Latinos, Poverty, and the Underclass: A New Agenda for Research

During the 1980s scholars interested in Hispanic issues sought to advance research by ensuring that Latinos were included in the ongoing debate on the urban underclass. In this article, it is argued that Blacks and Latinos differ in such fundamental ways that the underclass model-which was developed primarily to describe the situation of inner-city Blacks-cannot legitimately be employed to understand the social and economic problems of contemporary Hispanic groups in the United States. Although both groups share high rates of poverty and social dislocation, these high rates are generated through different mechanisms andfor different reasons, compared to Blacks.