Our panel, “Latina/o and Constructions of “American” Identity in the 21st Century,” employs an interdisciplinary lens to examine the myriad ways in which “American”-ness is defined and understood by Latina/o... [ view full abstract ]
Our panel, “Latina/o and Constructions of “American” Identity in the 21st Century,” employs an interdisciplinary lens to examine the myriad ways in which “American”-ness is defined and understood by Latina/o communities in the U.S. today including Salvadoran-Americans, undocumented Latina/o youth, and immigrants in the media. Consequently, our panel examines questions of how “American” identity is constituted and taken up by various groups, in particular, Salvadoran-Americans and undocumented immigrant youth. Moreover, we question how the media portrays and frames immigrants, regardless of legal status, as racialized Others and subsequently un-American will work to frame the reception of these two sub-groups of Latina/os today.
Ester Truijllo, a Ph.D. Candidate in the Department of Chicana/o Studies at UC Santa Barbara, in her paper “Americanness and U.S. Salvadoran Ethnic Labeling Practices,” uses qualitative data from 30 interviews to explore how U.S.-born Salvadorans make sense of their U.S. citizenship. Salvadoran-Americans are the first U.S.-born cohort of their recent immigrant population and thus assert their “Americanness” in relation to their generational proximity to El Salvador emphasizing their ability to travel with a passport, their U.S. electoral participation, and the relative material opportunity they have in contrast to members of their often mixed-legal-status households.
Kevin Escudero, a Presidential Postdoctoral Fellow at Brown University, will present his paper, “Obama Escucha, Estamos en La Lucha: Undocumented Immigrant Political Subjectivity,” which examines the use of civil disobedience as a social movement strategy. Utilizing a lens of Latina/o Studies, performance theory, and law, the paper reads these acts of civil disobediences as strategic performances on the part of undocumented activists to shift the discourse of belonging and membership in the U.S. nation state. Through actions such as the Dream 9, when undocumented youth left the U.S. and traveled to Mexico presenting themselves at the Nogales port of entry along the U.S.-Mexico border, undocumented community members are demonstrating the ability of those at the fringes of the nation to demand inclusion and re-define "American" identity on their own terms.
Finally, Yalidy Matos also a Presidential Postdoctoral Fellow at Brown University, will present a paper entitled, “Us v. Them: Media Constructions of American-ness,” where she examines how the media (newspapers) frame immigrants as un-American. Through content analysis, Matos examines two national level newspapers (NYT & WSJ) and three state-level newspapers (Arizona Republic, Birmingham News, and Rutland Herald) and makes an argument about the binary ways in which the media frames all immigrants as racialized Others and as un-American and the political consequence and costs for all immigrants, regardless of legal status.
Our panel therefore tells a story about the larger hegemonic discourse of American-ness, specifically how some groups take part in this discourse, how other groups fight against it and redefine it, but how elite rhetoric continues to label all immigrants especially Latina/os, as un-American regardless of their legal status.
