Inside Story

2019 ◽  
pp. 27-54
Author(s):  
Sarah C. Bishop
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Public Education ◽  
Undocumented Immigrants ◽  
The United States ◽  
Undocumented Immigration ◽  
Immigrant Rights ◽  
Immigrant Rights Movement

This chapter reveals the centrality of narrative and storytelling to the sociopolitical status of undocumented immigrants living in the United States. It offers a theorization of reclaimant narratives by illuminating the experiential, partial, public, oppositional, and incondensable nature of the stories undocumented activists tell. Despite attempts to essentialize and distill this narrative, the reality of undocumented immigration is a complicated story with no easy one-size-fits all tagline. This reality complicates the process of public education about immigration and works both for and against immigrants who use their stories as activism. The emergence of voices of undocumented storytellers in the immigrant rights movement has the capacity to engender empathy, motivate listeners, and even advance reforms in laws and policy. But these narratives also have the capacity to decelerate the movement by detracting from systematic problems and the tangible actions needed to advance reform.

In Pursuit of an Audience

2019 ◽  
pp. 131-151
Author(s):  
Sarah C. Bishop
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Undocumented Immigrants ◽  
Public Discourse ◽  
The United States ◽  
Undocumented Immigration ◽  
Immigrant Rights ◽  
Apparent Lack ◽  
Historical Reality ◽  
Lack Of Knowledge

This chapter turns from undocumented creators to their audiences to illuminate how immigrant storytellers conceive of and characterize US citizens who encounter reclaimant narratives. The narrators describe their frustration with citizens’ apparent lack of knowledge about immigrant rights and policy. I illustrate the link between US audiences’ perceptions of immigrants and the tropes present in mediated portrayals of immigrants in public discourse, and the narrators describe their own reactions to these portrayals. Finally, in response to the question “What do you wish US citizens knew about undocumented immigrants?” they explain why it is so important that citizens recognize immigrants as human, take a bigger picture view of the historical reality of undocumented immigration, acknowledge the factors that lead immigrants to give up their homes and communities and flee to the United States, and understand the privilege of citizenship.

Labor Unions and Undocumented Immigrants: Local Perspectives on Transversal Solidarity During DACA and DAPA

2020 ◽  
pp. 089692052098012
Author(s):  
Els de Graauw ◽  
Shannon Gleeson
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
San Francisco ◽  
Labor Unions ◽  
Undocumented Immigrants ◽  
The United States ◽  
Immigrant Communities ◽  
Immigrant Rights ◽  
Deferred Action ◽  
Immigrant Organizations ◽  
Local Perspectives

National labor unions in the United States have formally supported undocumented immigrants since 2000. However, drawing on 69 interviews conducted between 2012 and 2016 with union and immigrant rights leaders, this article offers a locally grounded account of how union solidarity with undocumented immigrants has varied notably across the country. We explore how unions in San Francisco and Houston have engaged with Obama-era immigration initiatives that provided historic relief to some undocumented immigrants. We find that San Francisco’s progressive political context and dense infrastructure of immigrant organizations have enabled the city’s historically powerful unions to build deep institutional solidarity with immigrant communities during the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA [2012]) and Deferred Action for Parents of Americans (DAPA [2014]) programs. Meanwhile, Houston’s politically divided context and much sparser infrastructure of immigrant organizations made it necessary for the city’s historically weaker unions to build solidarity with immigrant communities through more disparate channels.

scholarly journals Capitalism and the Immigrant Rights Movement in the United States

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marcel Paret ◽  
Sofya Aptekar ◽  
Shannon Gleeson
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Social Movements ◽  
The United States ◽  
Global Capitalism ◽  
Recent History ◽  
Immigrant Rights ◽  
History Of ◽  
Immigrant Rights Movement

Social movements are full of contradictions, and an inherent tension often emerges between reformist and radical flanks. This becomes especially true as activists attempt to draw connections between varied aims such as opposition to globalization and support for immigrants. During the 1999 Battle of Seattle, the movement focused on opposing neoliberalism (Graeber 2002) and advocating for alternative visions of globalization (Reitan 2012). Some activists also noted the hypocrisy of opening borders to capital while militarizing the borders for migrants. Yet, in the end, immigrant rights movements and their central issues did not feature prominently in Seattle or later anti-globalization efforts. Simultaneously, however, most immigrant rights advocates have not prioritized opposition to the destructive power of global capitalism. In this paper, we consider the implication of this critical omission and trace the recent history of the immigrant rights movement and its articulations with anti-capitalism.

