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Latino educational gains over time and income mobility portend a burgeoning Latino middle class. In this article, we critically review scholarship on the Latino middle class, from theoretical perspectives aiming to explain Latino experiences to empirical research investigating mechanisms that promote, and barriers that thwart, upward mobility. Studies suggest that the Latino middle class is distinctive for many reasons—from structural barriers to asset accumulation, legal status precarity for self or family, financial responsibility for class-disadvantaged kin, and negative controlling images that bog down class ascension. Scholars' recent efforts to decouple middle-class status from Whiteness is an important contribution that undercuts the notion that melding into Whiteness is the desired outcome of middle-class integration. In addition to the utility of education to upward mobility, we contend that studies of middle-class pathways should expand to recognize that Latinos are engaging in workarounds—career paths not requiring a bachelor's degree, such as business ownership or credentialed professions. Workarounds are an intervention that accounts for routes to mobility that are eclipsed by conventional conceptions of mobility. Ultimately, we argue that Latinos are attaining middle-class status even as they are racialized, thereby expanding the minoritized middle class. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Latinas represent one of the fastest‐growing groups of entrepreneurs in the United States, yet they are understudied in entrepreneurship research. Through three case studies of middle‐class and wealthy Latinas, we explore how ethnorace, gender, immigration, class, and community shape their entrepreneurial endeavors as they practice what we refer to as feminist ethnoracial entrepreneurship–entrepreneurial endeavors that aim to empower, assist, and/or build community amongst women through ethnic and gender‐specific services and experiences. Feminist ethnoracial entrepreneurship, in theory, aims to mitigate ethnoracial and gender inequality. Our participants draw from their lived experiences to inform their entrepreneurial motivations to make a profit and a social difference. By incorporating research centered on feminist approaches to entrepreneurship, we show how gender and the ethnoracial context combine with class to shape Latina entrepreneurs' ethnoracial capitalism and community empowerment practices at the levels of institutions, in community spaces, and markets as they navigate broader structures of racial and gender inequality. Our participants challenge structural ethnoracial and gender exclusion via entrepreneurial endeavors in finance that aim to address gender and racial gaps in access to commercial capital, by opening Latino coffee shops rooted in community and feminist ideology, and by fashioning physical and digital makers markets grounded in Chicana/Latina Feminisms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This research examines Latino economic elites in Los Angeles who engage in 'ethnoracial philanthropy' – giving to or creating ethnic-centric organisations that focus on alleviating socioeconomic inequalities. We draw on 65 in-depth interviews to provide insights into the ethnoracial educational structures created by Latino elites to facilitate the mobility of Latino youth. We compare three ways in which philanthropy manifests: via the creation of Latino scholarship funds; ethnic-centric charter schools in low-income Latino neighbourhoods; Latino youth leadership programmes comprised of college students from the top 100 universities. These institutions may serve to widen the path to inclusion by creating a distinct ethnoracial integration path via education, contrasting with assimilation theory and the minority culture of mobility framework. However, the focus on education, and not on other issues, benefits those who reproduce the elites' image. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Based on qualitative data drawn from Latino elites, Latino entrepreneurs, and two Latino banks in Los Angeles, we theorize the concept of ethnoracial capitalism , which occurs within racialized groups when group members commodify ethnicity through the sale of culturally-specific goods or when institutions and services are imbued with ethnicity and assumed to form the basis of profitable financial exchanges. We investigate why Latino elites establish Latino-centric banks, and we draw on the perspectives of Latino-elites and middle- and upper-class entrepreneurs to examine whether shared ethnoracial and class resources breed solidarity between Latino elite-owned and -operated banks and the Latino entrepreneurs they target. We find that structural constraints, the state, and class conflict thwarts the possibility of sustaining banking practices rooted in ethnoracial solidarity. Our research provides insights into the fraught intra-ethnic relationships that can occur within ethnoracial capitalistic endeavors that are situated within racist racial projects, such as the U.S. banking system. Ultimately, the sole presence of capital and ethnic financial institutions in minoritized communities does not remedy economic inequalities born of White supremacist racial projects and racially stratified systems, such as U.S. financial markets. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Black on the Block: The Politics of Race and Class in the City by Mary Pattillo. Chicago, IL, University of Chicago Press, 2007. 400 pp. $29.00. In 'The Talented Tenth,' [...]

An introduction is presented which discusses various reports within the issue on topics including low-wage immigrant workers in the U.S., social and economical challenges faced by the immigrants and immigrant entrepreneurship.

This research examines three questions. First and most broadly, how are professional Mexican Americans received in white-collar workplaces? Second, do their professional accomplishments buffer them from subtle racism? If not, what are the strategies they employ to manage subtle racism while at work? Finally, do experiences of subtle racism vary depending on whether one grows up poor or middle class? Based on 59 in-depth interviews with 1.5 and second-generation Mexican American professionals, results show those from poor backgrounds report more persistent experiences with subtle racism and they employ specific strategies to manage. This research adds to the literature by examining whether and to what extent class background heightens or minimizes Mexican Americans' experiences of interpersonal racism in the white-collar workplace. This research also addresses larger debates and theories about whether boundaries between Mexican Americans and whites remain salient once Mexican Americans enter the middle class. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Based on 50 in-depth interviews and extensive fieldwork, this article contributes to the literature on inequality and middle-class minorities by examining socially mobile Mexican Americans—those who were raised in low-income households, but who are now middle class. Mexican Americans who achieve extreme rates of intergenerational mobility straddle class and ethnic contexts, a position that is accompanied by a set of challenges that are unique to middle-class minorities. Socially mobile Mexican Americans retain an enduring familiarity with poverty and must manage intra-class relations with poorer coethnics, who often request financial and social support. As they enter white professional milieus, they must also manage interethnic relations with whites who do not view them as bona fide members of the white middle class. These challenges reinforce class and ethnic boundaries and lead middle-class Mexican Americans who grow up disadvantaged to adopt a minority culture of mobility that manifests through group-specific mobility strategies embedded in ethnic communities, such as creating and joining ethnic professional organizations. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article examines the incorporation of middle-class Latinas in Southern California. Based on three years of participant observation, 30 in-depth interviews, and 50 conversational interviews with the organization's members, I find that the upwardly mobile Latinas mobilize “middle-class ethnic capital” to create professional associations in ethnic communities that provide valuable business skills, networks, and social capital to coethnics. Members of the organization realize that they must approximate the normative business standards of white middle-class business culture to get ahead, yet they feel that it is vital to retain their ethnic identity and provide resources to the ethnic community. While contemporary immigration research maintains the Latino ethnic communities lack the “high-quality resources” that might buffer against downward assimilation and advance upward mobility, these findings suggest that it takes one or two extra generations for Latinos to mobilize class and ethnic resources to promote mobility. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article highlights divergent pathways to mobility among members of the new second generation, identifies key mechanisms affecting the choices they make in their pursuit of success, and explains how specific choices were pivotal in determining outcomes of segmented assimilation. First, the authors evaluate definitions of success and pathways to social mobility, advancing a subject-centered approach to study second-generation mobility. Second, the article turns to the results from the authors' ongoing qualitative study of the new second generation in Los Angeles to examine cases that exemplify predictable and anomalous outcomes. Third, the authors zoom in on patterns that emerge from real-life histories to clarify key mechanisms affecting the decisions made by members of the second generation that are consequential in shaping their paths to mobility. The study dispels some enduring myths about group-based cultures, stereotypes, and processes of assimilation. It also advances theoretical debates about intergenerational mobility and immigrant incorporation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]