In the early to mid-2006, millions of Latinos took to the streets to protest the passage of a restrictive immigration bill in the U.S. House, and to demand comprehensive immigration reform. Protest chants, signs, banners, and U.S. flags communicated an overarching theme: Latinos must not be ignored, because they have been, and will continue to be, proud Americans. In The New Americans? Heather Silber Mohamed offers a complex and comprehensive analysis of how immigrant rights’ protests like these should be seen as both cause and consequence, in theoretical explanations of Latino immigrant incorporation and identity formation.
Silber Mohamed develops an innovative and succinct “politics-to-identity” theory positing that social movement mobilization, frames and issue salience structure some Latinos’ sense of belonging and their political engagement. Given Latinos’ intragroup differences, the author relies on intersectionality research to help explain the complex ways in which categories of differences such as race/ethnicity and gender interact and explain Latinos’ immigration attitudes and predisposition to identify as American. In order to address the distinct experiences and statuses that Latinos have, Silber Mohamed develops two group categories. One group is the far-periphery which consists of those with a vulnerable status such as Spanish speakers, Salvadorans, and Latinas. On the other hand, those in the near-periphery have more power and consist of English speakers, Latino men, and individuals from Puerto Rico and Cuba. Based on these categories, the author theorizes that Latino groups who are most affected by the immigration policy debate (i.e., Mexicans, Dominicans and Salvadorans) are more likely to alter their immigration policy opinion and self-identification after the 2006 protests than those who are not very affected. Latinos who are more acculturated (i.e., English speakers or later-generation immigrants) are less likely to be influenced by the immigration debate and be less predisposed to be influenced by the 2006 protests than Latinos who are Spanish dominant and are part of earlier generations (26–27).
The author relies on a multitude of data sources and methods to address her research questions. In addition to drawing on a wealth of survey data (Latino National Survey, General Social Survey and the Pew Research Center's National Survey of Latinos), Silber Mohamed relies on interview data and the natural experiment of the 2006 immigrant rights marches.
The heart of the book analyzes Latino attitudes about immigration, what it means to be American and whether Latinos consider themselves American. Silber Mohamed finds robust support for her politics-to-identity theory. Relative to Latinos who were interviewed before the 2006 protests, Latinos interviewed after the protests expressed stronger support for liberal immigration policies and a desire to change to blend into the United States and were more likely to see themselves as American. Still, shifts in policy stances and self-identification after the protests do not affect Latinos equally. For instance, the shift in self-identification is most prevalent among far-periphery groups who are most vulnerable to shifts in immigration legislation (e.g., Spanish dominant Latinos, Mexicans, Dominicans). The author also reaches other notable conclusions. In politicized and nonpoliticized contexts, Mexicans, Dominicans, and Salvadorans support more liberal approaches to immigration reform than Puerto Ricans and Cubans. Latinas and Spanish-dominant Latinos also support less restrictive immigration policies. As to identity formation, Latinos in the far-periphery category are more likely to view American as an inaccessible category, associated with being white, being born in the United States and speaking English. Interestingly, after the 2006 protests, Latinos were less likely to emphasize these characteristics as essential to being American.
Silber Mohamed's book makes significant contributions to existing research in Latina/o politics. The author's uncommon approach of building on intersectionality research and examining Latino intragroup differences, with the creation of the far-periphery and near-periphery categories, provides a unique and much-needed contribution to our knowledge of Latinos’ political and identity formation. Further, the author's incorporation of research on social movements, issue salience and frames, to develop a comprehensive theoretical argument, fills considerable gaps in our understanding of Latina/o political participation and identity formation.
However, important questions about the link between immigrants’ experiences of anti-Latino, anti-immigrant discrimination on the one hand, and their identity and attitude formation on the other, were largely unexplored in the book. For example, to what extent do any experiences of discrimination affect Latinos’ predisposition to identify as American, their understanding of what it means to be American, and their attitudes regarding immigration policy? Previous research shows that discrimination affects identity development and Latino political behavior, and more specifically, some research (briefly acknowledged by the author) has found that experienced discrimination affects “identifying as American.”
As a whole, this book is an important and richly informative work. Not only does it address a timely and complex topic in an accessible manner while making significant theoretical contributions to the wider Latina/o politics literature, it also offers in-depth analysis of recent Latino immigrants’ identity formation and political engagement, identifying key opinions and attitudes which characterize this unique population in U.S. politics.
