ABSTRACT
Over the course of the 1999-2000 school year, I interviewed 26 Mexican and Puerto Rican high school students of various phenotypes to understand how they 1) defined their own ethnic identity; 2) perceived others defined them racially and ethnically; 3) assessed the opportunities available for the social group with which they identified and that of those with whom they were identified; and 4) how their academic orientation is related (or not) to the internal and external construction of their ethnic identity and perceptions of opportunity. In the following sections I provide contextual information regarding the research site, the city and community context, the selection of respondents and their background, data collection procedures, and data reduction and analysis.
