TY - JOUR
T1 - Mexican American Identity
T2 - Regional Differentiation in New Mexico
AU - Salgado, Casandra D.
N1 - Funding Information:
I would like to thank Phillip (Felipe) B. Gonzales, whose invaluable feedback assisted in moving this article forward. I am grateful to Vilma Ortiz, Laura E. Gómez, Karina Chavarria, Andrew N. Le, Celia Lacayo, members of the Race and Immigration Research Group at UCLA, and the editors and anonymous reviewers for their insightful comments. A special thank-you to the research participants who generously shared their stories. This research was funded by UCLA’s Institute of American Cultures and UCLA’s Chicana/o Studies Research Center.
Publisher Copyright:
© American Sociological Association 2018.
PY - 2020/4
Y1 - 2020/4
N2 - Existing research inadequately addresses the variation in Mexican Americans’ patterns of ethnic identification. Drawing on 78 interviews, I address this question by exploring how conceptions of ancestry and nationality shape ethnic identification among New Mexico’s long-standing Mexican American population, Nuevomexicanos. I find that Nuevomexicanos emphasized their ties to Spanish heritage within the history of New Mexico to explain their ethnicity and to construct their identity in opposition to Mexican immigrants. Although Nuevomexicanos varied in their claims to Mexican ancestry, they generally prioritized their roots in the original Spanish settlement of New Mexico to emphasize distinctions in ancestry, nationality, and regionality from Mexican immigrants. Moreover, despite Nuevomexicanos’ persistent claims to Spanish ancestry, they did not perceive themselves as racially White. Instead, Spanish ancestry was integral to Nuevomexicano identity because it enabled them to highlight their regional ties to New Mexico and long-time American identities. Thus, I argue that Nuevomexicanos’ enduring claims to Spanish ancestry represent a defensive strategy to enact dissociation from stigmatized Mexican immigrants. Overall, these findings show that Mexican Americans’ dissociation strategies are contingent on how they define themselves as members of an ethnic and national community. These findings also indicate that “Mexican American” as an identity term is a loosely maintained membership category among “Mexican Americans” because of their intragroup heterogeneity.
AB - Existing research inadequately addresses the variation in Mexican Americans’ patterns of ethnic identification. Drawing on 78 interviews, I address this question by exploring how conceptions of ancestry and nationality shape ethnic identification among New Mexico’s long-standing Mexican American population, Nuevomexicanos. I find that Nuevomexicanos emphasized their ties to Spanish heritage within the history of New Mexico to explain their ethnicity and to construct their identity in opposition to Mexican immigrants. Although Nuevomexicanos varied in their claims to Mexican ancestry, they generally prioritized their roots in the original Spanish settlement of New Mexico to emphasize distinctions in ancestry, nationality, and regionality from Mexican immigrants. Moreover, despite Nuevomexicanos’ persistent claims to Spanish ancestry, they did not perceive themselves as racially White. Instead, Spanish ancestry was integral to Nuevomexicano identity because it enabled them to highlight their regional ties to New Mexico and long-time American identities. Thus, I argue that Nuevomexicanos’ enduring claims to Spanish ancestry represent a defensive strategy to enact dissociation from stigmatized Mexican immigrants. Overall, these findings show that Mexican Americans’ dissociation strategies are contingent on how they define themselves as members of an ethnic and national community. These findings also indicate that “Mexican American” as an identity term is a loosely maintained membership category among “Mexican Americans” because of their intragroup heterogeneity.
KW - heterogeneity
KW - Hispanics
KW - identity
KW - Mexican Americans
KW - New Mexico
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85077896750&partnerID=8YFLogxK
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/citedby.url?scp=85077896750&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1177/2332649218795193
DO - 10.1177/2332649218795193
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85077896750
SN - 2332-6492
VL - 6
SP - 179
EP - 194
JO - Sociology of Race and Ethnicity
JF - Sociology of Race and Ethnicity
IS - 2
ER -