Undocumented College Students in the United States: A category in need of further analysis

2014 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 7-16 ◽  
Author(s):  
Francesca Deguili
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
College Students ◽  
Family Structure ◽  
Undocumented Immigrants ◽  
Legal Status ◽  
Family Members ◽  
Undocumented Students ◽  
The United States ◽  
Undocumented Immigration ◽  
Undocumented College Students

This paper concerns itself with a subset of undocumented immigrants, that of undocumented students in the United States. While many sociologists have engaged with undocumented immigration in general, not much attention has been paid to this growing group and when it has been done these students were treated as a unified and undiversified category. In this letter, instead, I intend to outline some of the ways in which the label of undocumented student and its consequences may vary greatly depending on a number of different elements, among them: the different legal status of various family members, the different methods of entry into the country, family structure, and the influence of the communities that surround them.

FLOResiste

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nilda Flores-González ◽  
Ruth Gomberg-Muñoz
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Indigenous People ◽  
Political Activism ◽  
The United States ◽  
Immigrant Worker ◽  
Immigrant Rights ◽  
Immigrant Rights Movement ◽  
Neoliberal Policies

This chapter examines the intersections of gendered and transnational labor, class, race, migration, and political activism in Flor Crisóstomo's life as a transnational worker, mother, and activist. Crisóstomo is an immigrant worker and mother from Mexico who turned into an activist after she was apprehended in a worksite immigration raid in 2006. She created a blog called FLOResiste to denounce neoliberal policies that have led to the migration of women and indigenous people and resulted in the separation of families. This chapter first situates Crisóstomo's experiences within theoretical understandings of transnational motherhood before discussing the circumstances that led her to migrate to the United States and expand on her experiences as a transnational worker until the raid. It also analyzes Crisóstomo's politicization through the immigrant rights movement, her defiance of a deportation order, and her activism and concludes by assessing how these events have transformed her perceptions and practices regarding parenting and placing those ideas in a transnational and neoliberal context.

The Changing Contours of the Immigrant Rights Protest Movement in the United States: Who Demonstrates Now?

The Forum ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 14 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
James A. McCann ◽  
Katsuo A. Nishikawa Chávez ◽  
Marisa Plasencia ◽  
Harper Otawka
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
The United States ◽  
Immigrant Population ◽  
Mexican Immigrant ◽  
Immigrant Rights ◽  
Longitudinal Surveys ◽  
Protest Movements ◽  
Protest Movement ◽  
Immigrant Rights Movement ◽  
Democratic Systems

AbstractDrawing from several original longitudinal surveys of the Mexican immigrant population in Texas and Indiana, we examine the course of the immigrant rights movement in the wake of the historic mobilization in the spring of 2006. We find that from 2007 to 2015, the number of participants in demonstrations, rallies, and marches to support immigrant rights dropped substantially, though protesting remains a fairly prevalent activity. The Mexicans taking part in protest events today, however, have higher levels of education and are older compared to 8 years ago, and they are not primarily driven by personal grievances. This change in the activist base suggests that the immigrant rights movement is following a trajectory that is common among protest movements across many democratic systems. What began as an expression of profound discontent has become a somewhat more conventional mode of involvement.

Conclusion

2019 ◽  
pp. 152-170
Author(s):  
Sarah C. Bishop
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
The United States ◽  
Immigration Reform ◽  
Policy Changes ◽  
Immigrant Rights ◽  
Voting Power ◽  
The Future ◽  
Immigrant Rights Movement ◽  
Future Work

This chapter argues that the future of the immigrant rights movement hinges on the power of storytelling. It illuminates the ideological role of audience knowledge and ignorance to the movement and demonstrates that the voting power to advance immigration reform may rest in the hands of individuals who favor a path to citizenship but do not know what policy changes would be necessary for that to happen. Bishop interrogates both nationalism and citizenship to demonstrate their critical relationship to the contested nature of immigration in the United States. The chapter details several areas of potential future work that could extend academic understanding of the role of storytelling in the immigrant rights movement.

On the association between undocumented immigration and crime in the United States

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christian Gunadi
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Violent Crime ◽  
Undocumented Immigrants ◽  
The United States ◽  
Crime Rates ◽  
Undocumented Immigration ◽  
Us States ◽  
Younger Age ◽  
The Usa ◽  
Immigration And Crime

Abstract Approximately 11 million undocumented individuals live in the United States. At the same time, there are concerns that the presence of undocumented immigrants may contribute to an increase in crime rates. In this article, I examine the institutionalization rate of undocumented immigrants and quantify the change in crime rates attributable to undocumented immigration. The analysis yields a few main results. First, despite possessing characteristics usually associated with crime, undocumented immigrants are 33% less likely to be institutionalized compared to US natives. Second, there is no evidence that undocumented immigrants who have spent more time in the USA are more likely to be institutionalized compared to those who have been in the USA for a shorter time. There is evidence, however, that arriving at a younger age is associated with higher institutionalization rate. Finally, overall property and violent crime rates across US states are not statistically significantly increased by undocumented immigration.

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