Migration and Ethno-Racial Identity: Interpartnering of Latin American Immigrants in Mexico

Immigrant Positioning in Twentieth-Century Mexico: Middle Easterners, Foreign Citizens, and Multiculturalism

This article examines the effect of perceived ethnoracial identity on electoral politics in the Dominican Republic and provides an explanation for the low salience of race and ethnicity in political behavior in Latin America. I argue that, under certain conditions, individuals will deal with ethnoracial discrimination and stratification through exit rather than voice—that is, they will reclassify their way out of marginalized ethno-racial categories instead of voting for candidates or parties that share their ethnoracial identities. This tends to be the case where ethnoracial group identity is inchoate and group boundaries are permeable. I also argue that where ethnoracial group loyalties are weak and immigration is widespread, citizens may emphasize national origin over race or ethnicity. Findings from an original field experiment and survey in Santo Domingo show that candidates did not consistently support candidates that shared their ethno-racial attributes, but they did slightly favor candidates perceived as white. Respondents strongly discriminated against candidates of Haitian origin.

This paper analyzes patterns of code switching found in a small group of first and second generation Catalan immigrants in Mexico, and is part of a wider study on the impact of exile upon the construction of identity in the discourse of political immigrants in Latin America. With regard to the pragmatic exploitation of code switching, it argues that code switching is used by bilinguals even when a monolingual alternative is available, either because changing languages at a specific point in conversation reduces the processing effort involved in interpreting the stretch of discourse where the switch occurs, or because the shift of code adds cognitive effects to the overall interpretation of the message. The paper focuses on the effects of ad hoc concept construction, — a well studied phenomenon in monolingual discourse — on the presentation of self in bilingual discourse, analyzing cases when the pragmatically derived ad hoc concept involves a switch of codes. It is argued that this mechanism helps subjects represent themselves in bilingual conversation as distinct both from Mexicans and from non expatriate Catalans.

BackgroundMinority stress from racism and heterosexism may uniquely interact to impact the mental health of racialized sexual minorities. We examined variations in anxiety and depressive symptoms by reported by ethno-racial identity among gay, bisexual, and other men who have sex with men (gbMSM) in Vancouver, Canada.MethodsWe recruited gbMSM aged ≥ 16 years from February 2012 to February 2015 using respondent-driven sampling (RDS). Participants completed computer assisted self-interviews (CASI) at enrollment and every 6 months until February 2017. We examined factors associated with moderate/severe anxiety and depression scores (> 10) on the Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale (HADS) and differences in key explanatory variables including sociodemographic, psychosocial, and substance use factors. We used multivariable mixed effects models to assess whether moderate/severe scores were associated with ethno-racial identity across all visits.ResultsAfter RDS-adjustment, of 774 participants, 79.9% of participants identified as gay. 68.6% identified as white, 9.2% as Asian, 9.8% as Indigenous, 7.3% as Latin American, and 5.1% as other ethno-racial identities. Participants contributed a median of 6 follow-up visits (Q1-Q3: 4–7). In the multivariable analysis, Asian participants had decreased odds of moderate/severe anxiety scores compared to white participants (aOR = 0.39; 95% CI: 0.18–0.86), and Latin American participants had decreased odds of moderate/severe depression scores compared to both white (aOR = 0.17; 95% CI: 0.08–0.36) and Asian (aOR = 0.07; 95% CI: 0.02–0.20) participants.ConclusionAsian and Latino gbMSM reported decreased mental health symptoms compared to white participants. Asian and Latino gbMSM in Vancouver appear to manage multiple minority stressors without adversely affecting their mental health.

This paper describes the impact that the different COVID-19 related restrictions have had on the mental health and wellbeing of 57 Central American and Caribbean immigrants stranded in Mexico due to the pandemic. Ethnographic data was obtained through the application of in-depth interviews centered on topics such as migration history, personal experience with COVID-19 and beliefs about the pandemic. This information was further analyzed through a narrative approach and Atlas Ti. US Title 42 and the Migrant Protection Protocols (MPP) have stranded thousands of individuals in the US-Mexico border region, a situation that has overcrowded the available shelters in the area and forced many of the immigrants to live on the streets and in improvised encampments. Thus, exposing them to a higher risk of contagion. Furthermore, the majority of the interviewed Central American and Caribbean immigrants consider that Mexico is more lenient when it comes to the enforcement of sanitary measures, especially when compared to their countries of origin. Finally, vaccination hesitancy was low among the interviewees, mainly due to the operative aspects of the vaccination effort in Mexico and the fear of ruining their chances to attain asylum in the US. These findings are backed up by the discovery of five recurring narratives among the interviewees regarding: (1) The pandemic's psychological impact. (2) The uncertainty of being stranded in Mexico and the long wait. (3) Their fear of violence over the fear of contagion. (4) The perceived leniency of Mexico with the pandemic when compared to their countries of origin, and (5) their beliefs about the pandemic and vaccines. The mental health of stranded Central American and Caribbean immigrants in Mexico during the COVID-19 pandemic is mostly affected by their inability to make it across the US-Mexico border using legal means.

