scholarly journals Building a Life Despite It All: Structural Oppression and Resilience of Undocumented Latina Migrants in Central Florida

2020 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 35-52
Author(s):  
SaraJane Renfroe
Keyword(s):  
Collaborative Research ◽  
Legal Status ◽  
Participant Observation ◽  
Social Systems ◽  
The United States ◽  
Immigration Policies ◽  
Central Florida ◽  
Women's Lives ◽  
Research Questions ◽  
Race Ethnicity

Immigrants to the United States encounter a multitude of challenges upon arriving. This is further complicated if migrants arrive without legal status and even more so if these migrants are women. My research engages with Kimberlé Crenshaw’s concept of intersectionality to examine interlocking systems of oppression faced by undocumented migrant women living in Central Florida. I worked mainly in Apopka, Florida, with women who migrated from Mexico, Central America, and South America. I found that three broad identity factors shaped their experiences of life in the U.S.: gender, undocumented status, and Latinx identity. The last factor specifically affected women’s lives through not only their own assertions of their identity, but also outsider projections of interviewees’ race, ethnicity, and culture. My research examines how these identity factors affected my interviewees and limited their access to employment, healthcare, and education. Through a collaborative research project involving work with Central Floridian non-pro t and activist organizations, I conducted interviews and participant observation to answer my research questions. Through my research, I found that undocumented Latina migrants in Central Florida face structural vulnerabilities due to gendered and racist immigration policies and social systems, the oppressive effects of which were only partly mitigated by women’s involvement with community organizations. My research exposes fundamental and systemic failures within U.S. immigration policies and demonstrates that U.S. immigration policy must change to address intersectional oppression faced by undocumented Latina migrants.

scholarly journals Lost and found: lessons from collaborative research with undergraduate students on the Lost Girls of Sudan

1970 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Laura DeLuca
Keyword(s):  
Undergraduate Students ◽  
Collaborative Research ◽  
Undergraduate Research ◽  
Participant Observation ◽  
The United States ◽  
Lost And Found ◽  
Anthropological Research ◽  
Faculty Supervision ◽  
Sudanese Refugees ◽  
Research Assistants

This article focuses on the challenges and rewards of working  with undergraduate research assistants. The anthropological research project involves interviews and participant observation with Sudanese refugees living  in the United States. Five undergraduates share their reflections as neophyte anthropologists. The audience for this article is primarily anthropologists and  others interested in involving students in field-based research. Undergraduate students embarking on research under faculty supervision may be interested as well.

scholarly journals Resisting Resolution: Enterprise Civic Systems Meet Community Organizing

2021 ◽  
Vol 5 (4) ◽  
pp. 20
Author(s):  
Christopher A. Le Dantec ◽  
Adriana Alvarado Garcia ◽  
Ciabhan Connelly ◽  
Amanda Meng
Keyword(s):  
Community Organizing ◽  
Collaborative Research ◽  
Participant Observation ◽  
Mixed Methods Study ◽  
Primary Research ◽  
Complex Needs ◽  
Enterprise Technology ◽  
Technology Platforms ◽  
Research Questions ◽  
Insight Into

Notions of the smart city look to mobilize information technology to increase organizational efficiency, and more recently, to support new forms of community engagement and involvement in addressing municipal issues. As cities turn to civic enterprise technology platforms, we need to better understand how that class of system might be positioned and used to collaborate with informal community-born coalitions. Beginning in 2019, we undertook an embedded collaborative research project in Albany Georgia, a small rural city, to understand three primary research questions: (1) How do community organizing practices take shape around joint initiatives with local government? (2) What data, tools, and process are needed to support those initiatives? (3) How do the affordances of City-run enterprise platforms support such community-born initiatives? To develop insight into these questions, we deployed a mixed-methods study that interwove participant observation, qualitative fieldwork, and participatory workshops. From this, we point to several mismatches that arose between the assumptions of a managed enterprise environment and the complex needs of establishing and supporting a multiparty community coalition.

