The social aftershocks of a migration crisis: racial threat and racial drift in the Dominican Republic

ABSTRACTIn this paper, I explore how the racial structure of an immigrant-receiving Latin American society informs the strategies that are available to its members when they are confronted with the arrival of perceived racial outsiders. Using survey data, I explore how Dominicans responded to the rapid influx of displaced Haitians in the aftermath of the 2010 earthquake in Haiti, and find that when surveyed after the earthquake, Dominicans were more likely to self-identify with the popular and nationalist identity category of indio. I argue that this signaled a heightening of anti-Haitian sentiment in a moment of perceived increased racial threat to the Dominican racial order, and that this shift was facilitated by Latin American racial dynamics that allow for movement between enumerated racial categories in societies structured around the logic of mestizaje.KEYWORDS: Raceracial threatanti-blacknessimmigrant receptionmestizajeDominican Republic AcknowledgementsI thank Eduardo Bonilla-Silva, the editors, and the anonymous reviewers for their helpful suggestions in the production of this manuscript. I thank LAPOP and their funders. A version of this paper was presented at the 2023 meeting of the Southern Sociological Association. Screening for IRB Exemption granted by Duke Campus IRB, Protocol #2020-0130.Disclosure statementNo potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).Notes1 For public, unrestricted survey data and technical information about LAPOP sampling, visit: http://www.vanderbilt.edu/lapop/core-surveys.php.2 Communications with LAPOP confirmed this.