Enacting a Latinx Decolonial Politic of Belonging: Latinx Community Workers’ Experiences Negotiating Identity and Citizenship in Toronto, Canada
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.26522/ssj.v14i2.2225Keywords:
settler colonialism, Latinx identities, citizenship, belonging, decolonizationAbstract
This paper explores how women and non-binary Latinx Community Workers (LCWs) in Toronto, Canada, negotiate their identities, citizenship practices and politics in relation to settler colonialism and decolonization. We demonstrate how LCWs enact a Latinx decolonial politic of belonging, an alternative way of practicing citizenship that strives to simultaneously challenge both Canadian and Latin American settler colonialism. This can be seen when LCWs refuse to be recognized on white settler terms as “proud Canadians,” and create community-based learning initiatives that incite conversations among everyday Latinx community members around Canada’s settler colonial history and present, Indigenous worldviews, as well as race and settler colonialism in Latin America. We consider how LCWs’ enactments of a Latinx decolonial politic of belonging serve as small, incomplete, but crucial steps towards decolonization.
References
Alberto, L. (2017). Coming out as Indian: On being an Indigenous Latina in the US. Latino Studies, 15(2), 247-253.
Blackwell, M., Boj Lopez, F., & Urrieta, L. (2017). Special issue: Critical Latinx indigeneities. Latino Studies, 15(2), 126-137.
Byrd, J. (2011). Transit of empire: Indigenous critiques of colonialism. University of Minnesota Press.
Cahuas, M. C. (2020). The struggle and (im)possibilities of decolonizing Latin American citizenship practices and politics in Toronto. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, 38(2), 209-228.
Cahuas, M. C. (2019). Burned, broke, and brilliant: Latinx Community Workers’ experiences across the Greater Toronto Area’s non-profit sector. Antipode, 51(1), 66-86.
Castellanos, B. (2017). Introduction: Settler colonialism in Latin America. American Quarterly, 69(4), 777-781.
Chatterjee, S. (2018). Immigration, anti-racism, and Indigenous self-determination: Towards a comprehensive analysis of the contemporary settler colonial. Social Identities, 25(5), 644-661.
Dhamoon, R. K. (2013). Exclusion and regulated inclusion: The case of the Sikh kirpan in Canada. Sikh Formations, 9(1), 7-28.
Freeman, V. (2010). “Toronto has no history!”: Indigeneity, settler colonialism, and historical memory in Canada’s largest city. Urban History Review, 38(2), 21-35.
Hooker, J. (2017). Theorizing Race in the Americas: Douglass, Sarmiento, Du Bois and Vasconcelos. Oxford University Press.
Hunt, S., & Holmes, C. (2015). Everyday decolonization: Living a decolonizing queer politics. Journal of Lesbian Studies, 19(2), 154-172.
Jafri, B. (2012). National identity, transnational whiteness and the Canadian citizenship guide. Critical Race and Whiteness Studies, 8, 1-15.
Landolt, P., & Goldring, L. (2009). Immigrant political socialization as bridging and boundary work: Mapping the multi-layered incorporation of Latin American immigrants in Toronto. Ethnic and Racial Studies, 32(7), 1226-1247.
Lawrence, B., & Dua, E. (2005). Decolonizing antiracism. Social Justice, 32(4), 120-143.
Lethabo-King, T. (2016). New world grammars: The ‘unthought’ black discourses of conquest. Theory & Event, 19(4), 1-9.
Lethabo-King, T. (2019). The black shoals: Offshore formations of Black and Native Studies. Duke University Press.
Lindsay, C. (2007). The Latin American Community in Canada. Statistics Canada, Social and Aboriginal Statistics Division. http://www.statcan.gc.ca/pub/89-621-x/89-621-x2007008-eng.htm#13
Lobo-Molnar, B. (2012). Entre nosotras: Latin American women’s perspectives on leadership [Unpublished Master’s thesis]. University of Toronto.
Lugones, M. (2007). Heterosexualism and the colonial/modern gender system. Hypatia, 22(1), 186-219.
Mata, F. G. (1985). Latin American immigration to Canada: Some reflections on the immigration statistics. Canadian Journal of Latin American and Caribbean Studies,10(20), 27-42.
Maynard, R. (2017). Policing black lives: State violence in Canada from slavery to the present. Fernwood Publishing.
Phung, M. (2011). Are people of colour settlers too? In A. Mathur, J. Dewar, & M. DeGagne (Eds.), Cultivating Canada: Reconciliation through the lens of diversity (pp. 289-298). Aboriginal Healing Foundation.
