CCAS 181B (Cross Listed)

Hispanic

DEFINE: A language-based panethnic category referring to the Spanish-speaking community; includes Spain but excludes Brazil.

Latino/a

DEFINE: A geography- and history-based category referring to people originating from Latin America; includes Portuguese-speaking Brazil but excludes Spain.

Latinx / Latine

DEFINE: Inclusive, gender-neutral terms challenging the implicit gender binary of Spanish; used primarily by youth and in academic spaces.

Chicano

DEFINE: A U.S. cultural and political identity specific to Mexican Americans, emerging during the late-1960s civil rights era to reject white assimilation and embrace Indigenous roots, anti-colonial resistance, and land rights. | CONNECT: Connects to Mora’s classification struggles and state co-optation: Chicano was grassroots radical agency, while agencies such as Nixon’s CCOSSP promoted the generic Hispanic label to defuse nationalist threats and aggregate groups for resources and marketing. | SOURCES: Week 1 Slides; Mora, Making Hispanics

Social Construct

DEFINE: A category given social and legal meaning through sociohistorical processes rather than biological facts; fluid across time and space (spatiotemporal).

Race vs. Ethnicity

DEFINE: Race is corporeal (social meanings assigned to physical traits such as skin color and hair texture); ethnicity is cultural (shared history, traditions, language, and customs).

Illegality as a Construct

DEFINE: Legal status is not inherent to a person; illegality is a state-manufactured status created through legal boundaries, quotas, and border enforcement. | CONNECT: Ngai’s Impossible Subjects: law and census data define national belonging; Mexicans were legally white under the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo but socially non-white, restricting agency. | SOURCES: Week 1 Slides; Ngai, Impossible Subjects; Week 5 Slides

Double Colonization

DEFINE: Two layers of imperial subjugation: (1) Spanish imperialism established a casta system privileging light skin and European whiteness; (2) U.S. imperialism imposed rigid racial hierarchy and spatial control following territorial conquest. | CONNECT: Central to racialization and migration prompts: Mexican Americans were incorporated through conquest in 1848; Puerto Ricans as colonial subjects after 1898 without full voting rights. | SOURCES: Week 1 Slides

Racialization in U.S. vs. Latin America (One-Drop Rule vs. Casta System)

DEFINE: U.S. one-drop rule: rigid racial binary classifying any non-white ancestry as non-white. Latin American casta system and fugitive semantics: flexible hierarchy of color, class, and ancestry, with terms such as moreno, blanquito, and indio.

Afro-Latinidad in the Caribbean and the U.S.

DEFINE: Black Latinos navigate anti-Blackness in Latin American home/host societies, where racial-democracy myths obscure racism, and in the U.S. racial hierarchy. | CONNECT: Duany’s Caribbean migration studies: double racialization within Latino communities through casta legacies and within the U.S. color line.

1924 Johnson-Reed Act and National Origins Quota System

DEFINE: Immigration law imposed national-origin quotas based on the 1890 census, favoring Northern/Western Europe, restricting Southern/Eastern Europe, and excluding Asians; Western Hemisphere nations including Mexico were exempt from numerical quotas due to agribusiness demand. | CONNECT: Ngai’s state-building and scientific racism: administrative restrictions (fees, literacy tests, inspections) constructed border policing and the illegal-alien category. | SOURCES: Impossible Subjects; Week 1 Slides

“Birds of Passage” and Agribusiness Labor Demand

DEFINE: Mexican migrants were framed as temporary workers who crossed for harvests, railroad work, or mining, then returned without permanent residency, family ties, or citizenship claims. | CONNECT: Agribusiness sought cheap, disposable labor without social costs (schools, healthcare, civic rights), sustaining deportability. | SOURCES: Impossible Subjects; Week 1

“Deportable Alien” vs. “Colonial Subject”

DEFINE: Deportable alien: border/immigration law makes migrants vulnerable to expulsion and loss of labor/civic rights. Colonial subject: imperial annexation made Puerto Ricans statutory U.S. citizens under the 1917 Jones Act while the island lacked presidential voting and full congressional representation. | CONNECT: Compare border policing of Mexican labor with Puerto Rico’s colonial legal ambiguity (“foreign in a domestic sense”). | SOURCES: Ngai, Chapter 1; Duany, Nation, Migration, Identity; Week 1 Slides

