Suchergebnisse

On the basis of participant‐observation in an immigrant human rights coalition, this contribution offers reflections on the opportunities and challenges of being an academic in a politically active coalition. It first examines the ways in which university scholars can encounter rich fields for social scientific learning by engagement with coalitions in the communities that surround them, offering an alternative to the ivory tower model of anthropology done in distant fields. It then explores the challenges of coalition involvement through the theme of role expectations and conflicts. Among the topics examined through participant‐observation are role expectations conflicts, time or schedule conflicts, resource tensions, legal and bureaucratic limits, social status inequalities, reduction of name visibility and ego gratification, and complex negotiations and compromises. It finishes with observations on commitment and objectivity, and proposes that coalitions shape particular forms of knowledge creating and communicating processes. These are real issues, but not insurmountable ones, and an honest accounting of them will result in more effective and rewarding coalitions between activists and academics.

For thousands of Mexican laborers, life along the U.S. border represents an opportunity both to earn wages and to gain access to consumer goods. For anthropologist Josiah Heyman, this labor force presents an opportunity to gain a better understanding of working people, "to uncover the order underlying the history of waged lives." Life and Labor on the Border traces the development of the urban working class in northern Sonora over the period of a century. Drawing on an extensive collection of life histories, Heyman describes what has happened to families over several generations as people have left the countryside to work for American-owned companies in northern Sonora or to cross the border to find other employment. Heyman searches for the origins of "working classness" in these family histories, revealing aspects of life that strengthen people's involvement with a consumer economy, including the role of everyday objects like sewing machines, cars, and stoves. He considers the consequences of changing political and economic tides, as well as the effects on family life of the new role of women in the labor force. Within the broad sweep of family chronicles, key junctures in individual lives—both personal and historical crises—offer additional insights into social class dynamics. These life stories convey the positive sense of people's goals in life and reveal the origins of a distinctive way of life in the borderlands.

In July 2012, a diverse group of US residents living near the US-Mexico border met in El Paso, Texas for a conference entitled, We the Border: Envisioning a Narrative for Our Future. This paper describes their vision for the US-Mexico border that is at odds with the widespread view of the border as a threat to the United States. These border residents viewed their region as a set of human communities with rights, capacities, and valuable insights and knowledge. They embraced an alternative vision of border enforcement that would focus on "quality" (dangerous entrants and contraband) over "quantity" (mass migration enforcement). They called for investments in the functionality and security of ports of entry, rather than in between ports of entry. They noted the low crime rate in US border cities, and examined how policies of not mixing local law enforcement with federal immigration enforcement contributed to this achievement. They saw the border region as the key transportation and brokerage zone of the emerging, integrated North American economy. In their view, the bilingual, bicultural, and binational skills that characterize border residents form part of a wider border culture that embraces diversity and engenders creativity. Under this vision the border region is not an empty enforcement zone, but is part of the national community and its residents should enjoy the same constitutional and human rights as other US residents. The conference participants emphasized the necessity and value of accountability and oversight of central government enforcement operations, and the need for border communities to participate in federal decision-making that affects their lives.