Economic Integration of Afro–Latin American Immigrants in Mexico

This introductory chapter provides an overview of the book's main themes. This book presents a study of Colombian popular music, ethnoracial identity, gender, and the transnational U.S.-Colombian community. It argues that that Colombian popular music provides a common space for imagining and enacting Colombian identity outside traditional national borders and in ways not overtly shaped by the scandal and shame of the drug-trafficking trade and violence with which contemporary Colombia is primarily associated. It examines issues of gender, ethnoracial identity, and transnational migration in the work of the Colombian recording artists such as Shakira, Andrea Echeverri (of the group Aterciopelados), and Carlos Vives. It also engages the current debates in American, Latin American, and U.S. Ethnic Studies regarding the academic location and institutional politics of transnational research.

This doctoral thesis project is carried out with the support of the Observatorio de lo Contenidos Audiovisuales (OCA) and the doctoral program of Education in the Knowledge Society of the University of Salamanca. This project seeks to analyze messages published in the social network of Twitter, to identify the origin of hate speech against Central American migrants in Mexico according to the three spheres of the agenda building (Media, Politics and Public) to determine where it starts and which of the three has more influence on the propagation of this discourse. In order to carry out this research, the Twitter API will be used to download the messages posted on the social network, and automated feelings analysis tools based on supervised automatic machine learning will be used for this, the feelings analysis tool will be used on this thesis is AutoCop, which was developed by members of the OCA and used for investigations that handle large scale data.

This chapter contributes to the academic debate on the migration-transformation nexus by linking social and political changes with Central American immigrants’ and refugees’ political participation in Mexico. The aim of this research is, on the one hand, to make their political agency visible by presenting different types of political participation. On the other hand, the author seeks to analyze the factors that lead to their decision to be politically active or not. Accordingly, a qualitative and inductive case study with 34 self-conducted semi-structured interviews was carried out. The data show how immigrants and refugees with and without Mexican citizenship mainly used unconventional forms of political participation to promote change in Mexican society and politics. Even though Mexico’s political structure is relatively closed for non-Mexicans, the interviewed Central Americans find ways to become politically active, as observed through protest marches, painting, or dancing. Four factors are decisive to understand their political activism: social identity, perceived injustice, politicization, and perceived personal and political efficacy. Additionally, the research reveals that the legal immigration status, (in)security, social embedding, and temporal and monetary constraints need to be considered in the Mexican context.

Central American immigrants in Mexico are particularly vulnerable and often invisible in the Mexican agenda of human rights. Each year, tens of thousands of men, women and children enter Mexico without legal permission as irregular migrants. More than nine out of ten are from Central America, especially from the countries of Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador. This paper presents an analysis of the current situation of Central American migration in Mexico and the historical evolution of migration policy, as well as a study on the violation of human rights of Central American migrants in Mexico as past and current policy, and actions that have been generated and should be taken to ensure their protection.

PURPOSELimited information is available on multiple myeloma (MM), chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL), and non-Hodgkin lymphoma (NHL) management in Latin America. The primary objective of the Hemato-Oncology Latin America (HOLA) study was to describe patient characteristics and treatment patterns of Latin American patients with MM, CLL, and NHL.METHODSThis study was a multicenter, retrospective, medical chart review of patients with MM, CLL, and NHL in Latin America identified between January 1, 2006, and December 31, 2015. Included were adults with at least 1 year of follow-up (except in cases of death within 1 year of diagnosis) treated at 30 oncology hospitals (Argentina, 5; Brazil, 9; Chile, 1; Colombia, 5; Mexico, 6; Panama/Guatemala, 4).RESULTSOf 5,140 patients, 2,967 (57.7%) had NHL, 1,518 (29.5%) MM, and 655 (12.7%) CLL. Median follow-up was 2.2 years for MM, 3.0 years for CLL, and 2.2 years for NHL, and approximately 26% died during the study observation period. Most patients had at least one comorbidity at diagnosis. The most frequent induction regimen was thalidomide-based chemotherapy for MM and chlorambucil with or without prednisone for CLL. Most patients with NHL had diffuse large B-cell lymphoma (DLBCL; 49.1%) or follicular lymphoma (FL; 19.5%). The majority of patients with DLBCL or FL received rituximab plus cyclophosphamide, doxorubicin, vincristine, and prednisone.CONCLUSIONThe HOLA study generated an unprecedented level of high-quality, real-world evidence on characteristics and treatment patterns of patients with hematologic malignancies. Regional disparities in patient characteristics may reflect differences in ethnoracial identity and level of access to care. These data provide needed real-world evidence to understand the disease landscape in Latin America and may be used to inform clinical and health policy decision making.

