| Sumario: | This study examines the attitudes and perceptions of assimilation among Latino/a immigrant-origin young adults. Drawing on 60 in-depth interviews with Latino/a college students, I find that children of immigrants' perceptions of belonging are shaped by the present-day hostile social and political context, and their response to such context shifts as they come of age. The findings revealed that college students absorbed restrictive ideals of assimilation as children and used those measures to negatively judge themselves and their immigrant parents. However, as adults, they began to outright reject ideals of assimilation in three qualitatively different ways. First, they emphasised that immigrants ought to adapt just enough to survive without compromising their ethnic differences. Second, they criticised structural inequalities as the reason for immigrants' hardships. Lastly, they pushed back against the 'moral economy of deservingness', and believed immigrants should be celebrated just as they are and not on what they can do to benefit the US. I argue that adult children of racialised and illegalised immigrants reject assimilation as a direct response to the marginalisation of their families. These findings underscore the interdependent relationship between social belonging and national ideologies on race and immigration, and how this relationship evolves over time.
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