Undocumented Mexicans In The Usa

When this volume was published in 1990, undocumented Mexican immigrants had become an important component of the US population. In this book the author analyzes the results of a unique survey conducted in Los Angeles County, where an estimated 44 percent of the undocumented Mexican population lived. The survey allows the author to make comparisons among the groups of undocumented and legal Mexican immigrants and to study the effects of legal status on their living conditions. The author also examines the findings of a number of other social scientists, providing a comprehensive summary of the data on undocumented Mexicans in the US. In his conclusion, he turns to an evaluation of policy options for incorporating this group into the US population and for immigrants. The book will be useful to sociologists and other social scientists as well as to lawyers and policy experts studying the problem of illegal immigrants.

Frederick Jackson Turner Award Finalist Winner of the David Montgomery Award Winner of the Theodore Saloutos Book Award Winner of the Betty and Alfred McClung Lee Book Award Winner of the Frances Richardson Keller-Sierra Prize Winner of the Américo Paredes Prize “A deeply humane book.” —Mae Ngai, author of Impossible Subjects “Necessary and timely...A valuable text to consider alongside the current fight for DACA, the border concentration camps, and the unending rhetoric dehumanizing Mexican migrants.” —PopMatters “A deep dive into the history of Mexican migration to and from the United States.” —PRI’s The World In the 1970s, the Mexican government decided to tackle rural unemployment by supporting the migration of able-bodied men. Millions of Mexican men crossed into the United States to find work. They took low-level positions that few Americans wanted and sent money back to communities that depended on their support. They periodically returned to Mexico, living their lives in both countries. After 1986, however, US authorities disrupted this back-and-forth movement by strengthening border controls. Many Mexican men chose to remain in the United States permanently for fear of not being able to come back north if they returned to Mexico. For them, the United States became a jaula de oro—a cage of gold. Undocumented Lives tells the story of Mexican migrants who were compelled to bring their families across the border and raise a generation of undocumented children.

In the past two decades, a tide of Mexican immigrants has settled illegally in the United States, and undocumented Mexicans today constitute an important component of the U.S. population. Yet due to their illegal status, information about the actual numbers of undocumented Mexicans, their living conditions, and the impact of their illegal status on their lives has been difficult to gather. In this book, the author analyzes the results of a unique survey conducted in Los Angeles County, where an estimated forty-four percent of the undocumented Mexican population lives. This survey allows the author to make explicit comparisons among groups of illegal and legal Mexican immigrants and to analyze the effects of their legal status on their living conditions.

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In the continuing U.S. debate over illegal immigration, a human face has rarely been shown. The topic has been presented as a monolithic abstraction, a creation of statistics, political rhetoric, and fear. This collection of letters between undocumented immigrants in California and their families back home reveals the other side of the story. Published for the first time in paperback, Between the Lines reveals the often poignant human drama currently being played out along the U.S.-Mexico border. The letters, presented in Spanish and English, express powerful feelings of hope, uncertainty, and fear among the undocumented travelers as they arrive in the United States and seek work, social support and legal status. The letters from their families in Mexico, Guatemala, and El Salvador return feelings of hope, love, and support. Translator/editor Siems provides a powerful and lyrical introductory essay that sets the stage for the letters that follow.

Seminar paper from the year 2007 in the subject Ethnology / Cultural Anthropology, University of North Florida, language: English, abstract: Leo Chavez, author of Shadowed Lives – Undocumented Immigrants in American Society and doctor in anthropology, has been working and writing about Central American immigration since 1980 (Chavez, vii). In Shadowed Lives, Chavez described and analyzed lives of illegal Mexican workers in Southern California, using anthropology “for challenging our assumptions about both ourselves and others in our world” (Chavez xii). The author covered, among other things, crossing borders, immigrant homes, migrant problems, families and networks, as well as working structures and processes living as an illegal alien in a foreign country. He was eager to explain phases of separation, transition and incorporation for immigrants when changing social status and environment in order to start a new life and undergo their territorial passage. The following paper will discuss several topics relating to key concepts learned in class. It will examine emic and etic interpretations, problems of ethnocentrism, and the appliance of cultural relativism. Furthermore, it will highlight research methods and backgrounds with regard to the author and his field of study. Last but not least, the paper will provide several examples of social power and describe factors that impact relationships between individuals or groups.

In August 2011, ethnographers Carolina Alonso Bejarano and Daniel M. Goldstein began a research project on undocumented immigration in the United States by volunteering at a center for migrant workers in New Jersey. Two years later, Lucia López Juárez and Mirian A. Mijangos García—two local immigrant workers from Latin America—joined Alonso Bejarano and Goldstein as research assistants and quickly became equal partners for whom ethnographic practice was inseparable from activism. In Decolonizing Ethnography the four coauthors offer a methodological and theoretical reassessment of social science research, showing how it can function as a vehicle for activism and as a tool for marginalized people to theorize their lives. Tacking between personal narratives, ethnographic field notes, an original bilingual play about workers' rights, and examinations of anthropology as a discipline, the coauthors show how the participation of Mijangos García and López Juárez transformed the project's activist and academic dimensions. In so doing, they offer a guide for those wishing to expand the potential of ethnography to serve as a means for social transformation and decolonization.