In recent years, the rhetoric toward immigrants has become increasingly hostile in Western countries. In defiance of this political climate, there has been a surge of online audio/visual platforms (podcasts, YouTube channels, Facebook groups, etc.) where immigrants come together to highlight their ethnic identity. For example, during Donald Trump's presidency (2016-2020), there was a noticeable increase in the U.S. in podcasts about Latinidad: online audio files through which podcasters of Latin American descent create aural enclaves for other Latin Americans by talking about Latinidad – i.e., a displaced sense of belonging to Latin America.

The project will explore the audio/visual transfer of Latinidad in these audio/visual platforms. This research will be framed using translation theory – a discipline that studies transfers between sources and targets. Podcasts, Youtube channels, Facebook groups and other audio/visual platforms about and by Latin American migrants in Western countries are treated in this project as new forms of translation whose discourse can be defined through their contexts, actors, and practices.

The main research questions of this project are the following:

1. Does the independent, commercial or public nature of the various audio/visual platforms ("context") determine how Latinidad is conveyed?
2. To what extent do the content creators of these platforms (“actors”) rely on their background to be perceived as reliable carriers of Latinidad?
3. What transfer strategies and tactics (“practices”) do they use? Finally, what discourses about Latinidad do these contexts, actors, and practices generate?