Mostly of Spanish Extraction: Second-Class Citizenship and Racial Formation in Puerto Rican Chicago, 1946–1965

Both Puerto Rico and the mainland US were characterized by "racialized social systems," wherein people identified with different racial categories experience a material "difference in life chances." During and after World War II, both societies also experienced profound transformations. Thus, Puerto Ricans arriving in Chicago worked to secure their place in an unfamiliar and rapidly changing situation. The resulting process of racial formation manifested in uneven, shifting access to material benefits routinely accorded to whites, and in the changing attitudes of the migrants, as well as those of their co-workers, bosses, neighbors, landlords, and the police. The supposed advantages of birthright citizenship eventually came to resemble the burdens of second-class citizenship that remained affixed to African Americans as they too arrived in Chicago in large numbers after World War II.