Details

Autor(en) / Beteiligte

• Furuyama, Katie L

Titel

Imagining equality, constructing ethnicity, race, identity, and nation: The Japanese American Citizens League and the League of United Latin American Citizens

Ort / Verlag

ProQuest Dissertations Publishing

Erscheinungsjahr

2012

Link zum Volltext

• ProQuest

Quelle

ProQuest Dissertations & Theses A&I

Beschreibungen/Notizen

• Membership-based organizations represent a constituent population, but in advocating for this group, they must include some and exclude others in order to construct a coherent and group image around which they can mobilize and make claims. For organizations representing immigrant, racial and ethnic groups within a national context, drawing boundaries around identity can require a delicate negotiation of issues of race, ethnicity, immigration, citizenship, and national identity. This dissertation integrates social movement theory models of political opportunity structures and collective identity formation, and a racial formation framework and seeks to understand how civil rights organizations representing racial, ethnic and immigrant constituent groups construct and manage the images of these groups over time. Analysis is based on a comparative and historical case study of the Japanese American Citizens League (JACL) and the League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC), organizations originally representing Japanese American and Mexican American citizens, respectively. It explores how the leaders of the JACL and LULAC have defined themselves in relationship to changes in the political opportunity structure and how processes of differential racialization shape political opportunity structures for their constituent groups. It also includes analysis of instances in the JACL and LULAC leaders aimed to construct a public image of their respective constituent groups through public relations campaigns, lobbying, and the courts. In particular, it focuses on how organizations construct identity within a context of contestation over group identity in internal organizational debates, criticism from competitors, and interaction with government policies. It finds that organizations changed their constructed identities in response to the following factors: institutionalization of race and language as categories under which the government worked to address disparities, funding structures privileging panethnic groups or projects, working in coalition with other actors who promote different identities, shifts in immigration flows and demographic changes within their constituent populations, and changes in racial/ethnic stereotypes about their group. These findings contribute to the understanding of collective identity construction within social movement organizations and differential racial formation.