In this groundbreaking study of Puerto Rican and Dominican migration to the United States, Wendy D. Roth explores the influence of migration on changing cultural conceptions of race-for the newcomers, for their host society, and for those who remain in the countries left behind. Just as migrants can gain new language proficiencies, they can pick up new understandings of race. But adopting an American idea about race does not mean abandoning earlier ideas. New racial schemas transfer across borders and cultures spread between sending and host countries. Behind many current debates on immigration is the question of how Latinos will integrate and where they fit into the U.S. racial structure. Race Migrations shows that these migrants increasingly see themselves as a Latino racial group. Although U.S. race relations are becoming more "Latin Americanized" by the presence of Latinos and their views about race, race in the home countries is also becoming more "Americanized" through the cultural influence of those who go abroad. Ultimately, Roth shows that several systems of racial classification and stratification co-exist in each place, in the minds of individuals and in their shared cultural understandings of "how race works."
"This insightful ethnographic study of Puerto Ricans and Dominicans provides important clarifications regarding the nature of racial orders in the United States and the Hispanic Caribbean . . . The central contribution of the book is clear. Roth provides a useful conceptual framework for better understanding racial identity and classification . . . The book does well to describe each schema in det
Social Forces
"Roth's superb study transcends the existing literature on migration and race by demonstrating how concepts of race and ethnicity are continually refashioned in a transnational space. Migrants maintain, adopt, and strategically utilize different racial schemas in constant reference to both their countries of origin and settlement. All future studies of how race 'travels' will have to engage the an
University of California, Berkeley, co-author of Racial Formation in the United States
"In this well-excuted project, Roth is attentive to the interconnections between the macro and micro, such as how governmental policy, institutions, and people's everyday use of terms affect conceptions of race. . . A strong addition to scholarship, this book will be most useful to scholars and graduate students of race and ethnicity, migration, and American, Latino, and Latin American Studies."
