Download or read book Miracles on the Border written by Jorge Durand and published by University of Arizona Press. This book was released on 2020-05-01 with total page 235 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This vivid study, richly illustrated with forty color photographs, offers a multilayered analysis of retablos—folk images painted on tin that are offered as votives of thanks for a miracle granted or a favor bestowed—created by Mexican migrants to the United States. Durand and Massey analyze 124 contemporary retablo texts, scrutinizing the shifting subjects and themes that constitute a running record of the migrant's unique experience. The result is a vivid work of synthesis that connects the history of an art form and a people, links two very different cultures, and allows a deeper understanding of a major twentieth-century theme—the drama of transnational migration.
Download or read book The Gang Paradox written by Robert J. Durán and published by Studies in Transgression. This book was released on 2018-04-08 with total page 299 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Robert J. Durán analyzes the impact of deportation, incarceration, and racialized perceptions of criminality on Latino families and youth along the U.S.-Mexico border. He finds significantly less gang membership and activity than common fearmongering claims would have us believe.
Download or read book Answered Prayers written by Eileen Oktavec and published by University of Arizona Press. This book was released on 2022-03-29 with total page 268 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: When Catholics in the Southwest ask God or a saint for help, many of them do not merely pray. They also promise or present a gift—a tiny metal object known as a milagro. A milagro, which means "miracle" in Spanish, depicts the object for which a miracle is sought, such as a crippled leg or a new house. Milagros are offered for everything people pray for, and so they can represent almost anything imaginable—arms, lungs, hearts, and eyes; men, women, and children; animals, cars, boats—even lost handbags and imprisoned men. In Answered Prayers, the Mexicans, Mexican Americans, Tohono O'odham, and Yaquis who practice this tradition share their stories of unwavering faith and divine intervention. Anthropologist and photographer Eileen Oktavec has spent more than two decades documenting this fascinating tradition in the Arizona-Mexico borderlands. Quoting extensive interviews, she explains the beliefs of the people who perform this ancient folk ritual and the many rules guiding this practice. She also describes the many places where milagros are offered—from the elaborate Mexican baroque Mission San Xavier near Tucson, Arizona, to tiny household shrines and hospitals on both sides of the border. Oktavec also explains how milagros are made, where they are bought, and how they are used in jewelry, sculpture, and art.
Download or read book Crossing the Border written by Jorge Durand and published by Russell Sage Foundation. This book was released on 2004-08-11 with total page 356 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Discussion of Mexican migration to the United States is often infused with ideological rhetoric, untested theories, and few facts. In Crossing the Border, editors Jorge Durand and Douglas Massey bring the clarity of scientific analysis to this hotly contested but under-researched topic. Leading immigration scholars use data from the Mexican Migration Project—the largest, most comprehensive, and reliable source of data on Mexican immigrants currently available—to answer such important questions as: Who are the people that migrate to the United States from Mexico? Why do they come? How effective is U.S. migration policy in meeting its objectives? Crossing the Border dispels two primary myths about Mexican migration: First, that those who come to the United States are predominantly impoverished and intend to settle here permanently, and second, that the only way to keep them out is with stricter border enforcement. Nadia Flores, Rubén Hernández-León, and Douglas Massey show that Mexican migrants are generally not destitute but in fact cross the border because the higher comparative wages in the United States help them to finance homes back in Mexico, where limited credit opportunities makes it difficult for them to purchase housing. William Kandel's chapter on immigrant agricultural workers debunks the myth that these laborers are part of a shadowy, underground population that sponges off of social services. In contrast, he finds that most Mexican agricultural workers in the United States are paid by check and not under the table. These workers pay their fair share in U.S. taxes and—despite high rates of eligibility—they rarely utilize welfare programs. Research from the project also indicates that heightened border surveillance is an ineffective strategy to reduce the immigrant population. Pia Orrenius demonstrates that strict barriers at popular border crossings have not kept migrants from entering the United States, but rather have prompted them to seek out other crossing points. Belinda Reyes uses statistical models and qualitative interviews to show that the militarization of the Mexican border has actually kept immigrants who want to return to Mexico from doing so by making them fear that if they leave they will not be able to get back into the United States. By replacing anecdotal and speculative evidence with concrete data, Crossing the Border paints a picture of Mexican immigration to the United States that defies the common knowledge. It portrays a group of committed workers, doing what they can to realize the dream of home ownership in the absence of financing opportunities, and a broken immigration system that tries to keep migrants out of this country, but instead has kept them from leaving.
