In her book Fluid Borders Lisa Bedolla talks about collective identity, she says that “collective identity is less about how one sees oneself, that is, one’s personal identity, and more about the values and attributions one feels are attributed to his or her group(s) because of how the group(s) is seen by others” (p. 7). So in other words social stigmas that are placed upon a group by an outside group (in our case, illegal immigrant vs. US born citizens) has a way of working its way into our subconscious and help us lump groups of people into categories, based off of little to no information about the individual. This association either by imagery or by word play has completely changed the way that we as modern citizens view illegal immigrants.
I was not aware that the INS, after 9/11 had been folded into the National Homeland Security Agency. While this may have been done for budgetary reasons, or manpower reasons, what it has done is it has begun to work its way into our subconscious to the point that we are beginning to associate illegal immigrants crossing the border with a terrorist invasion, undocumented workers with a national security threat. Similarly, the example of sending police officers instead of INS officials, to raid factories and arrest illegal immigrant’s plays a role in associating illegal immigrants with criminals. Because who do you send after criminals? Police officers.
This association of illegal immigrants with negative images is beginning to play a role in the policy of the US government. They are beginning to treat undocumented workers as criminals, sending them to jail, before deporting them or securing the borders with military forces all reflects this imagery.
I find it interesting how this sociological observation could be applied to the immigration debate, and am interested to see how the rest of Bedolla’s book looks at Mexican immigration through a sociological perspective.
If you would like examples of some of the images that I was talking about please go to: www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1710851,00.html and www.usliberals.about.com/od/immigration/a/IllegalImmi.html
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2 comments:
Steve,
What is interesting about the Time Magazine article in which it mentions the President of Mexico creating a new program for deportees ("Humane Repatriation") is that its not new. In the Great Depression of the 1930s over million Mexicans were deported back to the Mexico and received no help from the government so the majority returned. I wonder whether this new program with no budget will really help deportees reintegrate into Mexico society? It seems more style than substance. We will see when Calderon visit the U.S. this week what he has to say about immigration.
-Profe
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