Brokered Boundaries by Magaly Sanchez R

Brokered Boundaries by Magaly Sanchez R

Anti-immigrant sentiment reached a fever pitch after 9/11, but its origins go back much further. Public rhetoric aimed at exposing a so-called invasion of Latino immigrants has been gaining ground for more than three decades and fueling increasingly restrictive federal immigration policy. Accompanied by a flagging U.S. economy record-level joblessness, bankruptcy, and income inequality as well as waning consumer confidence, these conditions signaled one of the most hostile environments for immigrants in recent memory. In Brokered Boundaries, Douglas Massey and Magaly Sanchez untangle the complex political, social, and economic conditions underlying the rise of xenophobia in U.S. society. The book draws on in-depth interviews with Latin American immigrants in metropolitan New York and Philadelphia and in their own words and images reveals what life is like for immigrants attempting to integrate in anti-immigrant times.

What do the social categories Latino and American actually mean to today s immigrants? Brokered Boundaries analyzes how first- and second-generation immigrants from Central and South America and the Caribbean navigate these categories and their associated meanings as they make their way through U.S. society. Massey and Sanchez argue that the mythos of immigration, in which newcomers gradually shed their respective languages, beliefs, and cultural practices in favor of a distinctly American way of life, is, in reality, a process of negotiation between new arrivals and native-born citizens. Natives control interactions with outsiders by creating institutional, social, psychological, and spatial mechanisms that delimit immigrants access to material resources and even social status. Immigrants construct identities based on how they perceive and respond to these social boundaries. The authors make clear that today s Latino immigrants are brokering boundaries in the context of unprecedented economic uncertainty, repressive anti-immigrant legislation, and a heightening fear that upward mobility for immigrants translates into downward mobility for the native-born. Despite an absolute decline in Latino immigration, immigration-related statutes have tripled in recent years, including many that further shred the safety net for legal permanent residents as well as the undocumented.

Brokered Boundaries shows that, although Latin American immigrants come from many different countries, their common reception in a hostile social environment produces an emergent Latino identity soon after arrival. During anti-immigrant times, however, the longer immigrants stay in America, the more likely they are to experience discrimination and the less likely they are to identify as Americans.

DOUGLAS S. MASSEY is the Dorothy Swaine Thomas Professor of Sociology at the University of Pennsylvania. JORGE DURAND is professor and investigator in the Department for the Study of Social Movements at the Universidad de Guadalajara. NOLAN J. MALONE is a doctoral candidate in demography at the University of Pennsylvania.

SKU	Nicht verfügbar
ISBN 13	9780871545794
ISBN 10	0871545799
Titel	Brokered Boundaries
Autor	Magaly Sanchez R
Buchzustand	Nicht verfügbar
Bindungsart	Hardback
Verlag	Russell Sage Foundation
Erscheinungsjahr	2010-05-06
Seitenanzahl	316
Hinweis auf dem Einband	Die Abbildung des Buches dient nur Illustrationszwecken, die tatsächliche Bindung, das Cover und die Auflage können sich davon unterscheiden.
Hinweis	Nicht verfügbar