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Contemporary migration studies in cultural geography emphasize place-based approaches, recognizing the relational and contextual nature of belonging, especially as these are nested within material and symbolic structures of racial inequality. This article highlights the role of precarious legal status, focusing on undocumented immigrant young adults who grew up in the United States, to examine subjective experiences of place-making and belonging in situations of heightened visibility, deportability and vulnerability. We analyze 56 interviews with undocumented immigrant young adults, predominantly from Latin America, collected in Central Florida. Findings focus on themes linked to shared experiences of vulnerability due to illegality and visibility: (1) belonging in co-ethnic/co-legal neighborhoods, (2) ethnic and racial tensions, (3) neighborhood (in)security and safety, and (4) mutual assistantance and support among neighbors. In addition to poverty, poor infrastructure, and lack of safety, many neighborhoods in which undocumented youth grow up are characterized by racial and ethnic divisions. Our findings contribute an analysis of how undocumented migrants experience place as intersecting with broader patterns of race and ethnicity, and point to the importance of "co-legal status". This extension of the concept of co-ethnicity references shared experience of illegality as it relates to place-making for legally precarious individuals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Valdez and Golash-Boza argue that scholarship on race and scholarship on ethnicity have been divorced from each other and call for researchers to put these two paradigms in conversation with one another. I address some of their assertions using previous work, including my own, that has merged racial and ethnic literatures and that has shed new light on old theories, as well as opened the path toward new theories and methods. I argue that an ethnoracial perspective can be leveraged to better understand global racial and ethnic inequalities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using data from 41 in-depth interviews with undocumented young adults, we examine how they define what it means to be an American and explore whether and to what extent they identify as ‘Americans’. Framing our analysis in theories of personal and cultural trauma, we illustrate how undocumented youth experience double-consciousness that compounds their approach to national identities. Respondents express ambivalence towards adopting an American identity, recognising their commitment to American cultural values, yet continuously feeling repelled by laws that position them as outsiders to US polity. In spite of this, undocumented youth contest their liminal status by working towards full participation in civil society. Their activities, actions, and levels of civic participation demonstrate that even though they are barred from US citizenship, they work towards embodying what they believe a true American should be. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In this article I examine the settlement experiences of middle-class Puerto Ricans in the U.S. mainland. Data for the study come from open-ended interviews with 40 middle-class Puerto Ricans who came to the U.S. mainland, 20 of whom remained and 20 of whom returned and resettled in Puerto Rico. I examine their subjective interpretations of incorporation and the conditions under which they resettle in Puerto Rico. Findings reveal that in spite of occupational and economic integration into the U.S. mainstream, migration and U.S. settlement result in dislocations among Puerto Ricans, particularly regarding separation from family and kin networks and experiences with racialization and exclusion. Puerto Ricans see themselves as members of transnational families, yet, the struggles of leading dual lives between mainland and Puerto Rican societies result in settlement decisions that reflect desires to live locally with roots in one place instead of feeling split between the two. Experiences with U.S. racism complicate these decisions. Findings illustrate the various patterns of attachments to place, or emotional embeddedness, that impact the circumstances under which Puerto Ricans engage in alternating periods of mainland and Island settlement. The implications for assimilation theories are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]