INEQUALITY IN A “POSTRACIAL” ERA

2012 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
pp. 339-353 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ruth Gomberg-Muñoz
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Legal Status ◽  
Prison Population ◽  
Low Cost ◽  
The United States ◽  
Immigrant Workers ◽  
Immigration Policies ◽  
Role Of The State ◽  
Criminal Legislation

AbstractOver the past four decades, increasingly punitive and enforcement-oriented U.S. immigration policies have been legitimized by a rhetoric of criminality that stigmatizes Latino immigrant workers and intensifies their exploitation. Simultaneously, there has been a sevenfold increase in the prison population in the United States, in which African Americans are eight times more likely to be jailed than Whites (Western 2006, p. 3). In this paper, I draw on scholarship in history and sociology, as well as my own anthropological research, to develop the argument that criminal justice policies and immigration policies together disempower low-wage U.S. labor and maintain categorical racial inequalities in a “postracial” United States. First, I review the historical role of race in U.S. immigration policy, and I consider the evidence for systemic racism in immigration enforcement in the contemporary period. Second, I discuss criminal legislation in the neoliberal era and examine the ways in which criminal legislation and immigration policies together disempower large segments of the U.S. workforce, satisfying employer demands for low cost and pliant labor. Finally, I argue that a political focus on immigrant workers' “illegality” masks the role of the state in (re)defining the legal status of low-wage workers and veils the ways in which punitive policies maintain historical racial and class inequalities.

Are You With the FBI?: Fieldwork Challenges in a Post 9/11 Muslim American Community

2009 ◽  
Vol 31 (2) ◽  
pp. 12-17
Author(s):  
Tony Gaskew
Keyword(s):  
Participant Observation ◽  
Field Research ◽  
The United States ◽  
Muslim American ◽  
Patriot Act ◽  
Central Florida ◽  
Usa Patriot Act ◽  
The Usa ◽  
Muslim Communities ◽  
The Impact

This article is based on my experiences as an ethnographer and criminologist conducting sixteen months of field research among a Muslim American community in central Florida studying the impact of the USA PATRIOT Act. It highlights the unique challenges and obstacles facing researchers conducting participant observation within Muslim communities in the United States in the aftermath of 9/11. Establishing and maintaining trust and credibility with research participants has always been the foundation upon which fieldwork is built. Ethnographers engaged in research in Muslim American communities today must overcome various hurdles, including a deep sense of mistrust, alienation, fear, and potential issues of national security.

scholarly journals The Academic Performance of Undocumented Students in Higher Education in the United States

2019 ◽  
Vol 54 (1) ◽  
pp. 289-315 ◽  
Author(s):  
Amy Hsin ◽  
Holly E. Reed
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Educational Outcomes ◽  
Legal Status ◽  
Educational Inequality ◽  
Undocumented Students ◽  
The United States ◽  
Public University ◽  
Undocumented Immigrant ◽  
Institutional Settings ◽  
Race Ethnicity

Our understanding of the sources of educational inequality for the estimated 250,000 undocumented immigrant college students in the United States is limited by poor data. We use student administrative data from a large public university, which accurately identify legal status and include pre-enrollment characteristics, to determine the effect of legal status on GPA and graduation. We find that undocumented students are hyper-selected relative to peers; failing to account for this difference underestimates the effect of legal status on academic outcomes. Our findings also highlight the ways legal status interacts with institutional settings and race/ethnicity to affect educational outcomes.

scholarly journals The Academic Performance of Undocumented Students in Higher Education in the United States

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Amy Hsin ◽  
Holly Reed
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Educational Outcomes ◽  
Legal Status ◽  
Educational Inequality ◽  
Undocumented Students ◽  
The United States ◽  
Public University ◽  
Undocumented Immigrant ◽  
Institutional Settings ◽  
Race Ethnicity

Our understanding of the sources of educational inequality for the estimated 250,000 undocumented immigrant college students in the United States is limited by poor data. We use student administrative data from a large public university, which accurately identify legal status and include pre-enrollment characteristics, to determine the effect of legal status on GPA and graduation. We find that undocumented students are hyper-selected relative to peers; failing to account for this difference underestimates the effect of legal status on academic outcomes. Our findings also highlight the ways legal status interacts with institutional settings and race/ethnicity to affect educational outcomes.

