Friday, February 09, 2007
A good job and benefits causes restricted empathy?
I'm not sure I understand all the anthropological gooble-de-gook in this article, but I'm thinking these authors (the et al were almost all Hispanic surnamed) believe something in evil capitalism is keeping Hispanic border guards from siding with the Mexican illegals. I wonder--did anyone blame capitalism when German surnamed 3rd and 4th generation young men were fighting Germans in WWII?
"U.S. Immigration Officers of Mexican Ancestry as Mexican Americans, Citizens, and Immigration Police" by Josiah McC. Heyman and others, Current Anthropology, volume 43 (2002), pages 479–507
Summary
"U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) officers of Mexican ancestry do not identify with Mexican and other Latin American immigrants. Instead, they understand themselves as U.S. citizens who reject both domestic racism and ethnic loyalties that cross national borders. Their self-understandings emerge from processes that include U.S. citizenship ideology and social mobility into primary-labor-market jobs with stability, benefits, and progressive careers. These processes insulate them from the experience of immigrants in casual and insecure labor markets devoid of social benefits. Thus they differ from immigrants not only in being on opposite sides of the bureaucratic encounter but also in being at opposite poles of bureaucratized social citizenship. This suggests that a cause of opposition to immigration in advanced capitalist societies is that citizenship-based job and benefit systems restrict the scope of empathy."
"U.S. Immigration Officers of Mexican Ancestry as Mexican Americans, Citizens, and Immigration Police" by Josiah McC. Heyman and others, Current Anthropology, volume 43 (2002), pages 479–507
Summary
"U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) officers of Mexican ancestry do not identify with Mexican and other Latin American immigrants. Instead, they understand themselves as U.S. citizens who reject both domestic racism and ethnic loyalties that cross national borders. Their self-understandings emerge from processes that include U.S. citizenship ideology and social mobility into primary-labor-market jobs with stability, benefits, and progressive careers. These processes insulate them from the experience of immigrants in casual and insecure labor markets devoid of social benefits. Thus they differ from immigrants not only in being on opposite sides of the bureaucratic encounter but also in being at opposite poles of bureaucratized social citizenship. This suggests that a cause of opposition to immigration in advanced capitalist societies is that citizenship-based job and benefit systems restrict the scope of empathy."
# posted by Norma : 2/09/2007 01:22:00 PM
