“They Treat us Like Pests:” Undocumented Immigrant Experiences Obtaining Health Care in the Wake of a “Crackdown” Ordinance

This article presents findings from a qualitative study of Latino immigrant experiences seeking health care services in the wake of an anti-immigrant “crackdown” ordinance similar to Arizona's SB 1070. Prince William County, Virginia's 2007 “Rule of Law” ordinance escalated law enforcement efforts that targeted this population for deportation and ordered staff to ensure that no one receive social services other than those required by federal law. This article sought to answer the questions: (1) Were undocumented immigrants able to obtain health care? (2) How do immigrants characterize their experiences with health providers? Data were gathered via semi-structured interviews (n = 57) with Latinos in a low-income neighborhood. Analysis of Spanish-language narratives found that many were dissuaded from seeking care because of high costs as well as lack of familiarity with the health care system. Others perceived that they were treated with insensitivity or outright hostility—and believed this treatment was a deliberate effort to discourage them from seeking help.     

“No One Will Speak for Us”: Empowering Undocumented Immigrant Women Through Policy Advocacy

This article draws on data from an exploratory study involving an organized group of Mexican immigrant mothers engaged in community-based policy advocacy in the Pacific Northwest. Participants in the project lobbied state legislators on bills expanding the rights of undocumented immigrants—most notably, bills granting access to in-state tuition and driver’s licenses. In-depth interviews (n=12) reveal that through this process, participants came to see themselves as political subjects, despite their unauthorized legal status. Findings reveal that participants’ engagement in the policy process is centered on the idea of expressing needs and reflects their interest in improving individual, family, and community well-being. In this sense, their participation in politics flows from their roles as mothers and caregivers. By illuminating the experiences of a group—undocumented immigrant women—often overlooked in research on immigration policy and practice, this case offers a counter-narrative to the dominant portrayal of immigrant women and suggests ways to integrate community organizing and collective action into policy practice.     

Living “Anyway:” Stories of Access

Elana Dykewomon's 1974 novel, Riverfinger Women, was among the first lesbian books with a “happy ending.” Her seven books of fiction and poetry include the Lambda Award winner Beyond the Pale (now an audio and e-book) and Lambda nominee, Risk. She was an editor of the lesbian-feminist journal, Sinister Wisdom, for eight years. Her literary work foregrounds the lesbian heroic as integral to women's communities. As a social justice activist, she has organized and participated in anti-war, anti-racist, anti-classist, fat and disability rights work since the 1970s. She is now working with Old Lesbians Organizing for Change. She is happy to live embedded in dyke community as a lesbian radical committed to a loving justice. While she suffered psychiatric abuse at 13 (and acknowledges long-term adaptive behavior on that account), she has not experienced disabling mental illness since. Her primary disabilities are mobility impairment through severe, progressive arthritis and constant low-to-powerful pain, sometimes diagnosed as fibromyalgia. Her acute illnesses include pancreatitis and a rare-in-adults kidney disease currently in remission.     

Salvaging Decency: Mobile Home Residents’ Strategies of Managing the Stigma of “Trailer” Living

This paper is based on 45 ethnographic interviews conducted with residents of mobile home communities in West Central Florida between 2005 and 2008. It investigates their strategies of managing the stigma that is commonly associated with living in a mobile home. Informants routinely encounter negative stereotypes regarding their “trailer” home, community, and lifestyle in public discourse and personal interactions, and consequently have developed ways of salvaging their decency. My analysis of these strategies particularly emphasizes two versions of distancing, here called “bordering” and “fencing,” as examples of symbolic boundary work. Other techniques discussed include ignoring, passing, humoring, resisting, normalizing, upstaging, and blaming. Throughout the paper, I argue that mobile home residents’ ways of salvaging decency are both similar and different compared to how other disparaged groups deal with stigmatization. The conclusion discusses broader sociological implications of the research in enhancing our understanding of the experience of stigmatization, folk conceptions of decency, symbolic and social differentiation, as well as race and class dynamics.     

