Corporate Interests Behind SB1070

I was wondering how agricultural corporations would cope with SB1070. Would they be concerned with labor shortages? How was the law passed without their concern?  I was thinking about reactions similarly dramatized in the movie, A Day Without A Mexican.  However, another corporate interest benefits from SB 1070.  Immigrant workers would not disapear in thin air, their bodies and presence would become counted, secreted away both in bureaucratic record and physicality, and made invisible through  private/public contracts for detaining/incarcerating persons charged with immigration law violations. The private prison industry possesses a profit motive and work through lobbyiests to support legislators in favor of the legislation with donations.  A spokesperson from the private prison industry sits on the American Legislative Exchange Council Taskforce, the entity that wrote the SB 1070 legislation (specifically one member being the Corrections Corporation of America, a corporation that locks up the most immigrants charged on immigration violations).  This is described in an NPR report: "How Corporate Interests Got SB 1070 passed."  The Federal Government pays more to private and public jail and prison systems to warehouse immigrant persons than states pay for persons charged and incarcerated for state criminal violations. At the same time these incarceration systems provide much less services to immigrants at these incarceration facilities and receive less oversight of conditions within which immigrants are forced live. (See Brotherton & Kretsedemas, 2008)

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=131191523

                                                                           References

Arau, S. (Director), & Von Damm Montes, E. (Executive Producer). (2004). A day without a Mexican (Motion picture).  U.S.: Eye on the Ball Films.

Brotherton, D.C., & Kretsedemas, P. (2008). Keeping out the Other: A critical introduction to immigration enforcement today. NY: Columbia University Press.

Social Determinants

I recently showed the episode of “Bad Sugar” from the video Unnatural Causes: Is Inequality Making Us Sick to one of my classes. Here is a link to some clips from this video: 

http://www.unnaturalcauses.org/episode_descriptions.php?page=2

It can be a challenge to move analysis in the classroom from individual determinants of health to the social factors (which only mirrors how these issues tend to be dealt with in policy arenas). This video helps tremendously in illustrating how to move from individual to social.

Each time I view different episodes, I am struck by the limiting aspects of public and political discourse on health and health reform never taking in that all parts of society contribute to health and well-being. Maybe the health legislation recently passed will be revisited in Congress due to the backlash against it, but not revisited in ways that account for social determinants of health. Not considered in public and general politics  is that all policy is health policy. Just as immigration reform does not take into account the growing number of policies in other areas of law and within immigration law ( that would not necessarily be overturned by reform) that negatively impact immigrant families (See Kateel & Shahani, 2008).  Regarding health however, (and immigration law could also be viewed as a health policy too) this World Health Organization website explains the idea of social determinants of health very well.

http://www.who.int/social_determinants/en/

                                                                         Reference

Kateel, S., & Shanani, A. (2008). Families for freedom: Against deportation and delegalization. In  D.C. Brotherton & P. Kretsedemas (Eds.). Keeping out the Other: A critical introduction to immigration enforcement today (pp. 258-287). NY: Columbia University Press.

The Adventures of Unemployed Man Comic Book

 I heard about the comic book The Adventures of Unemployed Man on an NPR show, Marketplace Money. The link describing the characters are here:

http://www.unemployedman.com/characters.html

  Take a look at Fantasma, Fellowman, and White Rage.

Family Studies and Global Studies

Reading the Saturday New York Times, I pulled out a theme related to how families are impacted as a unit by macro-structural institutions. The division of Korean families across South and North Korea and the way the Red Cross plans reunions both through technology and through face-to-face meetings re-appeared as a news story in the Times on Saturday October 31, 2010.  Journalist McDonald wrote, “Most families became separated during the 1950-53 Korean War, essentially becoming stranded on opposite sides of the border when the fighting stopped. Virtually no communication channels exist for average North and South Koreans. There is no inter-Korean travel and both governments block telephone, Internet and postal services.”  The South Korean families bring basic everyday items such as sugar and soap to the Northern relatives.   A very moving part of the article refers to a hopeful South Korean’s words regarding meeting up with four family members: “Even if only one of them shows up,” he said, “my heart will be open.”  (McDonald, October 30, 2010) James Foley’s Korea’s Divided Families: Fifty Years of Separation would be a good source on the experiences of these families.

This article reminds me of many transnational family units that are separated by national borders, immigration policies, and international labor policies, including  the United States. Those situations are not yet socially-defined as problematic by most in the U.S., and technologies are not so closed off on the U.S. borders, but movement and permission to cross borders remains difficult, and sometimes “decencies” are brought or sent as remittances from the U.S. into other countries (McCroseen, 2009, p. 60).  This is just one example ripe for comparison that piqued my interest.

