First Part: Essays, Papers and Articles
Latinos Identities
(Essays by Totti-Shorris)
1-Can you mention several relevant factors for defining Latino social and cultural
identities ?
2- What factors play a central role in "uniting" diverse Latino national groups living in the United States?
3- Why (According to Shorris) there is not a collective Latino ethnic identity in the US?
4- According to Totti's essay what the Dominicans and the Puerto Ricans (located in the upper west side of Manhattan) have been able to forge to fight for their mutual community interests?
5- Why Totti argues in his essay that there is collective Latino identity emerging in the United States?
Falcon, Puerto Ricans: A Profile for the 1990s
1- Why Flacon uses the term "continuing invisibility" when he refers to Puerto Ricans in the US?
2- Can you compare the socio-economic data presented in this essay (Census-1990) to the one on Puerto Ricans from the Census in 1996? How this group has evolved?
3- Why Puerto Ricans are a politically significant group according to Falcon?
4- Why do you think Puerto Ricans represent 70% of the Latino vote in NYC when they are only 50% of that population?
5- Describe the main socio-economic indicators that distinguish the Puerto
Rican community in the US.
BourgoisÕs essay (From Jibaro to Crack Dealer)
1- What groups control the BarrioÕs public space according to this essay?
2- What Bourgois understands as the Puerto Rican youth Òstreet cultureÓ in NYC?
3- What structural processes have changed the New York legal economy during that last decades?
4- Why the so-called Òstreet cultureÓ that Puerto Ricans (like Julio) bring into their service sector workplaces may hamper their success in the legal job market?
5- What is the meaning of the term Ògettin dissedÓ that Bourgois uses in this
essay?
Colombians in NYC and LA
1- According to Guarnizo, Sánchez & Roach's essay, Colombian involvement in NYC politics has been minimal thus far. What are the reasons for Colombians' low political participation in NYC?
2- How in Guarnizo, Sánchez and Roach's essay the concept of transnationalism is being defined?
3- Sociologically speaking, to what other Latino group the Colombians seem to have some similarities?
4- Explain the nature of the transnational connections between the Colombians in the US and their home country.
5-How similar , or how different, to the other are the Colombian communities in NYC and in Los Angeles?
Dae Young Kim, "Beyond co-ethnic solidarity: Mexican and Ecuadorean employment in Korean-owned businesses
1- What is the so called "ethnic economy" described by Young Kim?
2- What is the role played by the ethnic (and co-ethnic) solidarity among the Koreans in NYC?
3- Which reasons are given by Young Kim to explain the shift from co-ethnic
labor to Mexican and Ecuadorean employment in Korean owned businesses?
4- Why in the late 80s and early 90s Korean businessmen in NYC started to hire
Mexicans and Ecuadoreans rather than other co-ethnic Koreans?
5- How were the labor relations between Mexican and Ecuadorean employees with their Koreans bosses according to Young Kim's analysis?
Second Part: Chapters from Books
Latinos in New York
Chapter 1
1- Which are the historical periods in the formation of the Latino community in New York City?
2- Can you describe the social background of the different Latino groups that immigrated to NYC during the XX century
3-What was the historical period during which most Puerto Ricans arrived to New York City?
4- Describe the new Latino migratory trends to NYC after the 1960s.
5- Where are the majority of the Latinos located in NYC today?
Chapter 2
1- Dominicans, in Hernández and Torres-Saillant's opinion, did not leave their country willingly. Why they argue that?
2- How Hernández and Torres-Saillant's essay portrait Dominicans in NYC?
3- What is the main source of socio-economic data used by Hernández and Torres-Saillant in their essay?
4- How during the 1990s Dominicans did become the second largest Latino group in New York City?
5- Are the Dominicans "birds of passage" or they are in NYC to remain, according to the evidence presented in this chapter?
6- On the Socioeconomic Profile of Dominicans in New York seems to confirm
previous findings on the socio-economic status of Dominicans in NYC presented
by Hernández and Torres-Saillant. Do you know why?
Chapter 3
1- What theoretical interpretation Smith's essay proposes to explain integration process of Mexican immigrants in NYC?
2- Why many Korean employers prefer to hire Mexicans over Puerto Ricans or Blacks?