PODER. (n.d.). About Us. https://poderff.org/about-us
Pulido, L. (2017). Geographies of race and ethnicity III: Settler colonialism and nonnative people of color. Progress in Human Geography, 42(2), 309-318.
Quijano, A. (2007). Coloniality and modernity/rationality. Cultural Studies, 21(3), 168-178.
Saldaña-Portillo, M. J. (2016). Indian given: Racial geographies across Mexico and the United States. Duke University Press.
Saldaña-Portillo, M. J. (2017). Critical Latinx Indigeneities: A paradigm drift. Latino Studies, 15(2), 138-155.
San Martin, M. (1998). Picking up the thread: An oral history of the Latin American Women’s
Collective in Toronto, 1983-1990 [Unpublished Master’s thesis]. University of Toronto.
Saranillio, D.I. (2013). Why Asian settler colonialism matters: A thought piece on critiques, debates, and Indigenous difference. Settler Colonial Studies, 3(3-4), 280-294.
Sharma, N. (2015). Strategic anti-essentialism: Decolonizing decolonization. In K. McKittrick (Ed.), Sylvia Wynter: On being human as praxis (pp. 164-182). Duke University Press.
Sharma, N., & Wright, C. (2008). Decolonizing resistance, challenging colonial states. Social Justice, 35(3), 120-138.
Simpson, A. (2014). Mohawk interruptus: Political life across the borders of settler states. Duke University Press.
Simpson, L. B., Walcott, R., & Coulthard, G. (2018). Idle No More and Black Lives Matter: An exchange. Studies in Social Justice, 12(1), 75-89.
Speed, S. (2017). Structures of settler capitalism in Abya Yala. American Quarterly, 69(4), 783-790.
Statistics Canada. (2016). Census Profile. (Catalogue number 98-316-X2016001). https://www12.statcan.gc.ca/census-recensement/2016/dp-pd/prof/index.cfm?Lang=E
Tuck, E., & Yang, K.W. (2012). Decolonization is not a metaphor. Decolonization: Indigeneity, Education & Society, 1(1), 1-40.
Urrieta, L. (2012). Las identidades también lloran, identities also cry: Exploring the human side of indigenous Latina/o identities. In M. B. Castellanos, L. Gutiérrez Nájera, & A. J. Aldama (Eds.), Comparative indigeneities of the Américas: Toward a hemispheric approach (pp. 53-56). The University of Arizona Press.
Veronis, L. (2010). Immigrant participation in the transnational era: Latin Americans’ experiences with collective organising in Toronto. Journal of International Migration and Integration, 11(2), 173-192.
Walcott, R. (2014). The problem of the human: Black ontologies and “the coloniality of our being.” In S. Broeck & C. Junker (Eds.), Postcoloniality-decoloniality-Black critique joints and fissures (pp. 93-108). Campus Verlag.
Wilderson, F. B. (2010). Red, white & black: Cinema and the structure of U.S. antagonisms. Duke University Press.
Wolfe, P. (2006). Settler colonialism and the elimination of the native. Journal of Genocide Research, 8(4), 387-409.
Wynter, S. (1995). 1492: A new world view. In V. Lawrence Hyatt & R. Nettleford (Eds.), Race, discourse, and the origin of the Americas: A New World view (pp. 5-57). Smithsonian Institution Press.
Downloads
Published
Issue
Section
License
Articles are published in Studies in Social Justice under the Creative Commons "Attribution/Non-Commercial/No Derivative Works" Canada licence.
The copyright for the articles published in this journal is retained by the authors, with first publication rights granted to the journal. By virtue of their appearance in this open access journal, articles may be used, with proper attribution, in educational and other non-commercial settings. The submission of a manuscript to Studies in Social Justice will be taken to mean that the author understands and agrees to the following:
- the manuscript represents original work not previously published;
- the manuscript is not being considered elsewhere for publication in the same language (publication elsewhere in an alternate language does not preclude acceptance of submission to Studies in Social Justice);
- appropriate written copyright permissions have been secured for republication of any copyrighted material contained in the manuscript;
- copyright for this article is retained by the author, with first publication rights granted to Studies in Social Justice;
- by virtue of its appearance in this open access journal, it is understood that the article is freely available for use, with proper attribution, for educational and other non-commercial purposes;
- reuse of the article for commercial purposes by anyone other than the author requires permission of the author;
- the author agrees to cite Studies in Social Justice as a source whenever h/she later republishes or reuses the article in other platforms.
