based on an economy that serves as an economic trap for Latino poor and working classes. Over the past four decades, Latinos in the United States have emerged as strategic actors in this process of socioeconomic transformation. This so-called Latinization of the United States comes at a time of increasing social polarization and class inequalities. These forces assert themselves economically, demographically, culturally, and politically in the workplaces and in Latino everyday life.

It is against this backdrop and intense national debate about the looming specter of the “browning of America,” that Chicano/Latino Studies scholars are working to theorize the impact of demographic changes. The subject of Latinos as a growing diaspora has also gained considerable attention in both discussions of identity policy circles and theoretical discussions. Recent projections by the Pew Hispanic Center show that 82% of the future Latino population increase will be due to immigrants from Latin America and their US-born descendants. This fact alone should prompt us to acknowledge that the survival and well-being of Latinos in the United States is also hugely linked to the well-being of workers in the Caribbean, Mexico, and Latin America. For the difficult economic conditions and the political ramifications that many Latino workers must contend with in their countries of origin—historically prompted by US economic policies and targeted investments in those regions (i.e. in agriculture and construction, for example)—have served as a historical catalyst of Latino migration to the United States, which in turn has played a significant role in social processes of individual and community identity formation.

The US economy continues to generate unprecedented wealth for its elite investor class. Unfortunately little of this wealth is reaching Latino working families and as a result those in most need go without health insurance, decent housing, quality education, or a decent living wage. One of the most striking features of the growing significance of inequality is how little most of us know or care about it. Inequality matters, and tackling its persistence and social ramifications is a matter of local, regional, and national importance. This is so, in that it reflects itself in changing patterns of migration and the labor market that impact social and material conditions tied, for example, to job opportunities, schooling, housing, as well as shifts in how identities are shaped, propagate, engaged, and appropriated within communities and the larger society.

Similarly, projected changes in the structure of employment at the major occupational group levels have deep implications for the study of social inequality of Latinos in the United States. First, it suggests that the problem of poverty increasingly concerns the working poor rather than primarily people largely marginalized from the system of employment altogether. It follows that poverty cannot be eliminated unless we prevent people from falling into a low-wage poverty trap. This is not to say that the link of poverty from the labor force has disappeared, but rather that an increasing proportion of poor Latinos are working fulltime in jobs that pay poverty-level wages. Second, the very slow rate of growth of jobs in the lower-middle range of job quality suggests that it is likely to become increasingly difficult for people working in the very worst jobs to move up in the employment structure. Most upward job mobility will be toward jobs that are only modestly better than the jobs already held. This is significant in that almost 27% of all Latinos today reside in poverty, while these rates are over 30% higher for Latino immigrants (Lopez and Cohn, 2011).

Efforts to critically examine the persistence of poverty and underachievement in Latino population then point to a powerful contradiction. On one hand, most educational institution are market-driven and tend to reproduce, often without intent, racialized class relations of power. This dynamic is perpetuated through recalcitrant and commonsensical structures of schooling and mainstream values of assimilation that, overtly or covertly, work to undermine the cultural identities and lived experiences that Latino students bring to the classroom. As such, Latinos are expected to not only embrace dominant cultural and class values in the formation identities, but to also accept victim-blaming notions, which often place responsibility for inequalities squarely back on the shoulders of impoverished communities.

There is no question that education is widely upheld within the larger society as the great promise of upward social mobility, along with the many privileges this bestows upon individuals. Education is then promulgated as the determining vehicle for both social and material success. In concert with the myth of the American Dream, long held as the national ethos, the hidden curriculum of the US political economy encompasses a set of ideals that bolster a meritocratic system, which claims to guarantee opportunities for prosperity and success. From this vantage point, upward mobility can readily be achieved by all, through exhibiting individual hard work, personal perseverance, and a competitive spirit. In the process, education is lauded as the greatest panacea of the democratic process in action, where all can be educated and hence, economically successful, if only they are willing to persevere and excel in prescribed academic standards. In the process, not only does this view justify and shroud existing inequalities, but it establishes the superior “merit” of the people at the top, as the main criterion for achieving success. Meanwhile, blame for poverty and its consequences—whether these be poor health, educational failure, substandard housing, or unemployment—are assigned to Latinos themselves, by inferring that they do not possess, genetically or otherwise, enough drive to avail themselves of the opportunities so freely offered.

