The 'Informality Gap': Can Latin America's discriminated minorities escape informal employment? Evidence from Peru

Juan Gabriel Delgado Montes '16

Ethnno-racial wage gaps are a well-documented reality. However, little attention has been placed on how access to social security, commonly linked to formal employment, differs between discriminated and non-discriminated social groups. Using evidence from Peru, the author explores to what extent education can help discriminated groups escape precarious informal employment. The results show that indigenous Peruvians with secondary education are far more likely to be informal than non-indigenous Peruvians, what the author calls terms the 'informality gap.'

And God Created...Puerto Ricans: Realizing, Recognizing, and Reclaiming Puerto Rican National Cinema

Alexandra James '16

How does a nation represent itself in the media? How does cinema become a tool for representing fears and desires while at the same time connecting to audiences beyond the nation itself? Puerto Rico is an example of a nation that is not independent, yet has a culture that is completely independent from American culture. What does this mean for Puerto Rican representation in films that come from Puerto Rico? What concerns and desires are displayed to audiences from the Puerto Rican lens?

Dominicano Donde Sea: 60 Years of Globalization, Migration, and Integration in the Nikkei Dominican Community

Omar Pineda '16

In 1956, Japan's post-war government reinitiated its emigration program to Latin America, this time partnering up with then Dominican dictator Rafael Trujillo. Over the course of six years, 1,300 Japanese nationals set off to start anew under the Caribbean sun. Where are the diverse Nikkei Dominican descendants of those who chose to remain in the Dominican Republic, and how have their migrations depended on today's intersections of the Dominican and Japanese diasporas? No matter where they may be, they are Dominicano Donde Sea.

Deciphering Latino Homosexuality, Culture, and Transnational Identities in Gay Commercial Spaces

Jesus Zelaya '16

The gay community has had a historically extensive connection with Jackson Heights in Queens, New York. The influence, significance, and visibility of the gay Latino community, through the gay commercial spaces that align Roosevelt Avenue, has been essential in transforming Jackson Heights into the gay epicenter for Latino immigrants. Jackson Heights became the gay Latino haven for immigrants in the 1970s with the large influx of Latin American migrants into Jackson Heights. I conducted ethnographic work, participant observation, and unstructured interviews with gay Latino men in the gay commercial spaces of Jackson Heights. Through my observations and interviews conducted I construct a narrative of the gay Latino migrant who use gay bars and clubs to solidify their cultural, national, and sexual identity. I delineate how gay Latino migrant men have been able to integrate into the larger immigrant community through the establishment of gay commercial spaces that have allowed migrants to form social networks, negotiate their transnational identity, and express their cultural affinities in tandem with their sexual identity. Through the personal accounts of gay Latino men I demonstrate how transnationalism is formed through their daily lives and in the gay bars and clubs where sexuality and culture are shaped, Latin American culture is reproduced across national boundaries, and identity is solidified. The lived experience of these gay Latino men demonstrates the intersectional connections between migration, sexuality, and culture.

 

 Logros Latinxs is brought to you by the students of La Causa, the Multicultural Resource Center,
the office of Student Activities and the office of Alumni and Parent Programs.

Questions about Logros Latinxs? Contact Alumni and Parent Programs at alumni@amherst.edu or 413-542-2313.