This dissertation investigates how colonialism, citizenship, migration, and racialization intersect in a new destination and shape Puerto Ricans’ contemporary experiences. Puerto Ricans are a strategic case to examine through these frameworks because Puerto Ricans’ have been U.S. citizens for over a century due to an ongoing colonial relationship between the U.S. and Puerto Rico. There have been various waves of Puerto Rican migration to the U.S. mainland throughout the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. Moreover, Puerto Ricans are a phenotypically diverse group due to the historic intermixing between Indigenous, African, and European groups in Puerto Rico. And, Puerto Ricans are an original member of the institutionally created Hispanic ethnic group.

Our current understanding of Puerto Ricans in the U.S. is largely based on their experiences in traditional destinations of migration located in the Northeast and Midwest. Scholars that have studied this experience have argued Puerto Ricans experienced a racialized mode of incorporation in traditional destinations, which explains their lower socioeconomic outcomes, marginalized experiences, and placement on the lower rungs of the social hierarchy in traditional destinations. However, the Puerto Rican experience is quite different today. In the latter part of the twentieth century, Florida emerged as a new destination for Puerto Ricans. The popularity of Florida has been such that as of 2017, Florida’s Puerto Rican population (1,128,225) surpassed New York’s historic Puerto Rican community (1,113,123). Florida presents a distinct context relative to traditional destinations because Florida is located in the U.S. South, it is a politically conservative state, and Central Florida specifically lacks the extensive migration history that characterizes gateway cities. Moreover, Florida has attracted Puerto Ricans of distinct socioeconomic and education backgrounds as well as Puerto Ricans from Puerto Rico and from traditional mainland destinations.

Given Puerto Rico’s and Puerto Ricans’ relationship to the United States, unique contextual dynamics in Florida, and current Puerto Rican migratory patterns and migrant characteristics, this article-based dissertation examines: 1) how Puerto Ricans experience their status as U.S. citizens in Florida; 2) how they make sense of the current immigration debate and how their political and social position influences their perceptions on immigration; 3) and how Puerto Ricans experience natural disasters and become structural and climate refugees.

This research relies on 129 in-depth interviews and participant observations conducted in Orlando, Florida. First, focusing on how Florida Puerto Ricans experience the institution of U.S. citizenship, I find respondents define U.S. citizenship as partial rights and as a formal status yet they feel excluded from the American national community. Second, in terms of the politics of immigration, I find Puerto Ricans largely express supportive attitudes toward undocumented immigration, nevertheless, respondents deploy mainstream views of migrant deservingness and undeservingness. Furthermore, I find Puerto Ricans’ immigration attitudes convey a group consciousness, and at times a sense of linked fate, with Latin American immigrants. I also find that for some respondents immigration is a critical election issue, such that a candidate’s stance on immigration would determine their vote for president in 2016. Lastly, I find Puerto Rico’s political and territorial status exacerbated the experiences of Hurricane Mar�a evacuees. Specifically, most Hurricane Mar�a evacuees experienced material losses, lacked access to vital essentials for weeks, and they experienced inadequate and insufficient governmental relief and aid in Puerto Rico. Further, they deployed migration to Florida as a disaster relief strategy. Based on these findings, I advance that Puerto Ricans have a colonial racialized citizenship. I argue this concept accounts for Puerto Ricans’ unequal political relationship with the State and group level relations that are racial.