On the limits of “wired identity” in the age of global media

Spaces of Identity: Global Media, Electronic Landscapes, and Cultural Boundaries. David Morley and Kevin Robins. London: Routledge, 1995.257pp.; $55.00 (cloth) $17.95 (paper).

Virtual Geography: Living with Global Media Events. McKenzie Wark. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1994.253 pp.; $29.95 (cloth) $14.95 (paper).     

Does Size Really Matter? On the Relationship between Immigrant Group Size and Anti‐Immigrant Prejudice

Group threat theory understands prejudice as a manifestation of the threat, either actual or assumed, that minority groups pose to majority groups. This theory is often operationalized by analyzing the impact of group size on anti‐immigrant prejudice. We test this hypothesis with a new dataset documenting 487 effects of group size on prejudice provided in 55 studies. More than half of these results show no relationship and the remainder shows both positive and negative relationships. Three explanations for this divergence are that there are (1) differences in the measurement of prejudice and immigrant group size across studies; (2) differences in the model through which size is hypothesized to lead to prejudice; and (3) differences in the geographic unit of analysis at which these relationships have been considered. Our analyses support the measurement explanation: results vary across studies because they reflect different measures of group size and prejudice.     

Living with Contradictions: Complementing Activity Theory with the Notion of “Installed Base” to Address the Historical Dimension of Transformation

This article addresses the historical dimension of the relation between information systems innovation and organizational transformation. We analyse findings from a study of ongoing transformations in the healthcare sector in Zanzibar, Tanzania. The process is described with a particular focus on instances where some contradictions in the old activity system were not resolved but inherited by the new activity system. To address this we complement the activity theory framework with the notion of “installed base” from studies of information infrastructures. This helps to illuminate the theme of unresolved and continuing contradictions, and thus contribute to the concept of historicity in CHAT-informed studies.     

The Enduring Price of Place: Revisiting the Rural Cost of Living☆

Even as the 2016 elections brought increased public attention to rural life, stereotypes and misconceptions abound. One of these misperceptions is the generalization that prices are lower in rural areas. This article is a restudy of Zimmerman, Ham, and Frank (2008) research on geographic differences in the costs of living. Asking the same fundamental question—if someone bought the same thing in a rural and urban area, would they pay the same price?—and using the same methodology, the results 10 years later indicate that, contrary to popular perception, there was again no consistent pattern of lower prices in rural counties and no consistent pattern of a lower rural cost of living in all of the rural areas. While prices are only one piece of the larger picture of how rural households meet their needs, in addition to price differences, the results highlight how differences in rural life create additional costs that extend beyond prices.     

“There are traitors among us”: On the Emotional Vicissitudes of Populist Politics

This article examines fellowship and accusations of betrayal among members of a populist movement in contemporary Argentina. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork conducted among self-described “militants” of the Kirchnerist movement, a contemporary iteration of Peronism, this work makes a uniquely anthropological intervention into existing literature on populist politics, which tends to focus on populism’s demonization of the enemy of “the people.” In contrast, this article argues that a focus on the demonization of an external enemy misses essential dimensions of the social world of Peronist politics, which is primarily characterized by loving bonds of fellowship between Peronist militants. I show how, in moments of uncertainty, this emphasis on fellowship morphs into a preoccupation with treachery, such that concern with the potential insubordination of one’s fellow Peronists eclipses animus towards external enemies. This article argues for greater attention to the lived experiences of adherents to populist movements to encourage a more holistic and nuanced understanding of the social world of populist politics.     

Making trouble: the uses of “formal organization” as an institutional resource

This study examines the ‘mechanisms of sustained and sanctioned rationality’ (Egon Bittner) in the maintenance of institutional boundaries. The methodology used is Categorization Analysis, the less frequently used form of Conversation Analysis. Through an analysis of the practices of reporting, the author seeks to show how ‘formal' organization is used as a background resource in the rational construction of the everyday ‘social' organizational activity, ‘making trouble’.     

Beyond the Certainty of Security: On Dominant and Latent Conceptions of “Security” in Modern Societies

While other political programs have a relatively short history, the programatic logic of “security” is rather long-standing. This article argues that “security as a product” is a conception of modernity which came to its limits. The question arises, which kind of conception could he beyond those limits.     

