Anth 103 - Invasion of Social Issues to Undocumented Immigrants’ Lives

Madeleine Leong

ANTH 103

Book Review

11/02/2014

Invasion of Social Issues to Undocumented Immigrants’ Lives

In Labor and Legality: An Ethnography of a Mexican Immigrant Network, by Ruth Gomberg-Muñoz delivers very entertaining personal stories about the undocumented immigrants and also give readers a new perspective on them. The stories are based on the lives of ten undocumented immigrants from Mexico, who work and live in the Chicago area. Instead of calling them undocumented immigrants, Gomberg-Muñoz uses the word “Lions” to describe them as they are from the city of Léon. Her main argument on this book is the undocumented immigrants work hard to improve their quality of life as well as their families’ that are back from home by finding job in the United States. She also argues that they have developed the social strategies in order to secure their financial pillar and gain their self-esteem and dignity. Through her well-researched account and analysis, readers can get the insightful understanding on the interconnection between the social issues and the undocumented immigrants in the United Stated.

First and foremost, U.S. employers are taking for granted Mexican immigrants’ “culture”. When the U.S. immigration reduced the number of legal immigration and the Mexico implemented the neoliberal economic policy that caused the Mexican producers competing with the U.S industries as this policy promoted the free market and free trades (Gomberg-Muñoz 32-33), the undocumented immigrants from Mexico increased. Their only jobs in the labor market are the low-paying works. This makes them work harder than others and helps them to create a work ethic. The Mexican immigrants’ work ethic is always assigned to their “culture” (qtd. in Gomberg-Muñoz 82). American business owners know that Mexicans need the low-paying job to survive. They use undocumented Mexican workers to do more dangerous jobs and overloading works and tend to pay them less because they believe Mexicans love to work harder. While the undocumented Mexicans play an important role in the economy of U.S., the Americans are still not appreciating the work ethic of Mexicans but instead they take for granted. Hence, Mexicans are always at the low-pay working class, and class order among the people in the U.S. society will be intensified. This problematic issue will not be changed but pressured a sort of violence in the United States.

Moreover, another issue that faced by undocumented immigrants is structural violence. Structural violence is a “social machinery of oppression” (Farmer 307). This means it is a systematic way to exert the violence by a group of people with certain social order. The undocumented immigration becomes a part of the machinery of the structural violence. Thus, the violence has exerted in the lives of undocumented immigrants and limit their degree of freedom in the U.S.. The examples of structural violence among the undocumented immigrants are fear of being deported, the threats of fire used to maintain the vulnerability of undocumented immigrants, and restriction of accessing the facilities in the U.S. although they pay taxes and contribute in U.S. economy. Luis, who is a busboy in I1 Vino claims that he always wants to improve himself when he is in the U.S. but the fear of being deported in his mentality always makes him thinking of himself as a wetback and exerts the pressure in his live in the U.S. (Gomberg-Muñoz 6). Alejandro argued that white people can fire them with no reason and you can’t do anything like sue them because you have no paper (Gomberg-Muñoz 69). Undocumented Immigrants are ineligible for buying insurance, obtaining social security or workers’ compensations and using the medical care. These examples lead the readers to understand the issue of structural violence that is exerted on the lives of undocumented immigrants in U.S..