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This article examines the racialized relationship between ideologies of language standardization and what I term “languagelessness.” Whereas ideologies of language standardization stigmatize particular linguistic practices understood to deviate from prescriptive norms, ideologies of languagelessness call into question linguistic competence–and, by extension, legitimate personhood–altogether. Throughout the article I show how these ideologies interact with one another, and how assessments of particular individuals' language use often invoke broader ideas about the (in)competence and (il)legitimacy of entire racialized groups. I focus specifically on dimensions of the racialized relationship between ideologies of language standardization and languagelessness in contemporary framings of U.S. Latinas/os and their linguistic practices. I draw on a range of evidence, including ethnographic data collected within a predominantly Latina/o U.S. high school, institutional policies, and scholarly conceptions of language. When analyzed collectively, these sources highlight the racialized ways that ideologies of language standardization and languagelessness become linked in theory, policy, and everyday interactions. In my examination of these data through the lens of racialization, I seek to theorize how ideologies of language standardization and languagelessness contribute to the enactment of forms of societal inclusion and exclusion in relation to different sociopolitical contexts, ethnoracial categories, and linguistic practices. Este artículo examina la relación racializada entre las ideologías de estandarización lingüística y lo que llamo “languagelessness.” Mientras que las ideologías de estandarización lingüística estigmatizan prácticas lingüísticas específicas consideradas como ajenas a normas preceptivas, las ideologías de languagelessness ponen en duda la competencia lingüística – y por extensión, la persona legítima – por completo. A lo largo del artículo, se muestra cómo estas ideologías interactúan entre sí, y cómo las evaluaciones de la práctica lingüística de ciertas personas proyectan a menudo ideas más generales sobre la (in)competencia y la (i)legitimad de grupos racializados. El artículo se focaliza en ciertas dimensiones de la relación racializada entre las ideologías de estandarización lingüística y de languagelessness en los marcos contemporáneos de l@s Latin@s y sus prácticas lingüísticas. Para esto, este trabajo se basa en un corpus que incluye datos etnográficos recogidos en un instituto estadounidense predominantemente Latin@, programas institucionales, y teorías académicas del lenguaje. Al analizarlos conjuntamente, estos datos resaltan la manera racializada en que las ideologías de estandarización lingüística y de languagelessness se relacionan con los ámbitos de la teoría, la política, y las interacciones diarias. Al examinar estos ejemplos mediante el concepto de la racialización, se pretende teorizar cómo las ideologías de estandarización lingüística y de languagelessness contribuyen a la reproducción de formas de inclusión y exclusión social en relación con distintos contextos sociopolíticos, categorías etnoraciales, y prácticas lingüísticas.

This study investigates Latina/o students’ experiences of racial microaggressions and how they cope with them through semi-structured and open-ended interviews with students attending a primarily White higher education institution in the Midwestern United States. Borrowing from Sue et al.’s (2007) categories of racial microaggressions and discussing their relationship to Bonilla-Silva’s (2014) color-blind racism, we illustrate the diverse ways in which Latina/o college students experience racial microaggressions and how these experiences varied by gender and skin color. Addressing a gap in the literature that examines Latina/o college students’ coping mechanisms, we develop a coping-mechanism typology consisting of external coping mechanisms (i.e., interest-based counterspaces and race-and ethnic-based counterspaces) and internal coping mechanisms (i.e., color-blind coping mechanism and racially cognizant coping mechanism) that may be useful for future research into how minority populations cope in a variety of settings as well as for higher education institutions that intend to increase educational attainment among Latinas/os.

Joseph Carens in his 2013 book Ethics of Immigration argues we should not criminalize undocumented migrants. Instead, we should view them as irregular immigrants who are entitled to some general human rights. This article focuses on Caren's discussion of criminalization in light of recent scholarship by John Marquez and Natalie Cisneros pertaining to the Latina/o border death toll, generalized violence, and discourses on undocumented pregnant migrante females as multiplying rats and anchor babies. This article argues that simply relying on a democratic state model to understand the realities of border militarization is not sufficient because it does not perform some of the explanatory functions performed by other non-ideal theories. By synthesizing the views of Cisneros and Marquez, this article distinguishs thick and thin senses of excessive border enforcement and outlines a notion of the racial/sexual state of expendability as a way of making better sense of these violent realities.

This participatory research project aimed to identify young people’s perceptions of the natural and built environment in their neighborhoods, including how social inequities shape those environments, and how their community and governments can improve them. The study took place with 25 young Latinas/os, ages 14 to 18, many of whom lived in a formerly unincorporated neighborhood (known as colonia) in Pharr, Texas, located in the state’s Rio Grande Valley region. Through a walkalong, photovoice, and focus groups, participants identified waste management as a resounding priority. Their reflections highlighted their motivations behind and actions toward addressing this problem. This study makes two empirical contributions to scholarly and applied discussions on young people’s outdoor experiences. First, young people’s prioritization of waste highlights the role that trash—often in the form of scattered objects, small and large—has in shaping young people’s outdoor experiences. Second, young people are committed to improving waste conditions through individual and group actions, and they identified needed structural changes. Pharr youths’ environmental commitments call for investment in waste management and set the stage for more generative ways of experiencing the natural environment.

