Paper short abstract:

Tropes of "generation" and "generational assimilation" have been a useful strategy for communities of racialized migrant laborers to discuss and effect social mobility. The terms however comprise a flawed unit of analysis to critique and frame inequality and marginality in migrant labor contexts.

Paper long abstract:

Academic studies of Portuguese and other migrant communities in the US have used "generation" to contemplate socio-economic and social mobility using terms like "integration," "adaptation," and etc. —usually examining an individual’s temporal distance from their first migrant ancestor to correlate with greater levels of “assimilation”. The academic language both produces and replicates folk terms that discuss longitudinal place making efforts in terms of generational change. It is necessary to recognize participants categories as important variables, however, "generation," "generational assimiliation" and "generational change" as part of an analytical concept obscures what are ongoing decisions by migrant founded communities to continue to perform assimilability narratives that structure privilege and social mobility in white nationalist political power processes. Presenting ethnography based on research from longitudinal migration from Portugal to New England, this paper critiques "generation" by examining migrant labor negotiations for legitimacy and civic power that depend on mutual multi-generational collective identities to advocate for belonging and influence. The reliance on "generation" replicates unequal discourses as older cohorts define their belonging through political discourse that marginalizes newer arrivals. It erases and reduces the complexity of the experiences of those within migrant labor communities and falsely presents a picture that tells a tale of inevitable (generational) progress; rather than provide a framework to better understand the agencies necessary to effect social change, or how political power and privilege is negotiated in collective place-making and racialized social mobility strategies.