Race and Filipina/o drug use: rethinking ethnicity among Filipina/o Americans through drug consumption, racial profiling, and the social construction of ethnicity

Abstract

This research uses 23 in-depth interviews of Filipina/o Americans seeking out treatment for drug use to understand the role of ethnicity as they experience drug use, recovery, and attempts to integrate back into society. Past literature has focused on the role of ethnicity as a buffer against drug use in host societies, with highly acculturated groups more prone to at-risk behavior. Such scholarship usually relies on static notions of ethnic culture. By contrast, using a social constructionist approach to ethnicity, I argue that meanings of ethnicity to the users go beyond homeland traditions and, in this case, reflect racialized police profiling of users in their neighborhoods and also their understanding of the methamphetamine epidemic in the Philippines. The interviewees affiliate their ethnic experiences with larger social conditions that point to neocolonialism in the homeland, racialization in the host society, and the war on drugs in both countries. This has implications for treatment programs that use culturally-appropriate services for addiction programs, so that providers complicate acculturation and assimilation models of ethnicity to understand social factors that affect the meaning of ethnic identity for Filipina/os.