I don't know! I don't know! Should I be Considered Latina? How Spanish and Non-Spanish speakers with Caribbean and Latin American Ancestry Relate to Latinx Identity
In this thesis, I analyze how Spanish and non-Spanish speaking individuals with Latin American and Caribbean ancestry relate to Latinx identity based on their upbringings, self-identification, adaptation experiences, and language acquisition patterns. I draw on field site observations of meetings and events held by both the Tufts University Association of Latin American Students and the Caribbean ... read moreStudents Organization in the fall of 2019, as well as 15 semi-structured interviews with immigrants and first-generation Tufts affiliates (faculty, students, and alumni) from Haiti, Belize, Brazil, and Spanish speaking Latin American countries. I demonstrate that participants were largely confused about the internal and external boundaries around Latinx identity. Subsequently, I show that participants largely viewed the Spanish language as the main signifier and symbol of being a part of the Latinx community in the U.S. Brazilian participants considered themselves to be Latinx. However, other participants did not consider themselves to be Latinx even though they all feel some connection to it as an identity and a group. Instead, my participants strongly identified with their respective ethnocultural identifiers (i.e. Haitian, Belizean Kriol, Garifuna). Finally, I conclude by examining the implications of these results for existing literature on Latinx identity. I advocate for incorporation of more non-Spanish speaking populations from other parts of Latin American into future studies of Latinx identity, in order to query its complexity and nuance more thoroughly.