American Defenders Against an Illegal Invasion

Dual Racialization Processes in Collective Identity Formation

Bibliographic Data

ID4797103
AuthorsJoshua R Hummel (0000-0002-3740-0951, North Carolina State University, corresponding author)
Year2022
Volume66
Issue12
Pages1688-1708
Publication date2022-11-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueAmerican Behavioral Scientist (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0002-7642 • E-ISSN: 1552-3381
PublisherSAGE Publications Inc (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1177/00027642221083524
OpenAlexW4221037731
LanguageEN
Citations received1
References cited63

This paper considers how the anti-immigrant organization Americans for Legal Immigration PAC (ALIPAC) uses discourse about immigrants and immigration to construct and maintain its collective identity. Although previous approaches to collective identity within organizations primarily center the organizations themselves, studies concerned with anti-immigrant discourse instead emphasize how the organizations that use such discourse racialize members of non-white (especially Latinx) groups as "illegal" residents of the United States who threaten the safety and economic well-being of Americans. Drawing from these two literatures to consider how anti-immigrant organizations construct collective identity, this study investigates how ALIPAC uses presentations its opposition and its membership together to shape the collective identity associated with the organization itself. Using a content analysis, 153 documents released by ALIPAC during 2005 and 2018, the study finds that ALIPAC uses a dual racialization process to racialize immigrants as criminal outsiders who, with assistance from political elites, have overwhelmed the United States and white Americans as victims of these criminal outsiders. From this dual racialization, ALIPAC identifies itself as a defender of American citizens against an immigrant invasion. These results illustrate how racialization and collective identity construction are relational processes understood through a group's presentations of itself and its opposition

Collective identity · Construct (python library) · Criminology · Framing (construction) · Geography · Identity (music) · Immigration · Opposition (politics) · Political science · Politics · Race (biology) · Racialization · Sociology · Gender Studies · Jewish and Middle Eastern Studies · Law · Migration, Refugees, and Integration · Terrorism, Counterterrorism, and Political Violence

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