In recent decades, the United States government enacted immigration policies that transformed migrant workers into undocumented immigrants. Illegality is a highly racialized status, as more than half of Mexican and Central American people in the U.S. are undocumented. Immigration laws that purport to be color-blind recreate older racial and ethnic discriminatory systems. Today, being an undocumented immigrant in the United States has repercussions far beyond administrative status. Immigration enforcement agencies and employers utilize the threat of deportation to suppress the efforts of workers to organize for improved working conditions. In this way, illegality functions to maintain a fearful and compliant workforce. The U.S. government enforces immigration policies that dehumanize and commodify millions of people, and relegate millions of workers to the most vulnerable occupations in exploitative industries.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:VANDERBILT/oai:VANDERBILTETD:etd-04112016-082506 |
| Date | 11 April 2016 |
| Creators | Lopez, Elizabeth |
| Contributors | Lesley Gill, William F. Robinson |
| Publisher | VANDERBILT |
| Source Sets | Vanderbilt University Theses |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Source | http://etd.library.vanderbilt.edu/available/etd-04112016-082506/ |
| Rights | restricted, I hereby certify that, if appropriate, I have obtained and attached hereto a written permission statement from the owner(s) of each third party copyrighted matter to be included in my thesis, dissertation, or project report, allowing distribution as specified below. I certify that the version I submitted is the same as that approved by my advisory committee. I hereby grant to Vanderbilt University or its agents the non-exclusive license to archive and make accessible, under the conditions specified below, my thesis, dissertation, or project report in whole or in part in all forms of media, now or hereafter known. I retain all other ownership rights to the copyright of the thesis, dissertation or project report. I also retain the right to use in future works (such as articles or books) all or part of this thesis, dissertation, or project report. |
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