What is at work is an ideology of schooling and the labor market that obscures the structural origin of the difficult conditions faced by Latino communities, as well as obstructs access to more effective solutions that would invite a more critical approach to the problem and a genuine commitment to transforming the structures of exclusion that predominate across societal institutions. Social mobility rhetoric laced in bootstrap values of rugged individualism and “race to the top” perseverance belies the fact that poverty trumps social mobility. Recent studies conclude that it is not only more difficult for poor Americans to rise up from the lower economic rungs, but that US social mobility is actually lower than that of Canada and Western Europe (DeParle, 2012). A 2013 study by the Brookings Institution concluded that “inequality is rising against a background of low social mobility;” that “there is a growing gap between families at the top and the bottom of income distribution, raising concerns about the ability of today’s disadvantaged to work their way up the economic ladder; and, therefore, “upward social mobility is limited in the United States” (Greenstone et al., 2013).

Critical scholars considering the conditions of Latino populations must move beyond simplistic notions of “social mobility” that have proven inadequate, in that such notions fail to contend with the conditions inequality and social exclusion that produce economic apartheid, racism, and social alienation in the lives of Latino populations. From the standpoint of a serious historical analysis, it is glaringly obvious that widespread restructuring cannot possibly be accomplished without genuine dialogue and participatory efforts for social and economic reform, grounded in what it means to exist within a genuinely democratic society. And it would do well for theorists to take a more grounded and substantive approach to Latino questions, by both entering into larger Latino educational and workforce debates and supporting community efforts to improve the quality of life of Latino populations.

To seriously tackle poverty in Latino communities today requires more than just getting poor people into jobs; it requires changing the quality of the jobs available to them. It requires challenging the conventional wisdom of market driven policies. The current employment and so-called anti-poverty policies are based on misperceptions of the problems and misguided analysis of their sources. Mainstream neo-classical economists continue to burst with confidence about the explanatory powers of market driven solutions. The starting point for most traditional economic analysis is the classic supply and-demand framework—competitive markets. In this model, market forces are independent of institutional constraints and low wages are the result of individual choices about job training or education that would improve the social and material status of Latinos. Thus, the cause of low wages and low occupational status is a result of non-optimal decision-making practices by individuals, rather than state policies that have effectively eroded the welfare state.

In direct contrast, we argue that poverty is everyone’s problem. And while solutions may be maddeningly elusive, the United States ignores poverty at its peril. Today, over 47 million people in the United States are living in poverty and this rate is now higher than it was in 1970. In the Latino community, the child poverty rate is 35%; and the total number of Latino children living in poverty is higher than any other minority ethnic group in the United States (Lopez and Velasco, 2011). According to the 2010 census, the median wealth of white households is 18 times that of Latino households. The lopsided wealth ratios that exist today are the largest ever seen, since the government began publishing such data a quarter century ago (Domhoff, 2012).

More than one out of ten Latinos is jobless. When stacked up against white unemployment, the contrast is jarring. The joblessness amongst Latino youth is even worse. One in five young Latinos is unemployed. In certain cities across the United States, nearly 50% of all youth of color cannot find jobs. Chicago, for example, is one of those cities with one of the highest metropolitan youth unemployment rates in the country. Of course, the overall joblessness is compounded by the historic loss of wealth in Latino communities, due to the recession in 2007. The unprecedented loss of homes and property fueled by the foreclosure crisis has sent black and brown net worth to an all time low. The lack of jobs and other financial resources is making it that much harder for these communities to recover. Economist predict that it will take at least a full generation before Latino and black communities regain what was lost in this last decade. And although the number of Latinos receiving a college degree (9%) has risen (Fry and Lopez, 2012), not only does the number of degrees conferred on Latinos still trail most other ethnic groups in the nation, there is also an increasing joblessness rate reported even among college graduates. So, despite reported increases in high school and college graduation rates, Latino youth are still experiencing conditions of persistent inequality in a worsening economic climate.

The process of racialization also works against the individual and collective interests of Latino communities. Often we hear that the hiring of Latina and Latino workers remains low because employers cannot find workers with the education and skills required. Yet, never have there been so many Latinos and Latinas in the United States with college degrees. Moreover, a look at the overall national data from the last five years also counters this racializing view, given that it points to massive job shortages at all levels of education (Bivens et al., 2013). While workers with higher levels of education face substantially lower unemployment rates, they too have seen a large percentage increase in unemployment, with rates today that are close to twice as high as they were in 2007. These numbers, of course, are even higher for workers of color at every income level.