Power in the Parish

2019 ◽  
pp. 111-131
Author(s):  
Brett C. Hoover
Keyword(s):  
Race And Ethnicity ◽  
Participant Observation ◽  
The United States ◽  
Cultural Work ◽  
Power Dynamics ◽  
Ethnic Communities ◽  
Study Approach ◽  
Race Ethnicity ◽  
Depth Interviews

Catholic parishes in the United States are complex organizations (where multiple communities coexist and interact). Relying on participant observation, in-depth interviews, and a case study approach, this chapter explores three parishes in Southern California that showcase the complexity of interactions among different racial and ethnic communities. These parishes are shared in various configurations by white, Latino, Black, and Asian parishioners, and this chapter illuminates the power dynamics of race and ethnicity as they work themselves out in American life. In shared parishes, the cultural work of constructing Catholic identity necessarily involves deploying distinct cultural expressions of Catholicism shaped by broader power dynamics of race, ethnicity, and language. This chapter lays bare this process as parishes illustrate power-in-action, with parish interactions variously producing, perpetuating, and challenging existing power dynamics and race relations.

Diminishing Barriers to the Praxis Examination in Communication Sciences and Disorders

2011 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 64-71
Author(s):  
Luis F. Riquelme
Keyword(s):  
Geographic Location ◽  
The United States ◽  
Success For All ◽  
Speech Language Pathology ◽  
Barriers To Success ◽  
Call To Action ◽  
Language Pathology ◽  
National Certification ◽  
Race Ethnicity ◽  
Passing Score

Abstract Passing the Praxis Examination in speech-language pathology or audiology can be a difficult task. A passing score is the entry to a list of requirements for national certification (CCC-SLP, CCC-A) and for state licensure in the United States. This article will provide current information on the examination and address barriers to success that have been identified over the years. A call to action may serve to refocus efforts on improving access to success for all test-takers regardless of race/ethnicity, ability, or geographic location.

More than victims: Resiliency of undocumented Latinas near Chicago, United States, and the strategic use of psychological suffering in obtaining legal status

2019 ◽  
Vol 16 (3) ◽  
pp. 361-368
Author(s):  
Stephanie Jean Kohl
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Domestic Violence ◽  
Legal Status ◽  
The United States ◽  
Immigration Law ◽  
Application Process ◽  
Theoretical Concepts ◽  
Psychological Suffering ◽  
Visa Application ◽  
Biological Citizenship

Caught between abusive partners and restrictive immigration law, many undocumented Latina women are vulnerable to domestic violence in the United States. This article analyzes the U-Visa application process experienced by undocumented immigrant victims of domestic violence and their legal advisors in a suburb of Chicago, United States. Drawing on theoretical concepts of structural violence and biological citizenship, the article highlights the strategic use of psychological suffering related to domestic violence by applicants for such visas. It also investigates the complex intersection between immigration law and a humanitarian clause that creates a path towards legal status and eventual citizenship.

Consular Protection and Solidarity across Borders

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alexandra Délano Alonso
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Latin American ◽  
Legal Status ◽  
Well Being ◽  
The United States ◽  
Migrant Populations ◽  
Policy Goals ◽  
Large Populations ◽  
Mexican Government ◽  
Working Together

This chapter demonstrates how Latin American governments with large populations of migrants with precarious legal status in the United States are working together to promote policies focusing on their well-being and integration. It identifies the context in which these processes of policy diffusion and collaboration have taken place as well as their limitations. Notwithstanding the differences in capacities and motivations based on the domestic political and economic contexts, there is a convergence of practices and policies of diaspora engagement among Latin American countries driven by the common challenges faced by their migrant populations in the United States and by the Latino population more generally. These policies, framed as an issue of rights protection and the promotion of migrants’ well-being, are presented as a form of regional solidarity and unity, and are also mobilized by the Mexican government as a political instrument serving its foreign policy goals.

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