Talk of “Broken Borders” and Stone Walls: Anti-immigrant Discourse and Legislation from California to South Carolina

Infesting our country: discursive illusions in anti-immigration border talk

“…For example, the term "illegal" allows anti-immigration proponents to replace an image of families needing to flee a country with a more alarming picture of faceless communities undermining the moral, cultural, and legal systems of the host country. In recent years, as Kingsolver (2010) demonstrates, the word "terrorism" is frequently used within arguments for anti-immigration to establish similar depictions. Drawing on the role of metaphor in shaping perceptions, Kingsolver (2010) also shows that such lexical strategies are not merely a means of constructing and circulating anti-immigrant ideologies, but "illegal," "bogus," "terrorism," and other similar constructs are part of larger systems of power and discrimination.…”

“…In recent years, as Kingsolver (2010) demonstrates, the word "terrorism" is frequently used within arguments for anti-immigration to establish similar depictions. Drawing on the role of metaphor in shaping perceptions, Kingsolver (2010) also shows that such lexical strategies are not merely a means of constructing and circulating anti-immigrant ideologies, but "illegal," "bogus," "terrorism," and other similar constructs are part of larger systems of power and discrimination.…”

Enterprising Women of Mexican American Farming Families in Southern Appalachia

“…Though these Mexican American women face discrimination in various arenas-whether it be at the Department of Motor Vehicles or in the grocery store line-they are just some of many Latinx who have gained socioeconomic mobility in agricultural communities (Du Bry 2007) and made places for themselves in the southeastern United States (Peacock, Watson, and Matthews 2005;Smith and Winders 2007) and southern Appalachia (Barcus 2007;Margolies 2012) over the last three decades. They persist with their rural livelihoods despite the structural violence of anti-immigrant policy that has spread since the 1990s from the US West Coast to eastern states (Kingsolver 2010) and is linked to localized federal immigration policing methods that threaten the mobility of Latinx, such as 287(g), which sanctions the racial profiling of drivers (Stuesse and Coleman 2014). (Yanagisako 2002) and noncapitalist ethics, logic, and practices that represent "alternative visions" that are possible when people have "lived experience or recent memories of alternative practices on which to build alternative visions" (Rothstein 2007, 11).…”

World Anthropological Perspectives on Economic Nationalisms*

“…ANTROPOL. | RIO DE JANEIRO, V.12.02: e210004, 2022 6-32 -the key assumption of its logic being that jobs are stolen from white, moral, and deserving US citizens by non-white, immoral, and undeserving noncitizens; an assumption which state-by-state anti-immigration (often unconstitutional) legislation has fueled across the US for the last quarter of a century (Santa Ana, 2002;Kingsolver, 2010). "Made in America Week" was promoted by the Trump White House as a pro-business event but industries were united behind an economic nationalist policy agenda.…”