Not to be described here in a comparative way but working to show the power of macro-structural impacts is the way that families in Iraq still face dangers and continue on in whatever ways they can while still dealing with the aftermath of  long years of violent conflict.  Having lost his merchandise and his two sons, Amjad Aben a gold jewelry seller persists though “the memories of his two grown sons are in the bullet holes that gouge the walls” (Healy, 2010, October 30).  MIT Center for International Studies provides an informative website: Iraq the Human Cost, found at this URL:

http://web.mit.edu/humancostiraq/index.html This website examines the continued impacts of war on Iraqi lives.  

Family stories and understanding the lives of families and impacts of macrostructural dynamics on kin-ties may open up a world of connection and comparison on both human levels and academic levels. These connections can be helped along by bringing family studies, research and description of state-sponsored and/or state-neglected violence, and global studies together.

                                                                       References

Healy, J. (2010, October 30). Iraqi gold’s glitter dims for dealers under siege. Retrieved from http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/31/world/middleeast/31baghdad.html?scp=1&sq=October%2030%20gold%20and%20Iraq&st=cse

 McCrossen, A. (2009). Land of Necessity: Consumer culture in the United States-Mexico Borderlands. Durham & London: Duke University Press.

 McDonald, M. (2010, October 30). Koreans reunite at a Red Cross Gathering. Retrieved fromhttp://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/31/world/asia/31korea.html?scp=1&sq=October%2030%20Korea%20and%20Red%20Cross&st=cse



A Little Bit about Corridos

Corridos are a Mexican or Mexican American song type similar to a ballad. They tell a story of an event and can provide social commentary on that event.   “Corridos about immigration portray the perception of the migrant experience by migrants themselves as a complex and multidimentional phenonomen. Themes of corridos related to migration include the following:

“(1) the feelings of the migrant experience, which are sometimes positive and others negative and a combination of both, (2) the economical and social contexts that force immigrants to leave their country, (3) the contributions migrants make to the U.S. and Mexican economy, and (4) personal and collective strategies to cope with the immigration experience…” (Chew-Sanchez, n.d., p. 8).

 Corridos may be divided into seven broad themes:

 “(1) homesickness which includes topics related to loneliness and feelings of missing the migrants’ relatives and loved ones; (2) border-crossing strategies. Under this topic the characters that may be involved in the corrido are: coyotes, INS officials, people who helped on their way to the United States; (3) racial and cultural discrimination that Mexican immigrants experience in the United States; (4) political issues that explain the economic and social situation that pushed migrants to leave their country; (5) love (this topic is more prominent in corridos that depict young immigrant males who left their girlfriends or wives in Mexico and came to the United States in order to go back and marry or to provide a better economic life to a wife); (6) acculturation.  In corridos is a topic of fear and anxiety (corridos tend to be critical of those who deny their Mexican roots or do not feel attachment to Mexico); and (7) death which can be part of the drama of corridos about immigration, particularly when crossing the U.S./Mexican border.” (Chew-Sanchez, n.d., pp. 8-9)

 A famous corrido, “The Ballad of Gregorio Cortez” has been written about in academics in the book With a Pistol in his hand: A border ballad and its hero” by Américo Paredes. One of Paredes’ students actually wrote a ballad about Paredes translated as “With a pen in his hand.” For migration corridos, go to http://parentseyes.arizona.edu/msw/corrido/index.html and scroll down to listen to “Señor Migra” by Jack Baker [“Migra” refers to border patrol] and “Corrido Del Bracero Fracasado.” With the QT option you can follow along with the translation as the music plays.  New corridos are created each year, I hope Jim Griffith and Mexican American and Mexican scholars follow in Paredes’ footsteps and musicians continue to perform and collect the ballads.

 References

Bernal, J. (2006, January 17). The Catholic Church and its migrant members: Spiritua capital in a sending  community. Retrieved September 25, 2007, from http://lanic.utexas.edu/project/rla/papers/Jesse/pdf

 Chew-Sanchez, M .I. (n.d.). Cultural memory in the rituals of the Mexican diaspora in the United States: the role of the corridos about immigration played by conjuntos norteños and the aesthetics of bailes norteños. Retrieved September 24, 2007, from http://latino.si.edu/researchandmuseums/presentations/chewsanchez_papers.html