Download or read book Migration Miracle written by Jacqueline Maria Hagan and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2012-09-10 with total page 234 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Since the arrival of the Puritans, various religious groups, including Quakers, Jews, Catholics, and Protestant sects, have migrated to the United States. The role of religion in motivating their migration and shaping their settlement experiences has been well documented. What has not been recorded is the contemporary story of how migrants from Mexico and Central America rely on religion—their clergy, faith, cultural expressions, and everyday religious practices—to endure the undocumented journey. At a time when anti-immigrant feeling is rising among the American public and when immigration is often cast in economic or deviant terms, Migration Miracle humanizes the controversy by exploring the harsh realities of the migrants’ desperate journeys. Drawing on over 300 interviews with men, women, and children, Jacqueline Hagan focuses on an unexplored dimension of the migration undertaking—the role of religion and faith in surviving the journey. Each year hundreds of thousands of migrants risk their lives to cross the border into the United States, yet until now, few scholars have sought migrants’ own accounts of their experiences.
Download or read book Migration Miracle written by Jacqueline Maria Hagan and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2012-09-10 with total page 234 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Since the arrival of the Puritans, various religious groups, including Quakers, Jews, Catholics, and Protestant sects, have migrated to the United States. The role of religion in motivating their migration and shaping their settlement experiences has been well documented. What has not been recorded is the contemporary story of how migrants from Mexico and Central America rely on religionÑtheir clergy, faith, cultural expressions, and everyday religious practicesÑto endure the undocumented journey. At a time when anti-immigrant feeling is rising among the American public and when immigration is often cast in economic or deviant terms, Migration Miracle humanizes the controversy by exploring the harsh realities of the migrantsÕ desperate journeys. Drawing on over 300 interviews with men, women, and children, Jacqueline Hagan focuses on an unexplored dimension of the migration undertakingÑthe role of religion and faith in surviving the journey. Each year hundreds of thousands of migrants risk their lives to cross the border into the United States, yet until now, few scholars have sought migrantsÕ own accounts of their experiences.
Download or read book Miracles 2 Volumes written by Craig S. Keener and published by Baker Books. This book was released on 2011-11-01 with total page 1459 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Christianity Today 2013 Book Award Winner Winner of The Foundation for Pentecostal Scholarship's 2012 Award of Excellence 2011 Book of the Year, Christianbook.com's Academic Blog Most modern prejudice against biblical miracle reports depends on David Hume's argument that uniform human experience precluded miracles. Yet current research shows that human experience is far from uniform. In fact, hundreds of millions of people today claim to have experienced miracles. New Testament scholar Craig Keener argues that it is time to rethink Hume's argument in light of the contemporary evidence available to us. This wide-ranging and meticulously researched two-volume study presents the most thorough current defense of the credibility of the miracle reports in the Gospels and Acts. Drawing on claims from a range of global cultures and taking a multidisciplinary approach to the topic, Keener suggests that many miracle accounts throughout history and from contemporary times are best explained as genuine divine acts, lending credence to the biblical miracle reports.
Download or read book Art in the Lives of Immigrant Communities in the United States written by Paul DiMaggio and published by Rutgers University Press. This book was released on 2010 with total page 302 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Art in the Lives of Immigrant Communities in the United States is the first book to provide a comprehensive and lively analysis of the contributions of artists from America's newest immigrant communities--Africa, the Middle East, China, India, Southeast Asia, Central America, and Mexico. Adding significantly to our understanding of both the arts and immigration, multidisciplinary scholars explore tensions that artists face in forging careers in a new world and navigating between their home communities and the larger society. They address the art forms that these modern settlers bring with them; show how poets, musicians, playwrights, and visual artists adapt traditional forms to new environments; and consider the ways in which the communities' young people integrate their own traditions and concerns into contemporary expression.
