Syracuse University SURFACE Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Sociology Affairs Winter 2008 Who Joins the Military?: A Look at Race, Class, and Immigration Status Amy Lutz Department of Sociology, Syracuse University Follow this and additional works at: https://surface.syr.edu/soc Part of the Family, Life Course, and Society Commons, Military History Commons, and the Race and Ethnicity Commons Recommended Citation Lutz, Amy. 2008. “Who Joins the Military?: A Look at Race, Class, and Immigration Status.” Journal of Political and Military Sociology 36 (2): 167-188. This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs at SURFACE. It has been accepted for inclusion in Sociology by an authorized administrator of SURFACE. For more information, please contact
[email protected]. WHO JOINS THE MILITARY? A LOOK AT RACE, CLASS, AND IMMIGRATION STATUS1 AMY LUTZ Syracuse University Journal of Political and Military Sociology, 2008, Vol. 36, No. 2 (Winter):167-188. This article discusses the history of participation of the three largest racial– ethnic groups in the military: whites, blacks, and Latinos. It empirically exa- mines the likelihood of ever having served in the military across a variety of criteria including race–ethnicity, immigrant generation, and socioeconomic status, concluding that significant disparities exist only by socioeconomic status. Finally, the article offers an in-depth look at Latinos in the military, a group whose levels of participation in the armed services have not been thoroughly investigated heretofore. The findings reveal that, among Latinos, those who identify as “Other Hispanic” are more likely to have served in the military than Mexicans, while Puerto Ricans are not significantly different from Mexicans in their service.