“Looking Mexican”: Indigenous and non-Indigenous Latina/o Immigrants and the Racialization of Illegality in the Midwest

Abstract

Immigration laws, judiciary hearings, and enforcement strategies produce the racialization of illegality, linking “illegality” to homogenized and stereotypical images of “Mexican,” “Hispanic,” and “Latina/o” origin. Immigration scholars have shown the transgressions produced by the racialization of illegality on Latina/o immigrants and non-immigrants who fit these stereotypes. How do Latina/o immigrants of different ethnic origins navigate the racialization of illegality? What strategies do they employ to manage risks associated with illegality? Through 61 interviews with Indigenous-origin and non-Indigenous Latina/o immigrants in Kansas between 2016 to 2019, this study examines the salience of race and the active role that the body plays within Latina/o immigrants’ experiences with the immigration regime. I find that immigrants actively employ the body as a resource to navigate illegality, particularly in a context where Latina/os make up a smaller share of a white-majority population. The racialization of illegality brings social divisions within Latina/o groups, reproducing centuries-old systems of oppression where whiteness is equated with protections given to citizens, while “looking Mexican” or “Hispanic” leaves Indigenous-origin immigrants and non-white Latina/os at the hands of immigration control. This research contributes to scholars’ call to further explore the role of race and the body in immigration processes.

The Development and Evaluation of the Stigma of Illegality and Marginalization of Latinxs (Siml) Scale

“…However, since undocumented immigrants live, work, and pray with others of their own ethnicity who hold permanent status or U.S. citizenship, the impact of today's legal regime have ripple effects beyond the presumed target population of undocumented. Such effects reach a variety of groups who are perceived to phenotypically 'look' or be Latinx (Del Real 2019;Gómez Cervantes 2019;Menjívar 2021;Menjívar et al, 2018). Race and illegality thus have become increasingly conflated, particularly for Latinxs (Armenta and Vega, 2017;Provine et al, 2016).…”

“…Tanya Golash-Boza and Pierette Hondagneu-Sotelo (2013) observe that, "between 1993 and 2011… there was a ten-fold increase in the number of Mexican deportees, and a twelve-fold increase in the number of Central American deportees" (p. 274). However, these figures do not match the proportion of Latinxs in the undocumented population-a burgeoning body of research has demonstrated that Latinxs are disproportionately the targets of lopsided enforcement strategies that underscore the racialization embedded within such schemes (Armenta and Vega 2017;Bosworth et al, 2018;Gómez Cervantes 2019;Menjívar, 2021;Provine et al, 2016). Enforcement practices today, therefore, evince an increasing reliance on legal status as a proxy for race (García 2017;Herrera 2016;Kibria et al, 2013) where the term illegality is not race-neutral; it has become closely associated with being Latinx (Armenta and Vega, 2017;Chavez 2013;Massey n.d.;Menjívar, 2021).…”

Legal Violence, Health, and Access to Care: Latina Immigrants in Rural and Urban Kansas

“…Immigration laws constitute legal violence (Menjívar and Abrego 2012) when they contain legislation that generates social suffering and harm for immigrants, deny them access to alleviate their predicament, and create conditions for immigrants to exploit one another. Such laws interact with existing racial hierarchies that differentially impact immigrant groups by race and other social markers (Gómez Cervantes 2019). Immigration law and public health policies have severely restricted public benefits for immigrants across legal statuses, especially for Latinas/os given that they are immigration enforcement’s primary target today (Abrego et al 2017).…”

Aging and undocumented: The sociology of aging meets immigration status

“…Socioeconomic resources such as wealth need to be understood with historic discrimination, racialization, and racism in mind. Racialization of undocumented immigrants creates distinct experiences as accounts of indigenous undocumented Latinx and non‐indigenous Latinx individuals (Gómez Cervantes, 2019) as higher rates of deportations among Black men (Golash‐Boza, 2015a) show. Thus, the wealth and socioeconomic profiles of immigrants in different immigration status may hinge on their multiple social identities and experiences of racial discrimination in the United States.…”

“…Undocumented older‐aged individuals cannot easily move across borders. Whether undocumented immigrants are indigenous or not and racialized as such may also constrain their healthcare access options because of fear of being identified as undocumented; this may place some undocumented immigrants in circumstances where other coethnic networks leverage their power over them by asking for large amounts of money to drive them to get medicine if individuals cannot obtain a driver's license (Cervantes & Menjívar, 2020; Gómez Cervantes, 2019). Systems of racism and being racialized matter for health outcomes (Torres, 2020), but relatively less of this literature has focused specifically on older‐age immigrants' experiences.…”