Settler Colonialism & Territorial Annexation (Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo vs. Insular Cases / Jones Act)

DEFINE: Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo (1848): U.S. gained Mexican territory; annexed Mexicans had citizenship rights on paper but suffered land/political dispossession. Insular Cases: territories deemed unincorporated; Jones Act (1917): statutory Puerto Rican citizenship without statehood/full protections. | CONNECT: Latino incorporation also resulted from conquest and annexation, not just voluntary migration; underpins double colonization and structural barriers. | SOURCES: Week 1 Slides (2026); CCAS M155B; Duany, Nation, Migration, Identity

El Vaivén & Transnationalism (“Nation on the Move”)

DEFINE: El vaivén: circular movement of Puerto Ricans between island and mainland enabled by 1917 citizenship and inexpensive flights. Transnationalism: sustained social, economic, cultural, and political ties across borders. | CONNECT: Duany’s nation on the move: national identity transcends territory; cultural nationalism flourishes even as political independence support declines. Contrast militarized border constraints on other migrants. | SOURCES: Duany, Nation, Migration, Identity; Week 3 Slides (2026); Midterm Study Guide (2026)

The Cuban Exile “Impossible Triangle” & Cold War Exceptionalism

DEFINE: Impossible Triangle: tense relationship among home regime, U.S. host government, and exile community. Cold War exceptionalism: early Cuban exiles received distinctive refugee protections and federal support, including the Cuban Adjustment Act and later wet-foot/dry-foot policy. | CONNECT: Compare early anti-communist Cuban exiles’ privileged entry with Central American refugees’ frequent asylum denials in the 1980s. | SOURCES: Pedraza, Impossible Triangle (2023); Midterm Study Guide (2026); Week 5 Slides (2026)

Temporary Protected Status (TPS) & Precarious Legal Statuses

DEFINE: Temporary humanitarian protection for designated countries experiencing conflict, disaster, or extraordinary conditions; authorizes work and protection from deportation but does not itself provide a direct path to permanent residency/citizenship. | CONNECT: Ngai’s state-manufactured vulnerability: liminal legality leaves Central American and Venezuelan communities without lasting security, constraining political and economic opportunities. | SOURCES: Pedraza, Impossible Triangle; Week 5 Slides (2026); Midterm Study Guide (2026)

State Co-optation & Institutionalization of Panethnicity (IMAA, CCOSSP, Census, & Media)

DEFINE: Top-down consolidation of Mexican American, Puerto Rican, and Cuban American groups into Hispanic/Latino: IMAA/CCOSSP promoted moderate Spanish-speaking identity; OMB Directive 15 and 1980 Census standardized Hispanic classification; Univision/SIN marketed a unified audience. | CONNECT: Mora’s Making Hispanics: panethnicity was an institutional compromise among government, activists, and media rather than an entirely organic identity; it muted some distinct nationalist claims. | SOURCES: Mora, Making Hispanics (Chapter 1); CCAS M155B; Midterm Study Guide (2026)

Structure vs. Agency in Latino Politics

DEFINE: Structure: institutional, legal, spatial, economic constraints such as gerrymandering, voter-ID rules, noncitizenship, disenfranchisement, segregation. Agency: organizing, resistance, mobilization, and civic self-determination. | CONNECT: Central course lens: Texas voting barriers constrain representation while grassroots registration and turnout campaigns contest them. | SOURCES: Week 1 Slides (2026); CCAS M155B; Midterm Study Guide (2026); Week 5 Slides (2026)

Deconstructing the Myth of the Monolithic “Latino Vote”

DEFINE: Latino voters are not ideologically uniform; choices vary by origin, region, generation, gender, religion, and socioeconomic class. | CONNECT: Garcia-Rios et al. (2024): material issue priorities (inflation, reproductive rights) help explain vote choice more than assumed panethnic unity. | SOURCES: Garcia-Rios et al. (2024); Week 5 Slides (2026); Midterm Study Guide (2026)

Spatial Politics, Gerrymandering, & Electoral Suppression (Texas vs. NY/MI)

DEFINE: Gerrymandering: district cracking/packing that dilutes minority votes. Voter suppression: restrictions such as fewer drop boxes, voter-roll purges, or strict polling rules that raise voting costs. | CONNECT: Compare Texas’s structural voting barriers, districting, and noncitizen population with distinct segregation/district patterns in New York and Michigan. | SOURCES: Week 1–3 Slides (2026); CCAS M155B

