Children of Latino immigrants framing race: making sense of criminalisation in a colour-blind era

Post-1965 children of Latino immigrants in the United States have come of age during an era of mass incarceration and a colour-blind ideology. Drawing from in-depth interviews with inner city, male, young adult children of Latino immigrants in Los Angeles, we examine the extent to which they make sense of their criminalisation through a racial lens. We find the segregated urban context to be a place of paradox: one that marginalises and racialises children of immigrants, while helping to sustain a colour-blind ideology. Internal dynamics in urban neighbourhoods heightens the criminalisation of young men, but obscures their perceived racialisation. Most young men dismiss instances of discrimination, but a racial lens emerges as they step out of their neighbourhoods into white spaces and discover they are uniformly 'othered' in association to the criminalised inner city. Respondents more likely to traverse urban space were more likely to emerge in racial consciousness, whereas the most 'locked in place' and subject to criminalisation, normalise this process through a colour-blind lens.