Latinos and Environmental Justice: Examining the Link between Degenerative Policy,Political Representation,and Environmental Policy Implementation

The theory of social construction and policy design is insightful for exploring the circumstances in which the allocation of policy benefits and burdens is attributed to the feed‐forward effect of degenerative policy that institutionalizes bias and reinforces the prevailing categorization and embedded social meaning regarding target populations. However, this theoretical framework has not been broadly adopted to analyze the environment‐related phenomena. With a nationwide, block‐group‐level sample, this study examines the extent to which degenerative policies pertaining to immigrants influence state agencies' environmental regulatory outputs for predominantly Latino communities. Results show that in the states with moderately to most restrictive immigrant policy and high levels of Latino representation in legislatures, the rigorousness of government agencies' compliance monitoring activities decreases for Latino neighborhoods of environmental justice concern, as states' policy stance toward immigrants becomes more unfavorable. More Latino elected officials do not bolster policy implementation efforts for the vulnerable communities or offset the backlash effect of immigrant policy.     

Rethinking the homonormative? Lesbian and Hispanic Pride events and the uneven geographies of commoditized identities

Scant academic attention has been paid to intersectional LGBT events. Miami Beach is home to a women’s circuit party called Aqua Girl and a Hispanic LGBT Pride called Celebrate Orgullo. This behind-the-scenes study on their planning challenges the invisibility of intersectional LGBTs as consumers and demonstrates that they can be targeted as a profitable niche market. I utilize the homonormativity critique as a framing. It describes the commercialization and mainstreaming of LGBT populations as potentially oppressive and normative. However, I challenge the a-spatial essentialisms that characterize the literature. For example, the naming of gay white men and gentrified gayborhoods as the homonormative subject/spaces/places ignores how others can make use of homonormativity elsewhere. For instance, the entrepreneurial, tourism-centered government of Miami Beach targeted both lesbians and Hispanic LGBTs for these events. The success and sponsorship of these events is due not only to the popularity of Miami Beach with tourists, and the large local Hispanic population, but also the scarcity of similar events elsewhere. These events have homonormative aspects but defy reductive labeling or accusation. Therefore, it is important to consider the relationality of local manifestations of homonormativity while avoiding the essentialism or dismissals of de facto ‘homonormative subjects, spaces, or events’.     

Latinos in the USA: Changing socio-economic patterns

This paper aims to provide an overview of socio-economic inequality experienced by Latinas and Latinos, suggesting that the increase in numbers and their dispersal throughout the country disrupts the traditional black–white paradigm used in race relations theory. Instead, I argue that the particular historical and geographical experiences of Latinas/os portend complex changes within labour markets and neighbourhoods and across families, ultimately challenging how we think about race relations in the USA.     

The migration response to the Legal Arizona Workers Act

The 2008 Legal Arizona Workers Act (LAWA) requires all public and private employers to authenticate the legal status of their workers using the federal employment verification system known as E-Verify. With LAWA, Arizona became the first state to have a universal mandate for employment verification. While LAWA targets unauthorized workers, most of whom are Latino immigrants, other groups could experience LAWA's effects, such as those who share households with undocumented workers. In addition, employers may seek to minimize their risk of LAWA penalties by not hiring those who appear to them as more likely to be unauthorized, such as naturalized Latino immigrants and US-born Latinos. Existing research has found a reduction in foreign-born Latino employment and population in response to LAWA. This paper asks a different question: have groups that are most likely to be affected by the law migrated to other states? We find a significant and sustained increase in the internal outmigration rate from Arizona of foreign-born, noncitizen Latinos – the group most likely to include the unauthorized – after the passage of LAWA. There was no significant LAWA internal migration response by foreign-born Latino citizens. US-born Latinos showed some signs of a LAWA-induced internal migration response after the law went into effect, but it is not sustained. The results indicate that local and state immigration policy can alter the settlement geography of the foreign born. This leads us to speculate about how immigrant settlement may adjust in the coming years to the intersecting geographies of post-recession economic opportunity and tiered immigration policies.     

美国墨西哥移民的人口效应评析

作为一个移民国家,多样化的种族/民族构成一直是美国人口结构的一个显著特征,外来移民始终是改变美国人口结构和布局的一个重要因素。近几十年以来,墨西哥裔人成为美国人口增长最快的族群之一,这部分人口主要由两种成分组成:出生于美国的墨西哥裔人和来自墨西哥的移民。作为拉美裔群体中最大的组成部分,墨西哥裔占全部拉美裔人口2/3左右;目前,墨西哥移民在美国全部外来人口中所占份额最大,达到30%;墨裔人在美国总人口中的比重逐年上升。墨裔人口不断膨胀源于其较高的生育率和移民的持续增加。墨西哥移民增加了美国的外国出生人口的数量;改变了美国人口的种族/民族构成,给美国带来了空前的族群异质性;人口多元化还影响到种族/民族关系。     

美国华人和其他主要亚裔族群的跨国政治活动调查

根据2000—2001年全美亚裔政治态度试点调查的原始数据,通过拉美裔跨国政治活动与亚裔的比较,从美国亚裔政治上能否被同化,政治活动能否跨国界、哪些亚裔参与跨国政治、亚裔的政治跨国主义和政治同化关系等方面,对美国亚裔跨国政治活动的形成、特点及其相互关系进行实证分析。结论是,亚裔在许多方面与拉美裔等其他移民群体有相似的特点;反对亚裔“不可同化论”;亚裔保持跨国联系不会对他们在美国的文化、政治同化产生负面影响;那些移民前积极参政、在美国积极参与族裔社区组织活动、积极参与和亚裔事务有关政治活动的亚裔,参与跨国政治的比例较高。     

Latino political participation in the Texas Panhandle, 1980–2010

Since the institution of the Bracero Program in 1942, Latinos (mostly Mexicans) journeyed to the United States in search of temporary manual labor. This economically driven migration continued after the termination of the Bracero Program in 1964 as Latinos from Mexico and South Texas searched for employment opportunities. The Latino population in the Texas Panhandle grew from 173,000 in 1980 to 340,000 in 2010. This new Latino population settled in counties that were predominantly Anglo and replaced some of the departing Anglos who looked for better jobs, mainly in the Dallas–Fort Worth Metroplex. This substantial shift in the ethnic composition of the region’s population resulted in a restructuring of the labor market and notable imprints to the cultural landscape. Over the years, Latinos have slowly begun to participate in city and county politics. This quantitative study investigated the impact of Latino migration and population increase on Latino political participation in the Texas Panhandle.