Social Class

D.) Social Class/ pg.96: large numbers of people who have similar amounts of income and education and who work at jobs that are roughly comparable in prestige.
Social Class is demonstrated in the Wetbacks video in a variety of ways. The immigrants in their native countries and newly migrated to countries are all a part of a similar social class. In both situations they have a similar income to each other. They are all of a lower class making very little money, in their home countries jobs are scarce and are failing to provide them with a sustainable amount of income. The same goes for the immigrants in their newly migrated to countries. They also are still making little money, while it may be more than they would have received in their home
Throughout the immigrants entire journey they are met with a very organized and standard system that allows for their migration in return for an easy profit on their mannerisms. One big instance where we see this in that video is how easily the immigrants move from country to country along their way without papers or following immigration customs. Many countries have well known loop holes where immigrants can cross the border easily all while avoiding going through customs. There are gaps and holes and safe routes where they can freely move through countries. We also see the immigration institution where farmers leave an easily accessible gap in their livestock fences along popular trials so that immigrants can cross their land without harming the fences. We see that immigration is well known, but many turn a blind eye and let it happen. We also see this institution in stopping points along the way where immigrants can stay in safe houses where they are provided with shelter and a meal for a set number of days before they are back at it again on their journey. The basic needs that are being met by society is a profit on the immigration. Many people take a stand that if they cannot stop it due to illegal activity they might as well profit off of it instead. Businesses along popular migration routes even stock their shelves with things that
We see a huge amount of class conflict in the home countries of the people travelling to America. Their home countries are very poor and do not have a large amount of jobs to keep up with the amount of workers they have. Their economies also rely on the former immigrants to send in money in form of remittances. These remittances are what runs most of the large immigration countries and accounts for a very large portion of their GDP. The fact that these remittances exist is another class conflict in the country that the people travelled to. They travelled to a new country that may not have a big enough amount of jobs to support the new set of people arriving and the natives in the area who are also in need of jobs. This produces a struggle for the immigrants because they are in need of work to sustain their families. The other issue of class conflict we see is the class conflict between the immigrants and the natives of the areas they go to. The people native to the areas around the border are very against immigration and want to stop it all together and have every immigrant deported to their home country. They even take matters into their own hangs and start to round up immigrants. This illustrates the class conflict between the immigrants and the natives because the immigrants are doing this to better themselves even staking their families life on it to make it in America so they