The public discourse about immigration in the United States has long been fraught with xenophobia and racism. Since 9/11, moreover, the immigration issue has been firmly linked to questions of national security in the public imagination. In this recent period, the state has asserted extraordinary controls over immigrants and citizens that affect…

During the interwar period, California's labor-intensive agriculture transitioned from reliance on diverse immigrants to preference for Mexicans. Political movements to restrict immigration, the Great Depression, and labor unrest compelled farm employers to search for labor that could be used flexibly and deported easily. To achieve this…

This study examines two successive days of U.S. television news coverage of the May 1, 2007, immigration rights rally in Los Angeles. As thousands of demonstrators appealed peacefully for comprehensive immigration policy reform, they were assailed by 450 police officers firing munitions and using truncheons. We evaluated fifty-one television news…

Almost forty years ago, noted immigration scholar Jorge A. Bustamante published an article in the "American Journal of Sociology" applying Howard Becker's labeling theory to the phenomenon of deviantizing and stigmatizing the undocumented. While immigration laws and some of the players involved have changed since his article was published,…

This study, carried out in a barrio neighborhood near the U.S.-Mexican border, uses a structural violence perspective to understand the extent of and individual determinants of mistreatment of residents by immigration authorities. Results indicate that barrio residents are more likely than the U.S. population in general to experience mistreatment…

This essay examines Chinese-Mexican interracial marriage during the early twentieth century through the lens of Mexican popular culture. Comedy, poetry, cartoons, and musical recordings of the time portrayed these marriages as relationships of abuse, slavery, and neglect, and rejected the offspring of such unions as subhuman and unworthy of full…

Interviews with 20 Zapotec immigrants from Oaxaca (Mexico) to Los Angeles examined their immigration experiences and adjustment to life in the United States. Discussion covers immigration from Oaxaca; living conditions, illiteracy, education, and language usage in the village of San Lucas Quiavini; immigration patterns; ethnicity and Oaxacan…

"Aztlanscape" is a painting that explores the notions of history, migration, and cultural exchange. It depicts various places with significant relationships to one another, reconfigured into a new landscape. The specific locales used in this painting are Albuquerque, New Mexico; Oakland, California; and Mexico DF, Mexico. These cities…

Mexican public opinion about emigrants to the United States has gradually changed from that of "cultural traitors." The Mexican government has increasingly come to see Chicano political leaders as important to Mexico's relationship with the United States, while Mexican intellectuals increasingly regard Chicano academics as their allies…

The general conversation today about the USA PATRIOT Act and its historical and legal significance must be contextualized with reference to a series of 1970s U.S. Supreme Court decisions regarding the U.S. Border Patrol that directly undergird the PATRIOT Act. The Supreme Court long ago turned the U.S. borderlands adjoining Mexico into a permanent…