Migrating race: migration and racial identification among Puerto Ricans

Abstract

The pattern of racial identification among Puerto Ricans is not uniform. It varies depending on where they live. Most identify as white, but more do so in Puerto Rico than in the USA. This paper addresses the impact that living alternatively in the USA and in Puerto Rico has on racial identification among Puerto Ricans. Using Public Use Microdata Sample data from the American Community Survey and the Puerto Rico Community Survey 2006–2008, I find that while there is no single pattern of impact, those more grounded on the island's racial system are more likely to identify as white in the USA, while those less grounded in Puerto Rico are more likely to identify as multiracial or by another racial descriptor. On their return to the island, they revert to the prevalent pattern of racial identification, while still exhibiting effects of their sojourn on their racial identity.

Keywords:

• race
• census
• racial identification
• Puerto Ricans
• migration

Acknowledgements

I thank two anonymous referees for the valuable suggestions to earlier versions of this paper as well as Ana Y. Ramos-Zayas for her comments on a later version.

Notes

1. Based on analysis of census data (Puerto Rico Community Survey 2006–2008, IPUMS), 94 per cent of Cubans in Puerto Rico identified as white, 3 per cent as black, 2 per cent as some other race, and 1 per cent with two or more races. Among Dominicans in Puerto Rico, 28 per cent identified as white, 35 per cent as black, 22 per cent as some other race, and 11 per cent with two or more races.

2. Trigueño, pardo and moreno were often used either as euphemisms for or as alternatives to mulato or negro. The slave registry of 1872 contained more than 30 descriptors and adjectives to describe the skin colour of slaves, including negro, mulato, moreno, pardo, trigueño and blanco. (Negrón Portillo and Mayo Santana 2007). Terms such as jabao may not have been used in official documentation, but its use is recorded in the literary record as far as the middle of the nineteenth century (Álvarez Nazario 1974).

3. In 2000, 80.5 per cent of the population identified as white, 8 per cent as black, 6.8 per cent as other, and 4 per cent as multiracial.

4. Census data, for instance, do not include information on experience with racial discrimination in Puerto Rico and the USA; the race of most respondents' parents, unless they are children living in the parents' household; or length of sojourn in the USA for Puerto Rican return migrants residing on the island. All of these factors are likely to inform greatly a person's racial identity and identification.

5. Most of these variables are categorical in nature. A dummy variable was created for each category. The omitted (reference) variables in the logistic equations in Tables 5 and 9 are: ‘women’, for Gender; ‘did not attend school’, for Educational Attainment; ‘professional’ for Occupation; ‘out of the labour force’, for Labour Force Participation; and ‘not at all’, for Speaks English.

6. Results for these control variables are not presented in Tables 5 and 9, but are available from the author upon request.

7. Data on the number of years persons born in Puerto Rico who resided in the USA but at the time of the survey resided in Puerto Rico are not available for analyses as they were not collected by the US Census Bureau in its American Community Survey or the Puerto Rico Community Survey.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Carlos Vargas-Ramos

CARLOS VARGAS-RAMOS is Research Associate in the Center for Puerto Rican Studies at Hunter College, City University of New York.