DEBATES: GLOBAL LATIN(O) AMERICANOS

Global Latin(o) Americanos: Transoceanic Diasporas and Regional Migrations by Mark Overmyer-Velázquez | University of Connecticut | [email protected] and Enrique Sepúlveda | University of Saint Joseph, Connecticut | [email protected]

Human mobility is a defining characteristic By the end of the first decade of the Our use of the term “Global Latin(o) of our world today. Migrants make up one twenty-first century the contribution of Americanos” places people of Latin billion of the globe’s seven billion people— Latin America and the Caribbean to American and Caribbean origin in with approximately 214 million international migration amounted to over comparative, transnational, and global international migrants and 740 million 32 million people, or 15 percent of the perspectives with particular emphasis on internal migrants. Historic flows from the world’s international migrants. Although migrants moving to and living in non-U.S. Global South to the North have been met most have headed north of the Rio Grande destinations.5 Like its stem words, Global in equal volume by South-to-South or Rio Bravo and Miami, in the past Latin(o) Americanos is an ambiguous term movement.1 Migration directly impacts and decade Latin American and Caribbean with no specific national, ethnic, or racial shapes the lives of individuals, migrants have traveled to new signification. Yet by combining the terms communities, businesses, and local and destinations—both within the hemisphere Latina/o (traditionally, people of Latin national economies, creating systems of and to countries in Europe and Asia—at American and Caribbean origin in the socioeconomic interdependence. In greater rates than to the United States.3 United States) and Latin American in a particular, migrant remittances make a bilingual fusion we aim to disrupt national fundamental contribution to many The diversity of these origins and conventions and underscore the processual, developing countries’ GDPs.2 destinations has not received balanced dynamic, and transborder nature of treatment.4 Studies of U.S.-bound migration. The hybrid term also signals the Latin America and the Caribbean have long migration have dominated the literature, importance of bringing together different been important regions of global migration reinforcing the sense of dependence, transnational case studies of Latin and have recently transformed themselves domination, and attraction exercised by the American migrants in a comparative from their origins as locations of United States over the whole region. analysis. In stark contrast with other host immigration to ones of emigration. After Although significant research has been countries, Latinos in the United States are four and a half centuries of immigration to conducted examining the flow of predominantly of Mexican origin and Latin America and the Caribbean, starting transoceanic market capital, the growing highly vulnerable to criminalization and with the arrival of Europeans, Africans, and globalization of Latin American migration deportation.6 As the sociologist Douglas Asians to the Americas throughout the to non-U.S. destinations requires a Massey points out in the forthcoming colonial period, the flow of migrants comprehensive overview. Emerging from volume, “this contrast alone cautions changed direction. In the decades following our forthcoming volume, Global Latin(o) against generalizing about Latino identity World War II, economic growth and Americanos: Transoceanic Diasporas and and Latino integration from the experience liberalized immigration policies in Europe Regional Migrations (Oxford University of the United States.” Placing this Forum’s and Asia and demographic expansion and Press), the articles in this edition of the case studies into conversation with one repressive regimes in Latin America and the LASA Forum help to shift the analytical another allows for a deeper and more Caribbean contributed to a period of lens away from U.S.-dominant nuanced understanding of Latin American intensified migration. Internal migration interpretations and document and examine migrations. developed from rural to urban areas and the growing flow between and within especially to the capitals and metropolises destinations in the Global South and across While most members of the Latin American of Latin America. In the 1970s migration the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans. By diaspora in the region identify themselves flows started between countries in the demonstrating the ways in which people in by their national affiliation (e.g., Peruvian, region and from those countries to the the Global South participate in and Haitian, Guatemalan), Latin Americans United States and Canada. Further negotiate globalization, these articles foster living outside Latin America refer to impacted by increasingly muscular U.S. a decentered, hemispheric, and transoceanic additional identifiers depending on the state security and border militarization approach that enriches and broadens our particular local context. There are self- following September 11, 2001, emigration theoretical conversations and substantive proclaimed “Latinas/os” in Canada, Israel, flows back to Europe and Asia began knowledge about Latin American and Spain, and elsewhere. The Japanese toward the end of the twentieth century. Caribbean migration. government calls Brazilian immigrants of Japanese descent living in Japan nikkeijin. The existence of Latinas/os in the non-U.S.-