Purpose of this special issue

The study of labor, migration, and Latino identities must occur within the context of the particular role that Latinos, a racialized group, have played in the US economic system. As William Robinson (1993) noted:

Much sociological writing on Latinos groups has focused on demographic phenomena, language, culture, and other descriptive or ascriptive traits. Other studies have stressed emerging ethnic consciousness, pan-Latino political action and other subjective factors as causal explanations in minority group formation. These factors are all significant. However, in my view, there are broad, historic “structural linkages” among the distinct groups that constitute the material basis and provide the underlying causal explanation for Latino minority group formation. In other words, cultural and political determinations are relevant, but subsidiary, in that they only become “operationalized” through structural determinants rooted in the U.S. political economy and in an historic process of capital accumulation into which Latinos share a distinct mode of incorporation. (pp. 29–30)

Thus, to fully understand the changing nature of Latino formations, it is important to see it, in part, as the result of inherent structural features of macroeconomic forces and trends. Tackling the problem(s) of poverty with its structural inequalities of class and power require the marshaling of new social formations and movements with a consciously articulated democratic agenda to make poverty history.

With this in mind, it is time to consider some radical and democratic alternatives and think hard about what works and what does not. The urgency of the problem requires that these questions be critically addressed, directly and openly. Undoubtedly, public policies and practices that emerge from such a critical vision would come at an enormous cost and substantial risk to the status quo—but it would carry real potential for substantive gains to economic and democratic reforms in establishing the conditions for economic justice and emancipatory possibilities for Latinos communities in the United States.

Through a variety of theoretical and conceptual approaches, the contributors to this special issue offer a contemporary analysis on questions of Latino formation and inequalities, given the different histories and experiences of incorporation of Latinos into the social and material context of US life. More specifically, Rendon examines the urban context of Mexican American male ethnic identity formation. Her in-depth interviews reveal the process of racialization among second-generation Chicanos and draws attention to how the urban condition influences the acculturation processes in urban neighborhoods. Osuna’s timely and important study interrogates the “tension” and “solidarity” between Salvadoran and Mexican working class communities in Los Angeles. Osuna skillfully offers a critical political and economic historical framework to better explain this interplay of tension and solidarity. Olivos and Sandoval present a case study that examines the incorporation of Guatemalan immigrants into the political economy of a small town in Iowa. Particular attention is paid to questions of class and consciousness, power relations, and the radicalized dynamics of the workplace.

Ibarra and Carlos argue that the current socio-economic condition of Mexicans and Mexican Americans cannot be understood apart from historical impacts that the US capitalist economy has had on this population. They build on Marxist-informed and other radical scholarship to develop what they call an Empire Theory of Migration (ETM) to examine how labor migration is linked to unequal economic policy between Mexico and the United States. United States imperial practices are implicated in this relationship. McConnell’s article explores the significance of legal status in levels of asset accumulation and wealth. Data from the Los Angeles Family Neighborhood Survey is used to demonstrate that unauthorized immigrants are the most disadvantaged among the four Latino groups. Kyriakides and Torres offer a geopolitical analysis of the changing patterns of transatlantic racialized relations, state surveillance, and the politics of Mexican migration to the United States. They demonstrate how analysis of state intervention at the United States–Mexico border can usefully draw on comparative method between racialized groups and racialized states. Here, the phenomenon is compared with the surveillance of “Muslims” and UK border control. The special issue ends with Gilbert G. Gonzalez’s review essay of three books that engage contemporary Latino politics and immigration within the Arizona context—State out of the Union: Arizona and the Final Showdown Over the American Dream, by Jeff Biggers; Latino Politics and Arizona’s Immigration Law SB 1970 edited by Lisa Magana and Erik Lee; and Alto Arizona! Veto SB 1070: Arizona Firestorm, Global Immigration Realities, National Media and Provincial Politics, Edited by Otto Santa Ana and Celeste Gonzalez de Bustamante.

This special issue offers diverse theoretical interpretations to current conditions within Latino communities. An effort is made to raise important questions related to laboring classes, migration, citizenship, housing, identities, and political participation in a changing political and economic landscape. Accordingly, the articles provide a place where varying scholarly ideas in the field move to better inform future conversations about the future of Latinos in the United States.

Footnotes

Notes

References

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