ColombianX American@ Studies: Generating New Questions and Answers

The Colombian ministry of external affairs has stimulated a dialogue among scholars based in Colombia about Colombian migration worldwide. Colombian scholars in the US represent a different set of voices in this conversation... [ view full abstract ]

The Colombian ministry of external affairs has stimulated a dialogue among scholars based in Colombia about Colombian migration worldwide. Colombian scholars in the US represent a different set of voices in this conversation and represent an emergent generation that is asking a different set of questions motivated by their ethno-racial, gendered and cultural experiences as part of a marginalized U.S. Latinx group. Offering the term “ColombianX American@s” as a starting point of intellectual promiscuity, what does this undisciplined Latinx Studies framework contribute to a scholarly conversation on ColombianX and Latinx experiences in the U.S.? How does ColombianX American@ studies offer a generative site for new ways of thinking about Latinx experiences, social movements, and a site of criticism for (trans)national studies?

In addressing this broader question this roundtable will discuss the following:
• ColombianXs comprise the largest South American-origin population in the United States, and Colombian capital is shaping inter-Latinx dynamics in many urban and suburban spaces. Yet what are the limits of a demographic argument for understanding U.S. Latinx populations? What is intellectually generative and useful to consider about Latinx experiences that is not about the numbers of Latinxs arriving or present in the U.S., but about the layers of historical processes that shape Latinx experiences across social differences?
• What does it mean to be an "other" Latinx migration? How does being a "minority within a minority" inflect the experiences of ColombianX American@s? How do ColombianX immigrants relate to and occupy the category of the ‘other’ Latinx im/migrant? How does time of arrival, place of settlement, and cultural and economic capital shape the ways that ColombianX immigrants imagine themselves as a Latinx minority?
• How do presumptions about ColombianXs as a white/light, middle-class diaspora shape the reception of this scholarship and views on the ColombianXs? How does this shape whiteness in the U.S.?
• How can we attend to the experiences of poor, working-class, racialized ColombianXs in the United States? Given ColombianXs' absence from the organizational and institutional developments that grew out of the Latinx nationalist movements, which methods and sources should we utilize to reveal the varied experiences of ColombianXs across the U.S.?
• How does the legacy of scholarship on other Latinx groups impact contemporary understandings of ColombianXs in the U.S.? How might other Latinx and non-Latinx experiences inform our understanding of ColombianX American@ communities in the U.S. and beyond?
• What do ColombianX experiences offer in mobilizing solidarites of Latinxs in cross-racial alliances and cross-national configurations? What role do gender and sexuality play in our understanding of ColombianXs?
• What are the challenges of doing this work from different geographic institutional locations? What relationship does ColombianX American@ studies have to the work done by academics writing from Colombia?
• How does the intense regional fragmentation within Colombia impact the study of ColombianX racialization, gender, and sexuality?
• How does considering historical ColombianX presences in emblematically Latinx cultural productions reshape the reception of Latinx Studies and ColombianX American@ Studies?