Racial Baggage
Mexican Immigrants and Race Across the Border

Sylvia Zamora (Author)

9781503632240

Paperback / softback, published 26 July 2022

248 pages, 2 figures, 3 halftones
21.6 x 14 x 1.5 cm, 0.666 kg

"During the Mexican Revolution, nationalizing elites forged ideas about the Mexican character, which included the mistaken notions that racism or Black people did not exist in their country. Mexican immigration has since become the largest, longest, and arguably the most marginalized in U.S. history. Through rich interviews, Sylvia Zamora uncovers how immigration and changes in both societies transform immigrant ideas about race and racism."—Edward Telles, author of Pigmentocracies "Racial Baggage demonstrates how racial ideologies travel across the U.S.-Mexico border. This excellent and highly original book challenges many assumptions about how migrants develop racial awareness and offers a compelling transnational framework that represents a critical intervention in the field."—Julie A. Dowling, author of Mexican Americans and the Question of Race "Zamora has produced an important new contribution to the fields of sociology, history, immigration studies, ethnic/minority studies, and political science. Those interested in better understanding the historical and ideological forces shaping immigration and race will want to readRacial Baggage. Highly recommended."—M. G. Urbina, CHOICE "Drawing on a rich set of interview data with 75 non-migrants, return migrants, and immigrants in the United States, Zamora forcefully advances race relations, identity formation and meaning making, and transnational migration social science literature while also shedding new light on how the US–Mexico border operates as a race-making site."—Stephanie L. Canizales, Social Forces "Ideas about race and the attitudes and practices they elicit vary greatly between the United States and Mexico. But what happens with the large-scale migration and fluid mobility of people between both countries? With Racial Baggage, Sylvia Zamora makes a valuable contribution to understand the dynamic ideas and practices regarding race across the border. It is not only that migrants discover themselves as racialized in the eyes of those already living in the United States of America, but also that their experiences North of the border inform anew their relations back in Mexico."—Raúl Acosta, Ethnic and Racial Studies "A central lesson we learn from Zamora is to pay close attention to pre-migration experiences when making sense of how the nation's racialized boundaries are reproduced.... Racial Baggage offers important accounts about how Mexican nationals on both sides of the U.S.-Mexico border craft, share, and enact racialized ideas and scripts. Scholars documenting transnational ties and the exclusionary boundaries of American whiteness will find familiar and generative themes in these accounts."—Juan Manuel Pedroza, Contemporary Sociology

Upon arrival to the United States, Mexican immigrants are racialized as simultaneously non-White and "illegal." This racialization process complicates notions of race that they bring with them, as the "pigmentocracy" of Mexican society, in which their skin color may have afforded them more privileges within their home country, collides with the American racial system. Racial Baggage examines how immigration reconfigures U.S. race relations, illuminating how the immigration experience can transform understandings of race in home and host countries.

Introduction: Immigration and Racial Transformation in America
1. Race in Mexico: Mestizo Privilege
2. Racial Border Crossings
3. First Encounters with Race in El Norte
4. Settling In: Illegality and the U.S. Color Line
Conclusion: From Mestizo to Minority