The struggle and (im)possibilities of decolonizing Latin American citizenship practices and politics in Toronto

Madelaine C. Cahuas

doi:10.1177/0263775820915998

The struggle and (im)possibilities of decolonizing Latin American citizenship practices and politics in Toronto

Madelaine C. Cahuas

Geography

Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review

6 Scopus citations

Abstract

This paper explores the tensions racialized migrants negotiate when politically organizing and enacting citizenship within the context of the Canadian white settler state. I focus on the experiences of Latin Americans in Toronto and the politics surrounding a cultural celebration – Hispanic Heritage Month. While some Latin Americans sought to use this event to gain recognition and assert their belonging to Canadian society, others opposed its naming, objectives and organization, and opted to create an alternative celebration – the Latin-America History Collective’s Día de la Verdad/Day of Truth Rally. I demonstrate that the narratives and practices mobilized around Hispanic Heritage Month and Latin-America History Collective’s Rally reveal how different forms of migrant political organizing can internalize, reproduce and contest white settler colonial social relations. Overall, this paper aims to contribute to and complicate debates on the fraught nature of racialized migrants’ citizenship, politics and identity formation in Canada, by emphasizing the vast heterogeneity of Latin American communities and decolonizing possibilities.

Original language	English (US)
Pages (from-to)	209-228
Number of pages	20
Journal	Environment and Planning D: Society and Space
Volume	38
Issue number	2
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1177/0263775820915998
State	Published - Apr 1 2020

Bibliographical note

Funding Information:
My sincere thanks to Kate Derickson, Alexander Vasudevan and the anonymous reviewers for their generous feedback and support throughout the review process. I am incredibly grateful to the Latinx community workers, activists and members of the LAHC for sharing your stories and doing the work you do, as without you this research would not have been possible. Special thanks to my brilliant, unstoppable hermana and compañera, Andrea Vásquez Jiménez who listened to a presentation years ago that would later become this paper and encouraged me to keep going then and continues to push my thinking and politics in critical ways.

Publisher Copyright:
© The Author(s) 2020.

Keywords

Citizenship
Latinx
decolonization
migrant politics
race
settler colonialism

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Cite this

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title = "The struggle and (im)possibilities of decolonizing Latin American citizenship practices and politics in Toronto",

abstract = "This paper explores the tensions racialized migrants negotiate when politically organizing and enacting citizenship within the context of the Canadian white settler state. I focus on the experiences of Latin Americans in Toronto and the politics surrounding a cultural celebration – Hispanic Heritage Month. While some Latin Americans sought to use this event to gain recognition and assert their belonging to Canadian society, others opposed its naming, objectives and organization, and opted to create an alternative celebration – the Latin-America History Collective{\textquoteright}s D{\'i}a de la Verdad/Day of Truth Rally. I demonstrate that the narratives and practices mobilized around Hispanic Heritage Month and Latin-America History Collective{\textquoteright}s Rally reveal how different forms of migrant political organizing can internalize, reproduce and contest white settler colonial social relations. Overall, this paper aims to contribute to and complicate debates on the fraught nature of racialized migrants{\textquoteright} citizenship, politics and identity formation in Canada, by emphasizing the vast heterogeneity of Latin American communities and decolonizing possibilities.",

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The struggle and (im)possibilities of decolonizing Latin American citizenship practices and politics in Toronto

Abstract

Bibliographical note

Keywords

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