In Ireland ‘Latin Americans are kind of cool’: Evaluating a national context of reception with a transnational lens

Abstract

In this article, I analyze how government policies and social reception shaped Latin Americans’ patterns of incorporation and identity formation in Ireland, a new immigrant destination country in Europe where Latin American migrants lack both historical presence and (neo)colonial linkages, in the early 2000s. I show that Latin Americans in Ireland perceived a weaker form of racialization, not only than several other immigrant, refugee and racial groups there, but also than Latin Americans going to the USA, Spain, and (for Brazilians) Portugal. I then argue that these results illustrate how many Latin American migrants are now embedded within a transnational social field that connects flows of people and ideas across several different receiving countries – both traditional and new – which in turn shapes their relative evaluations of individual national receiving ‘contexts of reception’. I conclude by examining the implications of these results for immigration and Latino Studies scholarship.