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based Latin American diaspora challenges (North) American locus and Latin America, Notes the assertion by Marcelo Suárez-Orozco and Caribbean studies beyond the 1 For a review of current scholarship on global and Mariela Páez that “the very term hemisphere, integrating and decentering migrant flows see Però and Solomos (2011). Latino has meaning only in reference to the traditional ethnic and area studies 2 U.S. experience. Outside the United States, approaches. “International remittance flows through official channels to developing countries in we don’t speak of Latinos; we speak of 2012 reached approximately USD 401 billion, Mexicans, Cubans, Puerto Ricans, and so The selections in this issue of the Forum three times the amount of total aid flows from forth. Latinos are made in the USA” address and reframe a central problem of OECD donors in 2011” (IOM 2015). See also (Suárez-Orozco and Páez 2008, 4). our time, seeing it not so much as the United Nations Department of Economic and challenge of incorporating immigrants into Social Affairs, Population Division (2013). These original, interdisciplinary studies Western societies and economies (which 3 “Internal Migration,” website of the United provide a critical examination of Latin too often frames immigrants as “the Nations Department of Economic and Social American and Caribbean migrations to problem”) but rather the challenge of Affairs Population Division: International non-U.S. destinations. In their brief redefining citizenship in an era of Migration. New York: United Nations. http:// overviews, authors in this “Debates” globalization, which positions immigrants www.un.org/en/development/desa/population/ section focus on two broad migratory as uniquely poised to teach us about what theme/international-migration/index.shtml. circuits originating in Latin America and this means. How Latin(o) American 4 We are responding to the call by scholars such the Caribbean: intraregional and immigrants respond and exercise agency as Marcelo Suárez-Orozco (2006), who writes, transoceanic. Intraregional migration under familiar and unfamiliar global “While there is a general consensus that examines migratory trajectories within conditions is of critical importance on a migration from Latin America is changing the Americas and the world beyond, there is little Latin America and the Caribbean. In number of fronts, not least of which is the systematic empirical, conceptual, and addition to the relocation of workers from health of democratic societies and the theoretical work examining the Exodo in an one country to another within the region diverse expressions of citizenship across the interdisciplinary, comparative, and regional (Nicaraguan workers to Costa Rica and Latin American diaspora. “Global Latin(o) framework.” Bolivian agriculturalists to Argentina), this Americanos” and their new destinations 5 In addition to including people from the Forum explores the experiences of migrants provide important contexts for studying Caribbean, we use “Global Latin(o) finding their way as minorities in the these issues. Americanos” as a shorthand meant to bilingual and bicultural context of Canada. encompass Latina/o/@/x people of all subject The studies of transoceanic migration positions; racial, ethnic, and gender groups; analyze transatlantic flows to Israel and and sexual orientations. Furthermore, we recognize that the term “Latin America” is transpacific flows to Japan. Factors itself a fiction, concocted in the nineteenth determining transoceanic migration include century either by European elites to impose colonial ties and proactive immigration colonial dominance on the New World policies that privilege historical ethnic (Mignolo 2009) or by Latin American elites to relations to Latin American descendants. resist U.S. and European imperialism (Gobat 2013). These studies draw on the work of scholars 6 Although the majority of Latinas/os in the such as Walter Mignolo and José Saldívar, United States are of Mexican origin (64 who call for a “remapping” of American percent in 2012), the U.S. Latina/o population studies through a discourse of “border in general is of diverse national and regional origins and is dispersed throughout the thinking” that challenges us “to re-imagine country. In 2012, other major groups included the nation as a site within many ‘cognitive people of Puerto Rican (9.4 percent), maps’ in which the nation-state is not Salvadoran (3.8 percent), Cuban (3.7 percent), congruent with cultural identity” (Saldívar Dominican (3.1 percent), and Guatemalan 1997, ix; Mignolo 2000). Expanding on (2.3 percent) backgrounds (United States this critique, these articles help us to Census 2014). For additional details, see reorient Latina/o studies outside of a Overmyer-Velázquez (2008).

2 References United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs, Population Division Gobat, Michel 2013 “International Migration 2013: Migrants 2013 “The Invention of Latin America: A by Origin and Destination,” United Nations Transnational History of Anti-Imperialism, Populations Facts no. 2013/3, September, Democracy, and Race.” American Historical http://www.un.org/en/ga/68/meetings/ Review 118 (5): 1345–1375. migration/pdf/International%20 Migration%202013_Migrants%20by%20 IOM (International Organization for Migration) origin%20and%20destination.pdf.

2015 “IOM Position on the Post-2015 United U.S. Census Nations Development Agenda.” https://www. iom.int/files/live/sites/iom/files/What-We-Do/ 2014 “Facts for Features: Hispanic Heritage docs/IOM-Position-Paper-on-Post-2015.pdf. Month 2014: Sept. 15–Oct. 15.” September 8. http://www.census.gov/newsroom/facts-for- Mignolo, Walter D. features/2014/cb14-ff22.html. 2000 Local Histories/Global Designs: Coloniality, Subaltern Knowledges, and Border Thinking. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. 2009 The Idea of Latin America. New York: John Wiley & Sons.

Overmyer-Velázquez, Mark, ed. 2008 Latino America: A State-by-State Encyclopedia. 2 vols. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press.

Però, Davide, and John Solomos, eds. 2011 Migrant Politics and Mobilisation: Exclusion, Engagements, Incorporation. New York: Routledge.

Saldívar, José David 1997 Border Matters: Remapping American Cultural Studies. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Suárez-Orozco, Marcelo 2006 “Some Thoughts on Migration Studies and the Latin American Exodo.” LASA Forum 37 (1): 13.

Suárez-Orozco, Marcelo M., and Mariela Páez, eds. 2008 Latinos: Remaking America. Rev. ed. Berkeley: University of California Press.

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