Boundary Articulation and Emergent Identities: Asian and Hispanic Panethnicity in Comparison 1970-1980

Abstract

This article examines how minority leaders articulate emergent group boundaries. We provide the first systematic comparison of the Asian and Hispanic panethnic movements of the 1970s, assessing how pioneering publications developed claims about panethnicity before the identities became widely institutionalized. The findings indicate that despite referring to communities with different histories, discussions about Asian and Hispanic panethnicity displayed strikingly similar discursive patterns. We identify three such analytical patterns-broad definitions, prototypes, and group comparison-and theorize about how they helped to make new Asian and Hispanic boundaries recognizable. In doing so, we develop a new analytical framework for understanding the role of cultural and discursive resources in boundary construction and suggest how it may be applied beyond the cases examined here.