On Latin@s and the Immigration Debate

AMERICAN ANTHROPOLOGIST VITAL TOPICS FORUM On Latin@s and the Immigration Debate Arlene D avila, guest editor, and Leith Mullings, Renato Rosaldo, Luis F. B. Plascencia, ˜ Gilberto Rosas, Ana Aparicio, Lourdes Guti errez Leo R. Chavez, Roc´io Maga na, N ajera, Patricia Zavella, Alyshia G alvez, and Jonathan D. Rosa INTRODUCTION Arlene D´avila Department of Anthropology, New York Univer- sity, New York, NY 10003; ad62@nyu.edu If there has been one key “vital topic” in the United States in recent years, it is undoubtedly the immigration debate, particularly in regard to U.S. Latin@s. While immigration is a global phenomenon, and U.S. immigrants hail from a variety of destinations and nationalities, in the past decades the U.S. immigration debate has been largely relegated to a “Latino issue,” at the same time that the “undocumented” has become synonym with Latin@s and Mexicans. This is the reason why this Vital Topics Forum focuses specifically on the immigration of Latin Americans to the United States, with the hope of shedding light onto some of the many insights that anthropologists have produced about this heated topic while contributing to larger theorizing about the role that race and racializing processes play in immigration debates more generally and beyond the United States. Indeed, for decades now anthropologists have engaged in major theorizing around issues of globalization, citizenship, national identity, and race. Anthropologists have produced rich ethnographies of the larger political-economic dynamics fueling immigration as well as examined the everyday pro- cesses through which immigrants adapt and transform them- selves and society at large. Unfortunately, there continues to be a huge gap between the many insights produced by anthropologists and the current immigration debate. Thus, we ask: What explains the current standstill around immi- gration reform, and why aren’t there any anthropologists at the table? We felt that producing a Vital Topics Forum on the issue would bring attention to some of the work that has been produced in recent years while providing a resource for teaching, research, and social advocacy for anthropologists and others who may wish to learn more about the historical and contemporary immigration of Latin Americans into the United States. We hope to make amply clear that anthropologists have much to say about immigration and that our insights can help expand the conversation and public debate about this topic. The forum includes a mix of younger and prominent anthropologists who I have asked to voice their insights on a variety of key topics. We start with Past President of the American Anthropological Association Leith Mullings intro- ducing a new AAA public education initiative on the topic of migration. This is followed by a piece by Renato Rosaldo discussing some ways in which cultural analyses can be en- riched by insights produced by anthropological research on immigration. We then turn to contributions by Luis Plascen- cia and Leo Chavez, who explore anthropological studies on changing conceptions of citizenship and nation and how they can best help advance our understanding of Latin Amer- ican immigration into the United States. Both scrutinize some of the gendered and racial dynamics involved in the debate, as evidenced in media representations of “anchor babies” (Chavez) and in the experiences of immigrants seek- ing to regularize their citizenship status (Plascencia). These are followed by examinations of the material aspects of the contemporary border by Roc´io Maga˜na, who considers the implications of the growth of militarized border enforcement and its stigmatizing effects, and by Gilberto Rosas, who looks at how immigrants continue to defy the border despite its heightened security. Essays on the growth of Latin@ subur- ban communities and on the plight of indigenous Latin@s by Ana Aparicio and Lourdes Guti´errez N´ajera point to the diversity of experiences and backgrounds that are sys- tematically omitted from most representations of Latin@s as an undifferentiated group. The final contributions by Patricia Zavella, Alyshia G´alvez, and Jonathan Rosa explore the racially loaded metaphors and tropes that color the immi- gration debate in the media, as well as, specifically, the rise and significance of immigrant social movements in expand- ing debates around reproductive rights (Zavella), the rights for the undocumented youth and their families (G´alvez), and C 2014 by the American Anthropological Association. AMERICAN ANTHROPOLOGIST, Vol. 116, No. 1, pp. 1–14, ISSN 0002-7294, online ISSN 1548-1433. All rights reserved. DOI: 10.1111/aman.12069