Negotiating Latina/o Ethnicity in NYC: Social Interactions and Ethnic Self-Presentation

Today, an increasing number of people regularly switch from ethnicity to ethnicity in normal discourse, in an attempt to maximize their economic and political interests. This paper focuses specifically on ethnic flexibility among Latina/os in New York City. Drawing on ethnographic, linguistic, and social network data we explore how Latina/os in NYC negotiate between multiple ethnic identities in everyday contexts. Through language and dialect switches, accents, and even calculated silence the Latinos in our research negotiated NYC's multi-level system of categorization. We hope to show that no one-to-one relationship exists between subjective feelings of ethnic belongingness and the use of ethnic markers. Ethnic markers, particularly language-related ones, are manipulated in a number of creative ways by members and non-members alike, pushing the limits of what constitutes ethnic group membership and challenging notions of ethnic authenticity. Keywords: situational ethnicity, multiple ethnic identities, codeswitching, Latina/os, New York City Introduction As America's ethnic diversity continues to grow, issues like resource distribution, ethnic conflict, or social and political movements cannot be understood in terms of neatly packaged identities in competition. Today, an increasing number of people regularly switch from ethnicity to ethnicity in normal discourse, in an attempt to maximise their economic and political interests. The literature on ethnicity provides many examples of people contextually invoking (or hiding) their ethnicity to strengthen or weaken their ties to kin, community and the state and thereby to improve access to economic and political resources (Barth, 1969; Horowitz, 1975, 1985; Kelly & Nagel, 2002; Patterson, 1975). Yet, while ethnic identification has long been understood by anthropologists to be a contextual phenomenon, less is known about how the process of ethnic identification switching works in daily life. Little research has been done in recent years to further develop a theory of ethnic flexibility, a pattern of social interaction that emerges in highly ethnically diverse environments. Through two case studies of ethnically flexible Latino men, we will demonstrate how situational ethnicity provides a fruitful theoretical departure for students of ethnicity. In kind, this paper focuses specifically on ethnic flexibility among Latinos in New York City. As America's fastest growing ethnic group, and certainly among the most internal diverse pan-ethnicities, Latinos are an ideal group for examining the salience and negotiation of multiple ethnic identifications. Drawing on ethnographic, linguistic and social network data we explore how Latinos in NYC negotiate between multiple ethnic identities in everyday contexts. These negotiations point to how Latinos cross back and forth between various Latino subgroup boundaries and reflect the prevailing patterns of everyday relationships and interactions among Latinos in New York. Latina/os in New York City In New York State, the majority of Latinos reside in the five boroughs that make up New York City (NYC). The Census shows that of the over three million Latinos state -wide, 2,281,173 reside in NYC alone; this is almost 1/3 of the total NYC population. The size of the Latino population in NYC has experienced a steady increase from 2000 to 2006. The Census data for these years show that the Latino population in NYC grew by 5.8 per cent. The most recent 2006 Census data shows that Puerto Ricans remain the largest Latino group in NYC (771, 984), making up 33.8 per cent of the total Latino population. They are followed by Dominicans (609,885), who are 25.7 per cent of total Latino population (See Table One). While Mexicans are the fastest growing Latino group (with an increase of 43.6 per cent from 2000-2006), they are the third largest Latino group making up 10.3 per cent of the total Latino population (263,811). …