In the first decade of the twenty-first century, the political landscape of Latin America began to shift away from what many would characterize as the dark days of neoliberalism. Scholarship on the relationship between neoliberalism and multiculturalism, which not long ago seemed to be going in circles,1 has finally pushed some of us to consider that Latin America has begun to move beyond neoliberalism into an era we might call—for lack of a better term—“post-neoliberalism.” As prima facie evidence of this, at the end of the first decade of the twenty-first century countries across Latin America have elected left-leaning presidents on platforms opposed to neoliberalism, and popular leaders are calling upon their followers to “fight for the people” more than at any time since mid-twentieth-century populism.KeywordsIdentity PoliticsLand ReformRural WorkerLand GrantConstitutional ProvisionThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.

During the last decades, political distrust has seemingly become a common trend across Latin American democracies, however, differences in the levels of confidence among groups have also been identified. This article considers the potential effects of ethno-racial structures and their interactions with other forms of socioeconomic inequalities on political trust. Building on data from four waves of the Latinobarometer project and contextual measures from different sources, we analyze these relations and find that both socioeconomic and ethno-racial inequalities affect political trust and impact on the formation of different relations with the political system across Latin America. Furthermore, in particular it is found that at the individual-level interactions between inequalities shape political trust differently depending on the particular ethno-racial identification. These findings contribute to the understanding of ethnicity and race and its associations with other structural inequalities in shaping mass political culture.

Past research suggests that ethnoracialized groups differ in their willingness to engage in preclinical Alzheimer's disease (AD) research overall. Studies indicated that participation willingness was affected by attitudes toward research and perceived invasiveness of biomarker collection techniques. However, comparative quantitative studies are few, and minoritized groups are under-included. In a cross-sectional online survey, we sought to explore community-based adults' willingness to engage in preclinical AD biomarker testing, comparing their attitudes about research and different types of biomarker procedures. We conducted an online survey with a diverse group of participants. African American (AA), American Indian/Alaska Native (AI/AN), Latinx (LTX), and Non-Hispanic White (NHW) adults aged 26-90 were asked about their research attitudes, biomarkers, and willingness to participate in specific biomarker test procedures (i.e., brain imaging via PET scanning, blood draws, and cerebrospinal fluid collection by lumbar puncture). We also assessed participants' perceived safety, burden, and distress for each of the three biomarker collection methods. To understand the association between research willingness and ethnoracial identity, we ran linear regression models for each procedure, adjusting for age, gender, educational attainment, and attitudes toward research. The AA group expressed greater willingness to engage in biomarker testing involving blood draws than the NHW group. The AI/AN group was significantly less willing to undergo lumbar puncture than the NHW group; this difference remained after adjusting for various sociodemographic factors and research attitudes. Respondents' willingness to engage in preclinical AD biomarker research was affected by their perceptions about the testing collection procedure.

Chagas' disease is caused by infection with the protozoan agent Trypanosoma cruzi. An estimated sixteen to eighteen million people are infected in Latin America. Outside of endemic regions, Chagas' disease may be transmitted through the transfusion of infected blood components, congenital infection and organ transplantation. We sought to determine the sero-prevalence of antibodies to T. cruzi in a community sample of Latin American refugees and immigrants to Canada. This was a sero-prevalence study in Latin American refugees and immigrants living in Canada. Eligible subjects were born in South America, Central America or in Mexico. Participants were recruited from a variety of community settings, as well as from medical clinics. Serum was tested by enzyme-linked immunoassay for antibodies to T. cruzi. A total of 102 participants were enrolled. One sample tested positive for antibodies for T. cruzi. The seroprevalence in our sample was 1.0% (95% CI: 0.2%- 5.3%). We found a low sero-prevalence of Chagas' disease in a community sample of Latin American immigrants and refugees. Physicians who treat Latin American immigrants should consider the risk profile and clinical status of the individual in their decision to screen for Chagas' disease.