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An Analysis Of Shadowed Lives: Undocumented Immigrants In American Society

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An Analysis Of Shadowed Lives: Undocumented Immigrants In American Society
Shadowed Lives Paper HL
Social anthropology HL
Ewan Marsden
10/18/14

Immigration is one of the most pressing issues facing the United States (US) today. It mainly involves the issue of Hispanics from Latin America, specifically Mexico and Central America entering the US. The entry of immigrants has always been a part of “American” society; it has been going on since the US was first discovered. There have been similar situations to that of Mexican immigration in the past, including the immigration of Japanese and Chinese migrant workers which took place before it was completely banned by the US government due to the number of immigrants increasing so rapidly1. The situation for undocumented immigrants coming in from the south was different, …show more content…
Leo Chaves, the author of Shadowed Lives: Undocumented Immigrants in American Society, believes that to understand the undocumented immigrants troubles with incorporation their everyday experiences, modes of behavior, and knowledge obtained during their territorial passage must be understood. For Chavez to completely understand this difficulty with their incorporation he utilizes Van Genneps rites of passage theory that explains the three phases of immigrating into the United States, which include separation, transition, and incorporation. Chaves utilizes the diachronic perspective to understand society and culture as a product of history evolved over time and shaped by internal and external forces. The nature of the ever-changing landscapes of ethnoscape in the United States (US) and the recurrent attitudes towards the individuals who constitute it and how mediascapes and ideoscapes perpetuate these ideas, show how various shared ideologies within the US regarding …show more content…
Many individuals rely on the media for information about the unknown world around them; therefore many individual perceptions on different cultures are purely based on widely accepted stereotypes that are perpetuated by the Media. How much influence it can have is exemplified when viewing and interpreting various magazine covers, in which issues relating to Mexican immigration are the main story and focus. “Fertility and Mexican immigration were the focus of U.S News & World Report’s July 4, 1977 issue. The cover’s headline read “ ‘TIME BOMB IN MEXICO: Why There’ll be No End to the Invasion of Illegals.’ ”9 The connotation within this particular headline is extremely negative, it portrays Mexicans as a threat to the US, and without even reading the article, it is straightforward to tell that it is pro anti-immigration. “The cover image was a photograph of a group of men, most with their hands in the air or behind their heads.”10 The image serves to show that what these men did was wrong; by having their hands up and behind their heads they show they are admitting guilt and that their actions were unlawful and they accept that they are guilty. To a individual with limited knowledge on this particular issue the headline and picture would
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