Demarcation and Difference: Language and Indigenous Self-Identity in Latin America
Indigeneity remains a major axis of stratification in Latin America, making questions of when and why people identify as Indigenous central to understanding and addressing inequality in the region. Using representative Latinobarometer data from 16 countries, collected between 2007 and 2020, the auth...
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| Main Authors: | , |
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| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
SAGE Publishing
2024-11-01
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| Series: | Socius |
| Online Access: | https://doi.org/10.1177/23780231241298319 |
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| Summary: | Indigeneity remains a major axis of stratification in Latin America, making questions of when and why people identify as Indigenous central to understanding and addressing inequality in the region. Using representative Latinobarometer data from 16 countries, collected between 2007 and 2020, the authors analyze the two most widely used instruments for the identification of Indigenous people in Hispanophone America: self-identification and respondents’ mother tongue. Descriptive analysis shows that though the majority of respondents are nonspeakers and nonidentifiers, nonnegligible proportions of respondents are identifiers and speakers, identifiers and nonspeakers, and nonidentifiers and speakers. In multivariate analyses, the authors test factors associated with identification conditional on linguistic background. The findings support hypotheses that privilege and, in some cases, social mobility are negatively associated with Indigenous identification and of race as a “master category.” The authors also document that Indigenous identification has increased over birth cohorts. The results contribute to the literature on the complexity of measuring Indigeneity in the Latin American context. |
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| ISSN: | 2378-0231 |