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Tenuous belonging: diversity, power, and identity in the U.S. Southwest

ABSTRACT Discrimination among social groups is an integral feature of contemporary immigration and citizenship policies, often reflecting historical trajectories of inclusion and exclusion produced by nation-building over time. This comparative historical study of the contentious incorporation of Arizona and New Mexico captures the legacies of racial hierarchy and the ways membership and identity are shaped by the intersection of race, language, and class. When the U.S. forcibly subsumed Arizona and New Mexico during the Mexican-American War, these territories vexed federal officials because their large Spanish-speaking populations of Mexican descent conflicted with dominant conceptions immigrant rights, and they present competing nativist and pluralistic policy responses to undocumented immigrants and Latino residents. This article tackles the question of why two U.S. states that share much in common – a border with each other and with Mexico, nearly identical geography and historical birth as members of the U.S., and large Latino and immigrant populations – diverged in the worlds they created for diverse ethnic and racial groups including immigrants. We find that the development of two distinct racial regimes in the American Southwest were profoundly shaped by the distribution of group power and distinct claims to national belonging.