Negotiating Ethnic Recognition Systems in the UK: the soft pan-ethnic identifications of Latin American migrants in the north of England

Despite aiming to provide minority ethnic groups with material equality and protection from discrimination, the British ethno-cultural system of recognition has perpetuated social differentiation which is difficult to transcend. Drawing from interviews with informants and ten in-depth case studies with Latin American and Latino-British families in the Yorkshire and Greater Manchester regions of the north of England, the paper explores the fraught relationship between these migrants and their multicultural framework of incorporation. Significant here are the contested understandings of the Latin American collective identity combined with the diversity of migration trajectories, socio-economic backgrounds, and life course needs of migrants and their children which contribute to soft panethnic identifications among the participant population. It is argued that by encouraging migrants and their descendants to seek recognition through absolute ethnic differences, multicultural recognition systems can reproduce colonial categories and fail to respond to the diverse social and life course needs of migrants.