The Second Generation in Chile: Negotiating Identities, Rights, and Public Policy
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/imig.12410 |
| Published date | 01 April 2018 |
| Author | Iskra Pavez‐Soto,Carol Chan |
| Date | 01 April 2018 |
The Second Generation in Chile: Negotiating
Identities, Rights, and Public Policy
Iskra Pavez-Soto* and Carol Chan**
ABSTRACT
This article presents the first study of children born in Chile to at least one migrant parent –
the “second-generation”. Based on a mixed methods and child-centred approach, this article
discusses institutional and experiential aspects of boundary and identity-making in Chile
regarding race and nationality. We first review quantitative data from the state regarding the
second-generation. Building on insights from comparative research on European states’sec-
ond-generation integration policies, we suggest how gathering targeted Census data in Chile
can inform the long-term evaluation of state policies and programs for socio-cultural inclusion
in education and labour. We also present qualitative data from interviews with ten second-gen-
eration children between ages eight to thirteen, born to parents from Peru and Ecuador. We
attend to how they negotiate being perceived as “foreign”and/or “Chilean”. Their position in-
between the two categories is an important starting point for policies and discourse to expand
notions of citizenship and belonging.
INTRODUCTION
This article takes as its starting point the position that research about children born to migrant par-
ents in destination countries –often referred to as the second-generation (Portes and Zhou, 1993) –
can challenge and illuminate polarizing contemporary debates on migration, citizenship, and
belonging (Vertovec and Wessendorf, 2010). Research on the second generation has examined per-
tinent questions about the effects of long-term social and structural discrimination of people marked
as “migrants”, and how or whether it is possible for migrants’children –and by extension, families
–to overcome discrimination, chiefly in terms of access to higher education and better pay. By
building on and contributing to this scholarship, we highlight its relevance for the resurgence of
nationalist and nativist public discourses in various destination countries globally. These discourses,
often amplified by conservative media sources, tend to accuse migrants of negatively altering or
destabilizing these countries’“national identity”and “values”(Huntington, 2004). Building on the
Chilean case study, this article considers how the unique positionality of the second-generation –
who occupy ambiguous social positions between “citizens”and “foreigners”–can expand cultural
notions of citizenship and belonging in migrant-destination contexts.
The majority of research on the second-generation is conducted in the United States (US), Eur-
ope (Thomson and Crul, 2007), and countries considered wealthy and developed such as Japan
(Takenoshita et al., 2014). Race and/or ethnicity are frequently cited as factors explaining the long-
term structural discrimination against migrants and their children. Their frequent exclusion from
* Universidad Bernardo O’Higgins, Santiago
** Universidad Alberto Hurtado, Santiago
doi: 10.1111/imig.12410
©2017 The Authors
International Migration ©2017 IOM
International Migration Vol. 56 (2) 2018
ISS N 00 20- 7985 Published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd.
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