Why would a country that has erased Blackness from its national history suddenly begin to enact laws and policies targeting Afrodescendants, and what factors impact the approach that such a state takes to institutionalize Afrodescendant subjecthood? Which actors influence debates about how to legally define and delimit Afro-descent in countries where an Afrodescendant category did not exist previously? And what are the stakes of these state definitions for those who are seeking legal recognition as Afrodescendants for the first-time? In this dissertation, I focus on different sets of interactions and relationships to explain why Argentina and Chile – two states that stand out in Latin America for being particularly successful in establishing themselves as White enclaves – have taken different approaches when legally defining and delimiting Afro-descent.

The scope of the legislation and policies targeting Afrodescendants varies greatly between these two countries. While Argentine law has stressed the importance of ancestry and a broad notion of Afrodescendant culture, institutionalizing different types of Afrodescendant subjecthood, Chilean legislation has defined Afro-descent in relation to a particular history, culture, and identity connected to a long-standing presence in the national territory. Each of the empirical chapters of this dissertation contribute to explaining why Afro-descent has been institutionalized differently in Argentina and Chile by focusing on the interactions between distinct sets of actors that have participated in debates around how to recognize Afrodescendants.

My findings draw on research conducted over the course of four years, which included participant observation, archival data analysis, and 105 in-depth interviews with Afrodescendant activists, scholars, NGO representatives, international and multilateral organization agents, and state officials working at different levels of the Argentine and Chilean governments. From a processual perspective, I examine how the interaction between different sets of actors contributed to the formation of a political field – in dispute – around the recognition of Afrodescendant people. I analyze how, in a context of the international rise of multicultural norms and local ethno-racial revitalization, classification struggles over the meanings and boundaries of Afro-descent have evolved in each country. I particularly focus on the stakes and impacts of these political struggles for delimiting who is included or excluded as a subject of rights.

I identify five factors that together explain divergences between how Afro-Argentine and Afro-Chilean activists have framed Afro-descent and how the Argentine and Chilean states have responded to their claims and institutionalized Afrodescendant subjecthood: 1. Local activists’ access to and mobilization of transnational networks and international resources that can provide leverage in their negotiations with state officials; 2. Governments’ responses to the international commitments they make at intergovernmental forums and ratify through international conventions regarding the adoption of human rights and multicultural norms; 3. Afrodescendant movements’ location in relation to national geographies of power and the social relationships they therefore develop that impact how they draw boundaries of belonging; 4. Countries’ territorial organization of political power and the constraints and opportunities that different political systems afford for activists to access state officials and public institutions to promote ethno-racial reform; and 5. The role played by immigration in debates within Afrodescendant movements and between activists and state officials around who should be legally recognized as Afrodescendant. Overall, my research reveals how and why different definitions of Afro-descent are legally institutionalized, and how these definitions shape the type, impact, and intended beneficiaries of public policies.

My research has several implications for sociological understandings of how social categories get institutionalized. First, it reveals the central role played by activists in classification struggles around the definition, delimitation, and institutionalization of social categories. It shows how activists delimit boundaries of belonging contextually and strategically, depending on who they interact with and what claims they seek to make. Second, it reaffirms the persistence of the nation-state as the main source of symbolic authority to institutionalize these categories, both by legally defining who gets particular resources and by shaping how society at large perceives and classifies the world and each other. The research demonstrates, however, that the state’s symbolic power is not absolute and that there are ongoing struggles to impose new categories both within the state and by civil society actors. Finally, the research shows that the stakes of how social categories are legally defined and delimited are high for those struggling to be recognized, as the institutionalization of social categories reifies distinctions between groups by assigning opportunities and resources to some over others. At the same time, it reveals how hard it is for state policies to disrupt the racial/social hierarchies that activists pushing for them are trying to dispute and dismantle.