Latinx Heritage Month

The 2016 presidential election of Donald Trump has ushered in a turbulent time in U.S. history. Given the Trump administration's emphasis on anti-immigrant policies and rhetoric, scholars and practitioners need to better understand how Latinx youth are responding to and affected by the political climate. Using written, open-ended responses from 562 Latinx adolescents from Southern California, the current study documented reactions to Trump's immigration politics. Forty percent of youth articulated views about immigration in their election reactions, and 96% of immigration-related responses were critical of the President's approach. Salient themes identified in immigration-related responses included feeling afraid and/or anxious; expressing anger, contempt, and/or disgust; recognizing and experiencing racism; offering pro-immigrant narratives; and increasing civic engagement. Findings align with social contract theory and suggest that many Latinx youth are feeling marginalized and threatened by government and recognizing injustices in the rights and protections afforded to their racial/ethnic communities. This work can raise awareness among educators and social workers about the tangible consequences of immigration policies and rhetoric for Latinx youth. This sociopolitical moment may also offer opportunities for youth empowerment through civic engagement.

Latinx individuals, particularly immigrants, are at higher risk than non-Latinx White individuals of contracting and dying from coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19). Little is known about Latinx experiences with COVID-19 infection and treatment.

Policy implementation research tends to document the failures of reform, describing the myriad ways implementers miss the mark in translating intent into impact; or in the words of Derrick Bell, policy scholars are left with examining the “unfilled hopes of racial reform” (2004, p. 185). In contrast, this article presents an intrinsic case study where campus leaders took a race-conscious approach to implementing a state-wide reform known as the Student Equity Policy. I constructed the TrenzaPolicy Implementation Framework to center the experience, knowledge, and assets of Latinx leaders in community college that oversee and implement policy reform. The framework highlights the raced-gendered perspectives of Latinx leaders in community college to understand their motivations to implement policy in race-conscious ways (Delgado Bernal, 2002). I conducted in-depth and sustained fieldwork to learn how implementers understood and responded to state-level reform in race-conscious ways and used the policy to target and address one of the most pressing issues in higher education, the inequitable rates of transfer for Latinx students. I share how the salience of racialized-gendered identity, cultural intuition, social context, and enacting agency allowed leaders to envision more race-conscious possibilities for policy reform and its implementation on campus.

Despite their considerable impact on Latino students and the communities they serve, Hispanic Serving Institutions (HSIs) are largely unrecognized in the academic literature for their role in Latinx higher education, much less for their role in Latinx community development. This study uses quantitative analysis to compare outcomes in selected indicators of Latinx community development between HSI host communities and non-HSI host communities. The results suggest an association between HSIs and the development of their host communities in terms of higher Latinx population shares and higher mean outcomes in selected measures of Latinx educational and economic wellbeing.

This symposium explores the well-being of Latinx farmworkers living and laboring in the United States. Our primary aim is to take a deeper look at the lived experiences of farmworkers. In the introduction, we explore the various ways in which well-being is framed in diverse academic disciplines, and how the concept of well-being has been employed in previous research on Latinx farmworkers. We argue that ethnographic methods have potential to represent farmworker experiences in a more nuanced manner than many other social science approaches. We advocate further research and action in terms of farmworker safety, health (including mental health and access to care), food security and food provisioning, rural isolation and access to housing, poverty and job security. Finally, we argue that farmworkers should be considered active and important actors in the context of global environmental change. Ultimately, the well-being of farmworkers is co-dependent on global environmental health and sustainability.

The term Latinx emerged recently as a gender-neutral label for Latino/a and Latin@. The purpose of this paper is to examine ways in which Latinx is used within the higher education context, and to provide an analysis of how the term can disrupt traditional notions of inclusivity and shape institutional understandings of intersectionality. Findings indicate a significant trend towards usage of Latinx in social media, and emerging use within higher education institutions. This paper is used to further the understandings of the use of the term Latinx, and to advocate for people that are living in the borderlands of gender.

This essay provides a case study of the art exhibition Because It's Time: Unraveling Race and Place in NM at the National Hispanic Cultural Center (NHCC) in 2018 in Albuquerque, New Mexico, in order to review the exhibition's contribution to racial equity discourse in New Mexico and the broader United States. It examines the role of museums and other public institutions in both shaping and being shaped by national discourse and continues a longstanding call for critical reflection on the work our institutions perform within, alongside, and/or in opposition to systems that uphold a status quo characterized by racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, ableism, poverty, and dispossession. This essay offers a critical analysis of museums before moving to a discussion of intersectionality and artworks by Latina/o/x and Indigenous artists, placing their work in conversation with a selection of artworks by artists with other racial, ethnic, and cultural identifications. The goal is to highlight the contributions of these artists to our collective understandings of the complexity of Latinx identity and experience in a world of contested racial politics.

From its origins in queer community conversations online, the term “Latinx” continues to gain wider circulation in various publics. This scholarly exchange examines the language and other politics of choosing to employ or to reject the “x” signifier. To engage a variety of perspectives on this topic, we invited five scholars with expertise in language, sexuality, gender, and latinidad from the continental United States and Puerto Rico to participate in an online exchange about what the “x” linguistic marker enables and constrains. Contributors do not always agree, and the tensions that arise point to broader discussions and strains unfolding beyond the pages of this journal. Ultimately, this exchange seeks to enliven ongoing conversations and to spark new ones among those interested in the politics, intersectional social locations, and exigencies implicated in discussions about “Latinx” and similar linguistic choices. As this exchange elucidates, the answer to “what's in an ‘x’?” depends on whom you ask.