3- Robert Smith indicates that Mexicans hold jobs in a particular segment of the labor market. Which one?
4- Why neither the melting pot paradigm nor the ethnic pluralistic assimilation model can explain the unique integration process of Mexican immigrants in NYC ?
5- How most of the Mexicans studied by Smith participate simultaneously in the social life of their home towns in Mexico and in their own ethnic communities in NYC?
Chapter 7
1- What are some of the factors that explain wage inequality among diverse ethnic and social groups in the NYC labor market.
2- Can you point out some of the problems with traditional human capital approaches on the labor market according to Meléndez's analysis?
3- According to Meléndez's analysis the income distribution seems to be unequal within the total Hispanic population of NYC. Is true; why is so?
4- Compare the income/wage distribution of Puerto Ricans and Afro-Americans in the NYC labor market.
5- What kind of approach Meléndez seems to propose to explain the socio-economic
dynamic of the NYC labor market?
Chapter 1
1-What factors explain that for some Latino groups their "Hispanic identity" functions as a "symbolic ethnicity"?
2- What we understand by racial and ethnic stratification in American society?
3-According to C. Nelson and M. Tienda the most successful members of the "Hispanic community" tend to redefine their ethnic identity as a consequence of their up-ward social mobility and higher economic status. How they explain this process?
4- Why C. Nelson and M. Tienda states that Latino ethnic identity must be explained withing the general structural socio-economic context of American society?
5- Describe the social process (composed by three interrelated phases/modes)
described by C. Nelson and M. Tienda to explain the way diverse immigrant groups
have "entered" into the American society.
Chapter 2
1- What is the original meaning of the term "Hispanic"?
2- Can you describe what happened during and after the Mexican-American war of 1846-49?
3- Compare the meanings of categories such as class and race in the US in relation to their use in Latin America?
4- How Latinos have been perceived from the perspective of the dominant US national imaginary?
5- What were the so called "Doctrine Monroe" and the so called "Manifest Destiny"?
Chapter 4
1- How political and economic factors explain the internal and external migrations of Salvadorians?
2- How US migration (and refugee) policies are related to this country foreign policy?
3-How Hamilton and Stroltz relate migration processes to capitalist development?
4- How the core capitalist economies function as "poles of attraction" for Third World workers?
5- What is the role of "social networks" in sustaining migratory processes?
Chapter 5
1- According to Clara Rodríguez what indicators seems to measure the socio-economic disadvantage of a social/ethnic/racial group?
2- Why Puerto Ricans have the highest level of poverty of all Latino groups?
3- Which are some of the socio-economic characteristics that distinguish Puerto Ricans living in the US?
4-Can you compare the socio-economic status of Puerto Ricans to other Latino groups in the US?
5-What role of the so called "push and pull factors"have played in the migratory
process of Puerto Ricans to the US?
Chapter 6
1-What is the "Bracero Program"?
2- Can you compare the situation of Mexican immigrant workers during the first part of the 20th Century to their socio-economic situation since the 1970s?
3- How the economic situation in Mexico is related to fluctuations in the number of Mexicans who emigrate to the US?
4- How you would describe the socio-economic situation of "undocumented" Mexican workers living in the US?
5- Where in the US economy are concentrated most of these "undocumented" Mexican
workers?
Chapter 7
1- What Portes and Stepick argue when they compare the Nicaraguan immigrants to the Cubans who came earlier in the 1960s?
2-Can you describe the social background of the different waves of Nicaraguans immigrants who arrived to the US after 1979?
3- Where in Florida's economy the Nicaraguans seem to be concentrated?
4- What was the role Cubans played in the social and economic resettling of the Nicaraguan immigrants?
5- Can you describe the US (Federal) policy toward Nicaraguans? How it changed?
Chapter 8
1-In Luis Guarnizo's view Dominican residents in the US have acquired a de facto "binational citizenship". What he means by that?
2-What theoretical perspective Guarnizo uses in his research on Dominican residents in NYC?
3- Explain the process of class restructuring in the Dominican community of NYC presented in this chapter.
4-How Guarnizo describes sociologically and economically the Dominican residents in NYC?
5- What is the nature of the "cultural identity" of the Dominican residents in NYC?
