No abstract

No abstract

This article documents the sociospatial dynamics and policies that intensify structural vulnerability among Latin American im/migrant farmworkers in Western/Central New York. Focusing on the production of immobility as a characteristic facet of illegality in this region, we examine geographic, labor, and legal factors that constrain im/migrants’ movement outside of the farms where they work and the range of tactics they utilize in response. Our findings indicate that each of the tactics that im/ migrant farmworkers use to resolve practical problems of limited mobility simultaneously exacerbate its other detrimental effects. Discussion centers on the importance of meso-level policies that can moderate im/migrant mobility and, consequently, structural vulnerability. We conclude with an argument for research to explore the effects of such meso-level policy changes on im/migrant mobility and precarity and to support advocacy efforts focused at the meso-level scale, especially at the present historical moment when policies related to driver’s licenses are changing in many states. Data reported in this article come from ethnographic research conducted in collaboration with a grassroots farmworker organization that helped lead the successful campaign for driver’s license access in New York.

No abstract

The Trump administration’s policies have created a climate of heightened hostility in the U.S. northern borderlands that exacerbates im/migrant farmworkers’ anxieties surrounding deportation and family separation. At the same time, Trump’s enforcement initiatives have inspired resistance efforts aimed at mitigating these threats. Drawing on evidence from ethnographic research with Mexican and Guatemalan farmworkers in New York, we explore these interrelated, countervalent trends. First, we show how farmworkers’ heightened fears and social isolation since the outset of Trump’s presidency negatively impact their emotional and mental health. Second, we trace an opposing force of state‐level political shifts and local activities that may be mitigating these detrimental effects for im/migrant farmworkers. In particular, we focus on pro‐immigrant advocacy efforts in New York. We refer to this pro‐immigrant turn as contramigra, a phenomenon of intentional pushback against immigration detention and polimigra cooperation tactics between nonfederal law enforcement and federal immigration authorities.

Trends in higher education pedagogy increasingly point to the importance of transformational experiences as the capstone of liberal arts education. Practitioners of ethnography, the quintessential transformational experience of the social sciences, are well-positioned to take the lead in designing courses and term projects that afford undergraduate students opportunities to fundamentally reshape their understanding of the social world and their own involvement within it. Furthermore, in the United States, colleges and universities have become proponents of service learning as a critical component of a holistic educational experience. In this article, we describe how service learning can be incorporated into training students in ethnographic field methods as a means to transformational learning and to give them skills they can use beyond the classroom in a longer trajectory of civic participation. We discuss strategies, opportunities, and challenges associated with incorporating service learning into courses and programs training students in ethnographic field methods and propose five key components for successful ethnographic service learning projects. We share student insights about the transformational value of their experiences as well as introduce some ethical concerns that arise in ethnographic service-learning projects.

In this article, I explore the affective landscape of matrifocal kinship in Brogodó to examine how the emotional intimacy that Black women shared with their women kin buffered the effects of unmet marital expectations, marital conflict, and divorce. I describe how women viewed their relationships with their families as a source of love and emotional intimacy that was more reliable and fulfilling than what they could expect from husbands who did not meet the romantic love ideal. Research that relies too heavily on functional assumptions about the relationship between matrifocality and marriage dissolution misses how the desire for emotional intimacy influences women's perspectives on and decision‐making around marriage dissolution. I argue that women's reliance on consanguineal kin as an affective alternative to romantic love and companionate marriage was a critical factor in their decisions to end their marriages. I also assert that rather than weakening extended family ties, in Brogodó the spread of notions of romantic love and companionate marriage strengthened the matrifocal family model by reinforcing women's views that consanguineal rather than affinal kin were at the center of their worlds.

No abstract