The Politics of Everyday Life: Mexican Hoosiers and Ethnic Belonging at the Crossroads of America

Abstract

As state‐based legislative measures continue to target undocumented immigrants in an all too familiar politics of belonging, the narratives of immigrants themselves remain marginalized. The following argues for the recuperation of voices elided by popular discourse and provides a space to explore the manifestations of belonging for Mexican residents. This type of belonging, what I am terming ethnic belonging, reconciles U.S. nationalism with ethnic solidarity and transnational networks. Ethnic belonging specifically refers to the uncoordinated ways individuals articulate an ethnic sense of belonging that can later impact community activism. I suggest that personal interaction in the workplace, in the classroom, and even at sporting events lay the foundational consciousness of ethnic belonging that critique dominant narratives of exclusion. Importantly, this project highlights the experiences of Mexicans in a small Midwestern town; thus, illustrating how collective resistance through ethnic belonging is critical for contemporary immigrants who settle in “new,” and perhaps unwelcoming, communities.

“You don’t look Puerto Rican”: Collective memory and community in Orlando

“…On her return to Orlando, she began to speak only Spanish to her mother and became outspokenly angry when people told her, “You don’t look Puerto Rican.” The Vélez children returned to Sanford from Puerto Rico missing the daily interaction with a close network of friends and family there. Others took Anglo friends to Puerto Rico, a practice that incorporated their Puerto Rican pasts into their Orlando present and asserted their “right to be different and to belong” (Vega, 2012: 198, citing Rosaldo, 1994).…”

Globalization and Race: Structures of Inequality, New Sovereignties, and Citizenship in a Neoliberal Era

“…In addition, knowledge about the "Other" was understood first through conceptualizations of the "tribe," whereas "ethnicity" was viewed as a way to index kinship (Cohen 1978(Cohen , 1989Fox 2011;Mudimbe 1997Mudimbe , 2010 and to think through particular practices involving the power to name in relation to cartographies of space (Eriksen 2004, Worby 1994. For some, ethnicity provided a newly conceptualized category to make sense of the way that colonial adumbrations complicated existing status hierarchies and produced new racial and ethnic hierarchies, thereby contributing to contemporary social problems (Mamdani 2001, Shaw 1995 or to boundary-maintenance practices among a range of communities (Barth 1998, Carnelli & Eriksen 1998, Eriksen 2010, Striffler 2007, including immigrant communities conscientious of their succession location (Brubaker 2004, Chavez 1991, Vega 2012, Williams 1989, Yuval-Davis et al 2005. From colonial to postcolonial governments, ethnicity has been seen both as an instrument of state politics and a mechanism for social mobility and opportunism (Comaroff & Comaroff 2009).…”

If Anyone Hears This: Confronting Discourses of Immigration in South Mississippi

“…While we pay attention to those who organize large‐scale public actions such as marches or unions (e.g., Baker‐Cristales ; Griffith ; Hayduk ), we are less likely to focus on those who wage this fight in quieter, more quotidian ways at a local level (c.f. Vega ; Quesada ). In this paper, I examine the efforts of some Latin American immigrants living in South Mississippi to speak back during times of wide‐spread rejection and social invisibilization.…”