Considering Gender in Transnational Places and Spaces: The Case of the Rural Youth Soccer Association (RYSA)

2003 ◽  
Vol 25 (1) ◽  
pp. 30-33
Author(s):  
Alayne Unterberger

Binational migration affects all facets of life on both sides of the US-Mexico border. It reshapes social relationships, gender, worldview and health behaviors not only in Mexican sending communities but also in the thousands of receiving communities in the US. Over the past ten years, I have worked with farmworkers in a receiving community in Hillsborough County, Florida. I have been continually struck by the dissonance between my experiences in the "community" and outside accounts, especially numerous stories in the Tampa Tribune. These relate obituaries, crime stories and the worst kinds of violence, murder or vehicular homicide.

2020 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-20
Author(s):  
John Parsons

Narratives of security and threat are continually used to justify morally contentious activities. In the past three years, the United States’ government has increasingly promoted narratives of “criminal migrants” and “immigrant invasions.” In response to perceived threats, the US-Mexico border has undergone a process of militarization. During this time, various border militias have continued to operate along the southern US border. My research was conducted over 11 months with two militias operating on the US-Mexico border I have labeled Border Watch. This militia provides a snippet of how morality is operationalized in the legitimization of actions and how morality is intrinsically linked to security in the lived experiences of its volunteers. In this article, I argue that the volunteers make sense of their experiences away from the border through the narrative espoused by the US government. The resonance between experience and narrative defines the latter as truth and the ability to dismiss counter-narratives. For the volunteers of Border Watch who adhere to a notion of citizenship through the lens of the citizen-soldier ideal, the narrative delivers a moral imperative to act in defense of the nation. Within the nexus of danger, security, and morality, the volunteers of Border Watch conceptualize their project as one in which moral citizens protect the nation and its citizens from an evil Other.


Author(s):  
Roberto Alvarez

I utilize my situated position as anthropologist, academician, and citizen to argue not only that we should “think” California, but also that we should “rethink” our state—both its condition and its social cartography. To be clear, I see all my research and endeavors—my research on the US/Mexico border; my time among the markets and entrepreneurs I have worked and lived with; my focus on those places in which I was raised: Lemon Grove, Logan Heights; the family network and my community ethnographic work—as personal. I am in this academic game and the telling of our story because it is personal. When Lemon Grove was segregated, it was about my family; when Logan Heights was split by the construction of Interstate 5 and threatened by police surveillance, it was about our community; when the border was sanctioned and militarized it again was about the communities of which I am a part. A rethinking California is rooted in the experience of living California, of knowing and feeling the condition and the struggles we are experiencing and the crises we have gone through. We need to rethink California, especially the current failure of the state. This too is ultimately personal, because it affects each and every one of us, especially those historically unrepresented folks who have endured over the decades.


Author(s):  
Sara Riva ◽  
Erin Routon

Abstract This article explores the mechanisms in which, through the US family detention asylum process, neoliberal ideas of citizenship are reinforced and contested. Through ethnographic research, and using a Foucauldian lens, we take a closer look at the neoliberal processes involved within so-called family detention. Specifically, we focus on legal advocates who are helping detained women prepare for their legal interviews. This paper argues that humanitarian aid work becomes knowable through attention to microlevel details and forms of practice—on the ground and at the margins. This affords a recognition of not only areas of functional solidarity or symbiosis with the state, but also those less visible forms of contestation. We claim that while legal advocates play a role within the neoliberal regimes at work inside these centres, they also contest this system in various critical ways, ensuring both access to legal representation for all detainees and their eventual release.


2016 ◽  
Vol 106 (1) ◽  
pp. 119-127 ◽  
Author(s):  
Guilherme Borges ◽  
Cheryl J. Cherpitel ◽  
Ricardo Orozco ◽  
Sarah E. Zemore ◽  
Lynn Wallisch ◽  
...  

2009 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 69-84 ◽  
Author(s):  
Isabel Velázquez

This study examines the beliefs held by a group of adult Spanish-English bilinguals from El Paso, Texas regarding the vitality of Spanish in their community and the ways in which their own experience of being bilingual on the US-Mexico border has influenced their perceptions of the benefits and costs of fostering Spanish development in their children. Results show that parents’ positive attitudes toward Spanish did not translate into the investment of time and resources to foster Spanish development in their children nor, ultimately, into the use of Spanish by their children. Households where the mother perceived herself as having an active role in her children’s linguistic development and where she perceived both Spanish and a bilingual/biethnic identity as desirable for her children’s future were also households where children were expected to speak Spanish at home and where more opportunities for linguistic development were present. The author argues that these beliefs must be understood as a consequence of the underlying tensions present in the community, where intense linguistic and interethnic contact takes place every day.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document