Negotiating Ethnic Boundaries: Multiethnic Mexican Americans and Ethnic Identity in the United States

Negotiating Ethnic Boundaries: Multiethnic Mexican Americans and Ethnic Identity in the United States

Ethnicities
Volume 4, Number  1 (March 2004)
pages 75-97
DOI: 10.1177/1468796804040329

Tomás R. Jiménez, Assistant Professor of Sociology
Stanford University

This article examines the ethnic identity of the offspring of Mexican/white (non-Hispanic) intermarriages, or multiethnic Mexican Americans, using 20 in-depth interviews with multiethnic Mexican Americans in California. Interviews indicate that respondents gravitate toward a Mexican American ethnic identity since it is the most salient ethnicity in their social environment. But as respondents choose their identities, they confront ethnic boundaries, or sharp division between ethnic categories, that influence the extent to which they feel free to assert any one particular identity. They respond to these boundaries by taking a symbolic approach, a Mexican American approach, a multiethnic approach to their ethnicity, and a combination of these approaches.

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