This study asks the question, “How do diverse social spaces support or constrain the development of oppositional consciousness among DACAmented Latina/o youth?” Our analysis is based on 40 in-depth interviews with Latina/o youth and young adults living in Colorado who received a two-year reprieve from deportation and work authorization through the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program enacted in 2012. The findings indicate the development of three points along a continuum of oppositional consciousness, which we term latent, emergent, and manifest. The implications of this study reveal how social spaces inside and outside of schools in a non-traditional destination can support or constrain the oppositional consciousness of liminally legal DACA recipients.

Grounding the analysis in racial formation and identity formation theories, I analyzed how South American immigrants (Argentines, Colombians, and Peruvians) in Ohio contend with South American and US racial structures and racialization—or what I call Mexicanization—and how they view their racial and ethnic identities. Mexicanization is a specific racialization or homogenization based on Mexican and associated stereotypes applied through microaggressions and discrimination with the primarily white population. Through forty-three semi-structured in-person interviews, the respondents reveal they preferred an ethnic identity over racial identity, and most selected a panethnic identity. The findings indicate that this identity forms, in some cases, as a reaction and challenge to Mexicanization while also providing empowerment. Overall, identities emerge from a complex dialectic process that involves the US and the South American immigrants’ country of origin racial and ethnic ideologies, but mostly they emerge from interactions in local communities, where these immigrants formed affirming panethnic identities as they confronted Mexicanization.

This article focuses on the work and efforts put forth by the University of Houston’s Recovering the US Hispanic Literary Heritage program (Recovery) to create the first digital humanities center for US Latina/o Research: #usLdh. Recovery is a program to locate, preserve, and make available the written legacy of Latinas/os in the United States since colonial times until 1960. Through 27 years of successful work Recovery has not only been able to inscribe the excluded history of Latinas/os, but also has created an inclusive and vast digital repository that facilitates scholarship in this area of studies. This article focuses on the importance of recovery work in the writing, teaching, and understanding of history and considers how local personal archives have helped to fill in the gaps of mainstream history. We will detail the goals and challenges of this mission, as well as the importance of educating the community in digital methods that preserve and disseminate minority voices.

By 10 January 2017, activists in the predominately Latina/o working class city of La Puente, California had lobbied the council to declare the city a sanctuary supporting immigrants, people of color, Muslims, LGBTQ people, and people with disabilities. The same community members urged the school district to declare itself a sanctuary. While community members rejoiced in pushing elected officials to pass these inclusive resolutions, there were multiple roadblocks reducing the potential for more substantive change. Drawing on city council and school board meetings, resolutions and my own involvement in this sanctuary struggle, I focus on a continuum of three overlapping and interlocking manifestations of white supremacist heteronormative patriarchy: neoliberal diversity discourses, institutionalized policies, and a re-emergence of high-profiled white supremacist activities. Together, these dynamics minimized, contained and absorbed community activism and possibilities of change. They reinforced the status quo by maintaining limits on who belongs and sustaining intersecting hierarchies of race, immigration status, gender, and sexuality. This extended case adds to the scant scholarship on the current sanctuary struggles, including among immigration scholars. It also illustrates how the state co-opts and marginalizes movement language, ideas, and people, providing a cautionary tale about the forces that restrict more transformative change.

This article explores complexities of identity inhered in African Diasporic communities through an investigation of Spanish-speaking Afro-Latinas/os and Latinas/os of African descent in a predominantly Black middle school. Participant observation and interview data collected over 17 months revealed a school whose members represent peoples of diverse African descent. Among educators and students at the research site, Diasporic encounters reveal ideologies grounded in a lack of awareness and misconceptions about race, ethnicity, and nationality. Particularly for Afro-Latina/o students and educators, these ideologies influenced the creation of their own distinct racial and ethnic identities and subjectivities and informed how they understand and experience notions of Diaspora. The findings of this study suggest that fostering informed discussions about race, ethnicity, nationality, and Diaspora in schools would benefit both students and educators, particularly Afro-Latinas/os and Latinas/os of African descent. Such discussions would allow Diaspora to be used as a tool for learning about Diasporic complexities in ways that positively impact identity making and relationship building among and across students and faculty in increasingly diverse U.S. schools.

Utilizing a bricolage of interactionist cultural studies, ethnic foodways, and situational analysis this paper examines how Latino immigrants, representing six countries and multiple preimmigration class positions, come to perform Latinidad through the lay health practice of comiendo bien (eating well). Comiendo bien was examined through participant observation of 15 families living in San Francisco and 27 key informant interviews. Comiendo bien is a performance that exists through the convergence of multiple identity positions. Latina/o immigrants not only enact the Latinidad in the United States through artistic expression or political strategizing, but also by sharing an idealized practice of healthy eating.