Publication details
Imagining difference and inequality: cultural constructions of unauthorized immigrants
| Authors | |
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| Year of publication | 2015 |
| Type | Conference abstract |
| MU Faculty or unit | |
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| Description | Immigration is a hotly contested issue in receiving countries, especially with regard to unauthorized populations. Some see the unauthorized as “illegal” interlopers, while others advocate for their rights. Each of these social movements devotes a great deal of energy to articulating its demands and grievances, increasingly utilizing the Internet as a site of meaning creation. Culture acts as both an instrumental and expressive vehicle through which activists imagine and respond to discourses of difference and inequality. Are unauthorized immigrants just like “us,” as immigrant rights groups assert? Do they deserve equal treatment under the law and in the court of public opinion? Or are they intractably different because they have broken the “rules” and reside in the country illegally? Utilizing internet data collected from 29 national-level organizations in the United States, I conduct a cultural sociological analysis of the ways in which both immigrant rights and immigration control activists construct the unauthorized population. To unearth the structures of meaning in the organizations’ website and social media activity, I examine the ways in which they create legal and moral boundaries around different categories of immigrants, often (and sometimes unwittingly) portraying some as more equal than others. Looking at the cultural construction of unauthorized immigrants through the theoretical lens of boundary work helps us understand the conditions of belonging to a collectivity such as the nation state and potentially work at moving from exclusivity and inequality to inclusivity and fairness for all within its borders. |
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