Podcasts from the SfAA

David W. Haines (George Mason U)

Migration Policy from the Margins
Recent American immigration policy debates focus largely on employer interest in cheap labor, migrant hopes of a better life, and the mixed responses of local communities. However, it is also important to assess the issues that are not discussed, particularly migration that is not directly labor related or that is not firmly permanent. Such a view from the margins of the current debate suggests that the most crucial issues may not involve high profile problems in labor migration but rather the broader social flows of migration and how they reflect alternative American – and global – futures.

Caroline B. Brettell (S Methodist U)

• Email cbrettel at smu dot edu
• telephone 214-768-4254
  
• personal website link

Immigration Policy/Incorporation Policy: The National/Local Divide
In this panel, participants engage aspects of the immigration debate and immigration reform. Although anthropologists have much to say on this matter because we work in local places, are attuned to a multiplicity of voices, and focus on the symbolic as well as the material dimensions of social life, our perspectives are rarely heard in comparison with researchers in other disciplines – economics, sociology, and political science. Anthropology can offer a unique understanding not only of why immigration impassions so many people, but also why reform is stalled and what solutions might actually move us forward.

Beth Baker-Cristales (Cal State-Los Angeles)

Global Contradictions: Democracy, the State, and International Migration
Politicians and policymakers do not simply craft laws; they formulate the language used to conceptualize the boundaries of legality and the state, shaping the discursive construction of personhood and the terms by which these understandings circulate in public life. Anthropology, with its attention to the ways public meanings are constructed, is particularly well suited to explore this construction of legality and its wider implications. This paper will examine some of the contradictions between the rhetoric surrounding immigration and immigration reform in the United States with the realities of transnational migration and economic globalization

Josiah Heyman (U Texas-El Paso)

Engaging in the Human Rights Policy Process at the United States-Mexico Border
Over the past three years, I have been closely engaged with coalitions advocating for human rights improvements in U.S. border immigration law enforcement. I draw on some previously untapped strengths as an academic scholar, transposed to new uses. These include a teaching-based ability to summarize and simplify key findings on immigration and border issues, and a research-based ability to track down key bodies of knowledge, such as best practices in police review and oversight. I place these observations in the wider context of current debates over comprehensive immigration reform in the United States and other prosperous nations.

Leo R. Chavez (UC-Irvine)

Protesting the Latino Threat Narrative and Claiming Citizenship
In 2006, immigrants marched to protest proposed immigrations laws and for recognition of their social and economic contributions to society. This paper focuses the meanings of citizenship that the immigrant marchers were enacting, and the way national symbols can be interpreted as symbols of both unity and division. National flags and the language used to sing the national anthem became symbols of controversy. The immigrant marchers wore symbols to oppose the way the Latino Threat Narrative represents their lives. For others, the U.S. flag and national anthem became symbols of the perceived dilution of the rights and privileges of citizenship because of the immigrants’ presence

Jara Carrington (U New Mexico)

The U.N. Convention on the Rights of the Child, the U.S. Legal System and Undocumented Immigrant Youth from Central America
All too often, minors who are not eligible for immigration relief in the U.S., and have no familial support in their home countries or are fearful of returning home are still removed from the U.S. Legal professionals working with these youth must negotiate a precarious balance between protecting their clients and working within the bounds of U.S. law. In most regards, the structure of the legal system in the U.S. directly prohibits the implementation of the Convention on the Rights of the Child, as it may relate to undocumented immigrant youth, in any meaningful way

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