Gender Gap & Issue Prioritization in Recent Elections (2024 Case Study)

DEFINE: Divergence in political priorities and voting behavior between Latino men and Latinas. | CONNECT: Garcia-Rios et al. (2024): inflation, living costs, and border concerns helped move some working-class Latino men toward Trump; abortion and reproductive rights helped mobilize Latinas for Harris. | SOURCES: Garcia-Rios et al. (2024); Week 5 Slides (2026)

Mae M. Ngai – Impossible Subjects: Illegal Aliens and the Making of Modern America (Chapter 1)

• 1924 Johnson-Reed Act: 1890-census national-origins quotas privileged Northern/Western Europeans, excluded Asians, and codified racial hierarchy and state control over belonging. | • Western Hemisphere exemption: Mexico avoided numerical quotas due to labor demand, but fees, literacy tests, visas, and public-charge rules helped manufacture the criminalized “illegal alien.” | • Mexican labor racialization: Mexicans were legally white for naturalization (Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo; In re Rodriguez) but socially racialized as non-white, temporary, and deportable.

G. Cristina Mora – Making Hispanics: Classification and the Politics of Ambiguity (Chapter 1)

• State co-optation: Johnson/Nixon committees IMAA and CCOSSP reframed distinct Chicano and Puerto Rican demands as moderate Spanish-speaking panethnicity. | • Categorical ambiguity: broad shared cultural language let activists pursue grants, census officials standardize data (OMB Directive 15), and media sell a national market. | • State–activist–media triad: government, organizations such as NCLR, and networks such as Univision jointly institutionalized and popularized Hispanic identity around the 1980 Census.

Jorge Duany – Nation, Migration, Identity: The Case of Puerto Ricans

• La nación en vaivén: circular island–mainland movement makes Puerto Rican identity deterritorialized, a translocal “nation on the move.” | • Cultural vs. political nationalism: independence support declined while identity persisted through language and symbols such as jíbaro, casitas, and Paseo Boricua. | • Citizenship ambiguity: 1917 Jones Act citizenship and Insular Cases enabled movement but left Puerto Rico “foreign in a domestic sense,” without island presidential voting rights.

Jorge Duany – Racializing Ethnicity in the Spanish-Speaking Caribbean

• Common racialization: anti-Haitian Dominican and anti-Dominican Puerto Rican prejudices mark dark-skinned migrants as Black foreign outsiders blamed for social problems. | • Externalizing Blackness: national myths of whiteness/light mestizaje or mulataje project Blackness onto immigrants while obscuring local African heritage. | • Fugitive semantics: fluid labels (moreno, indio, trigueño) often collapse into White/Black binaries for lower-class migrants, reinforcing labor and housing exclusion.

Silvia Pedraza – The Impossible Triangle: Cubans and Venezuelans in the U.S.

• Impossible Triangle: tensions among home regime, U.S. host government, and exiles complicate diplomacy and exile political goals. | • Old vs. new Cubans: early Cold War intransigentes were often anti-communist, pro-embargo, GOP-aligned; later arrivals emphasized family, travel, remittances, and survival. | • Political incorporation/voto castigo: naturalization and South Florida concentration enabled electoral power; perceived betrayals (Bay of Pigs, Elián González) drove punitive voting.

Sergio I. Garcia-Rios et al. (2024) – The 2024 Presidential Election Through Latino Lenses: Priorities and Vote Choice

• No monolithic Latino vote: preferences differ across gender, education, class, and issue priorities. | • Economic concerns: inflation and cost of living helped push some non-college-educated Latino men toward Trump. | • Latina gender gap: reproductive rights after Roe’s reversal helped mobilize support for Harris alongside broader economic and border concerns.

Gary Orfield & Jongyeon Ee (2014) – Segregating California’s Future (UCLA Civil Rights Project)

• Double/triple segregation: Latino students in California experience severe combined racial, poverty, and language isolation decades after Brown v. Board. | • Policy retreat: despite Jackson v. Pasadena, voter initiatives and later federal court rollbacks weakened desegregation mandates and integration policy. | • Education disparities: concentrated poverty and racial isolation correlate with lower API scores/graduation rates and less experienced staff and fewer resources.