Chapter 9
1- Juan Flores argues that Puerto Rican culture in NYC (the so-called Nuyorican culture) is a good example of what form of cultural practice?
2- How Puerto Ricans in NYC have produced a new popular Latino culture?
3- What is the meaning of "cultural syncretism"?
4- What is the nature of the relationship between the Afro-AMerican and the the so-called Nuyorican culture?
5- How Puerto Ricans in the US represent their island (Puerto Rico's) national culture?
Chapter 10
1- Why the author talks about "diversity" rather than just commonalties in this essay?
2- How race and class play an important role among Chicanos(as)?
3- How sexuality and sexual differences are presented in this essay?
4- How "culture" is conceptualized by Zavella?
5- What she means when she refers to someone who said that " you are so different from other Mexicans" ?
Chapter 11
1- How race, class , and gender -as paramount sociological categories- are used by Mary Romero?
2- Can you summary Teresa's life story?
3-What Romero means when she talks about maintaining "cultural identities"?
4-How Teresa's mother felt regarding the situation of her daughter in the house?
5- Explain the use in the essay of the idea of social boundaries by Mary Romero.
Chapter 12
1-How Mexican and Cuban women share many perceptions and expectations about sexual roles?
2- Compare the household situation of Mexican and Cuban families regarding their composition, socio-economic status, labor force participation, and other demographic variables.
3- What is the sociological difference between the notion of "family" and "household" that Patricia Fernández-Kelly and Ana M. García do use in this essay?
4- How the dominant "patriarchal" cultural norms appear to have different degree of socio-cultural weight among Cuban and Mexican households?
5-How paid work does affect the social experiences of Mexican and Cuban women?
Chapter 13
1- Can you describe the ways in which domestic tasks were re-negotiated among men and women in dual-earner Chicano families?
2- Can you describe the different meanings of "machismo" presented by the authors.
3- Describe the sociological method (and the specific sample) used by these researchers in their work, and why they focused their research on that social group?
4- What are the main sociological findings of this research?
5- To what extent the new family arrangements (and the new division of household labor) contradicted traditional stereotypes of socio-sexual roles in male-dominated Chicano families?
Chapter 14
1-Does paid work serves to "liberate" Latino women, and if so, in what sense?
2-How internal family relations (between men and women) seem to change as the result of their immigration to the US?
3- Why salaried women's economic (financial) contribution is so important for many Latino families?
4-Why so many Latinos and Latinas prefer to stay in the U.S. rather than returning to their home countries?
5- How you would describe the affective/emotional life of many Latina women
who need to work while simultaneously they have to take care of their children?
Chapter 15
1-How immigration has restructured Miami construction industry in every sense; labor relations, trade unions' social composition, etc.?
2-Explain the Carpenters' union policy toward Latinos and how it changed.
3-Can you describe the social relations at work between workers from different races and ethnic groups?
4-Why language seems to be a focal point of social conflict between workers and management in Miami construction industry?
5-Do ethnic and racial tensions among workers undermine their social solidarity and class consciousness as workers? In so, in what sense?
Chapter 16
1-Why the anti-bilingualism/English Only movement emerged in Miami in the early 1980s?
2- What was the meaning of the policy of so called "Enlightened Assimilation" implemented in Miami until the 1980s?
3- What do you understand by the so called "Latinization" of Miami? How do you think this would apply to other Latinos' urban experiences in the US?
4- What else is really behind the English Only movement? It is just an opposition to the use of Spanish as a public language or there are other cultural and social issues at stake?
5-Did the electoral victory of the English Only movement in the 1980 anti-bilingualism referendum accomplish the political goals of that movement? If yes, or not, explain why do you think that is the case.
Chapter 17
1-How the economic restructuring in Houston did set the context for the class- based racial and ethnic urban conflicts described in the chapter?
2-How you would describe the social relations between diverse racial and ethnic groups in the "Arboleda"? Did Latinos immigrants faced closed borders or open frontiers in their interactions with Anglos and Afro-Americans?
3- What kind of research is an "ethnography" and what is the socio-economic focus of this "fieldwork"?
4- Describe the social strategies developed by the Arboleda's tenants to regain/retain living spaces in the urban complex.
5- What kind of Latino immigrants are studied by Rodriguez and Hagan? Can you
describe who they were, and from where they came?