The Latinx problem: The troubling work of categories in the 20th and 21st centuries

This dissertation studies the history of U.S. Hispanic and Latino panethnicity to study the impact of data and online technologies on modern practices of demographic categorization by using the new category, “Latinx,” as a theoretical lens. The dissertation’s chapters present case studies examining academic scholarship, research databases, and election coverage, converging distinct archives, to consider categorization, datafication, knowledge production, and Latinx people in the United States. In Chapter 1, the way that Latinx is received by academics is discussed to underscore an ongoing lack of conformity regarding terms and names used in scholarship about this population, including the diverse theoretical approaches found in Latinx scholarship. In Chapter 2, the databases and publications of health research about Hispanic and Latino populations are scrutinized to understand the foundations of the group’s observed epidemiological paradoxes to show how particular knowledges about this population are produced as “truthful” although “paradoxical.” In Chapter 3, the national, racial, and gendered frameworks that produce the categories of undocumented and Latinx demonstrate the ways that stereotypes and assumptions are made real through the datafication of immigration discourses and leveraging of data as the bearer of truth. In Chapter 4, examining discourses on the “Latino vote” demonstrate how this concept is maintained today by the politically conservative Latino man voter archetype, shaped by voter data analysis and expectations about Latinx American citizenry. This final chapter shows how machismo and mestizaje produce ideas of ethnic masculinity that maintain understandings of difference that support white supremacy and gender norms.Throughout its chapters, the dissertation argued that “Latinx” operates not simply as an alternative category, but as an intervention into exclusionary logics of dominant regimes of categorization and the contradictions embedded within it. This study exposes the representational failures of “Hispanic” and “Latino”—as well as “Latina,” “immigrant,” and “undocumented”—in the regimes of academic research, epidemiology, and immigration enforcement to illuminates how identity categories of difference sustain ideas about American belonging. Using Latinx as a lens reveals the limits and potential of identity as a political and analytic tool under modern datafication. Today’s data-centric approaches to governance and society are deeply implicated in the work of sustaining difference and marking limits of belonging to society and the nation, influencing the significance of claiming an identity that best fits in certain contexts. In the governmental and knowledge regimes examined, categories are usually full of contradictions and founded on stereotypes, consistently offering improper and insufficient representation. Datafication does not merely reflect social difference; it actively organizes and stabilizes normative assumptions about race, gender, and sexuality, thereby enabling the continued governance of populations through laws and social norms. Categorization and datafication are not neutral processes, but mutually reinforcing technologies of power.