Beyond the certainty of security: On dominant and latent conceptions of “security” in modern societies

While other political programs have a relatively short history, the programatic logic of security is rather long-standing. This article argues that security as a product is a conception of modernity which came to its limits. The question arises, which kind of conception could be beyond those limits.     

Not Just Play: an outline of the “Art for Social Change” programme

Not Just Play will introduce the reader to the European Cultural Foundation programme “Art for Social Change”. This programme is being carried out in partnership with the network of Soros Foundations, mainly in Central and Eastern Europe. The article offers some insights into the rationale behind the programme, its framework and the activities carried out within “Art for Social Change”. It will close with some information regarding the evaluation of the programme.     

What is political about political ethnography? On the context of discovery and the normalization of an emergent subfield

Despite recent interest in political ethnography, most of the reflection has been on the ethnographic aspect of the enterprise with much less emphasis on the question implicit in the first word of the couplet: What is actually political about political ethnography and how much should ethnographers pre-define it? The question is complicated because a central component of the definition of what is political is actually the struggle to define its jurisdiction and how it gets distinguished from what it is not. In this article we aim to show how ethnography can actually lead us out of this conundrum in which the political is paradoxically both predefined and, at the same time, the open question that leads the process of inquiry. We do so by advancing a formal and relational approach that provides us with procedural tools to define the nature and specificity of the political bond not ex ante, but rather during the process of research itself. In the first part of the article we historicize the development of political ethnography as a distinct avenue for inquiry and show what have been the challenges to its normalization. This is followed by the article’s main section, which focuses on the four ways in which what is political has been conceptualized in contemporary socio-ethnographical literature. In the conclusion of the article, we advance a lowest common denominator definition proposal, with examples from other scholars as well as from our own research to illustrate how this approach would work.     

On the ontological status of autism: the ‘double empathy problem’

In recent decades there has been much debate over the ontological status of autism and other neurological ‘disorders’, diagnosed by behavioural indicators, and theorised primarily within the field of cognitive neuroscience and psychological paradigms. Such cognitive-behavioural discourses abstain from acknowledging the universal issue of relationality and interaction in the formation of a contested and constantly reconstructed social reality, produced through the agency of its ‘actors’. The nature of these contested interactions will be explored in this current issues piece through the use of the term the ‘double empathy problem’, and how such a rendition produces a critique of autism being defined as a deficit in ‘theory of mind’, re-framing such issues as a question of reciprocity and mutuality. In keeping with other autistic self-advocates, this piece will refer to ‘autistic people’, and ‘those who identify as on the autism spectrum’, rather than ‘people with autism’.     

On the nature of Suppes–Sen maximal paths in an aggregative growth model

This article investigates the nature of paths in the standard neoclassical aggregative model of economic growth that are maximal according to the Suppes–Sen grading principle. This is accomplished by relating such paths to paths which are utilitarian maximal when an increasing (but not necessarily concave) utility function evaluates each period’s consumption. Dynamic properties of Suppes–Sen maximal paths, which lie entirely above or entirely below the golden-rule, are analyzed. An example is presented in which an explicit form of a consumption function is described, which generates only Suppes–Sen maximal paths. This consumption function is shown to generate consumption cycles, and violate the Pigou–Dalton transfer principle.     

Importing Trachoma: The Introduction into Britain of American Ideas of an ‘Immigrant Disease’, 1892–1906

This article examines how the American perception of trachoma as a disease prevalent among East European Jewish migrants was adopted in Britain in the years immediately preceding the passing of the 1905 Aliens Act. Increasingly rigorous immigration law in the United States meant that a proportion of migrants who arrived were refused entry and were subsequently forced to return to Europe. Steamship companies' interests, however, meant that a number of those migrants debarred from America were returned not to European frontiers but to the United Kingdom. One of the most potent ramifications of this was that trachoma, the reason why 87 per cent of migrants were rejected from America on health grounds, was considered in Britain to embody Britain's role as the destination for those migrants not fit for settlement in America. The disease was picked up by the growing anti-immigration lobby, who used it as symbol of the ‘undesirability’ of the immigrant in Britain.