Download or read book Border Culture written by Victor Konrad and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2022-12-29 with total page 200 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book introduces readers to the cultural imaginings of borders: the in-between spaces in which transnationalism collides with geopolitical cooperation and contestation. Recent debates about the "refugee crisis" and the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic have politicized culture at and of borders like never before. Border culture is no longer culture at the margins but rather culture at the heart of geopolitics, flows, and experience of the transnational world. Increasingly, culture and borders are everywhere yet nowhere. In border spaces, national narratives and counter-narratives are tested and evaluated, coming up against transnational culture. This book provides an extensive and critical vision of border culture on the move, drawing on numerous examples worldwide and a growing international literature across border and cultural studies. It shows how border culture develops in the human imagination and manifests in human constructs of "nation" and "state", as well as in transnationalism. By analyzing this new and expanding cultural geography of border landscapes, the book shows the way to a fresh, broader dialogue. Exploring the nature and meaning of the intersection of border and culture, this book will be an essential read for students and researchers across border studies, geopolitics, geography, and cultural studies.
Download or read book Humanities and Option for the Poor written by Clemens Sedmak and published by LIT Verlag Münster. This book was released on 2005 with total page 228 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The concept of a preferential option for the poor calls for a special attention to the weakest members of a particular society. Such an option is a challenge for the ethics of science as well. How can we pursue an "option for the poor" in the humanities? Can we do that without generating "ideologies"? This volume gives an account of these questions. Representatives of sociology, religious studies, law, economics, theology, history and philosophy try to answer this question. It is manifest that the discussion of an option for the poor is also a matter of intellectual integrity.
Download or read book Religion on the Edge written by Courtney Bender and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2013 with total page 312 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The thirteen essays in this volume offer a challenge to conventional scholarly approaches to the sociology of religion. They urge readers to look beyond congregational settings, beyond the United States, and to religions other than Christianity, and encourage critical engagement with religion's complex social consequences. By expanding conceptual categories, the essays reveal how aspects of the religious have always been part of allegedly non-religious spaces and show how, by attending to these intellectual blindspots, we can understand aspects of identity, modernity, and institutional life that have long been obscured. Religion on the Edge addresses a number of critical questions: What is revealed about the self, pluralism, or modernity when we look outside the U.S. or outside Christian settings? What do we learn about how and where the religious is actually at work and what its role is when we unpack the assumptions about it embedded in the categories we use? Religion on the Edge offers groundbreaking new methodologies and models, bringing to light conceptual lacunae, re-centering what is unsettled by their use, and inviting a significant reordering of long-accepted political and economic hierarchies. The book shows how social scientists across the disciplines can engage with the sociology of religion. By challenging many of its long-standing empirical and analytic tendencies, the contributors to this volume show how their work informs and is informed by debates in other fields and the analytical purchase gained by bringing these many conversations together. Religion on the Edge will be a crucial resource for any scholar seeking to understand our post-modern, post-secular world.
Download or read book Understanding and Teaching Contemporary US History Since Reagan written by Kimber Quinney and published by University of Wisconsin Pres. This book was released on 2022 with total page 354 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Understanding and Teaching Contemporary US History since Reagan is designed for teachers looking for new perspectives on teaching the recent past, the period of US history often given the least attention in classrooms. Less of a traditional textbook than a pedagogical Swiss Army knife, the volume offers a diversity of voices and approaches to teaching a field that, by its very nature, invites vigorous debate and puts generational differences in stark relief. Older history is likely to feel removed from the lived experiences of both teachers and students, allowing for a certain dispassion of perspective. By contrast, contemporary history creates unique challenges, as individual teachers and students may think they know "what really happened" by virtue of their personal experiences. The volume addresses a wide swath of topics, from social movements around identity and representation to the Supreme Court, law enforcement, migration, climate change, and international relations. Emphasizing critical thinking and primary-source analysis, it will aid teachers in creating an invigorating and democratizing classroom experience. Intended for use in both secondary and postsecondary classrooms, the book's structure allows for a variety of applications and invites a broad audience.
Download or read book Beyond Smoke and Mirrors written by Douglas S. Massey and published by Russell Sage Foundation. This book was released on 2002-03-14 with total page 210 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Migration between Mexico and the United States is part of a historical process of increasing North American integration. This process acquired new momentum with the passage of the North American Free Trade Agreement in 1994, which lowered barriers to the movement of goods, capital, services, and information. But rather than include labor in this new regime, the United States continues to resist the integration of the labor markets of the two countries. Instead of easing restrictions on Mexican labor, the United States has militarized its border and adopted restrictive new policies of immigrant disenfranchisement. Beyond Smoke and Mirrors examines the devastating impact of these immigration policies on the social and economic fabric of the Mexico and the United States, and calls for a sweeping reform of the current system. Beyond Smoke and Mirrors shows how U.S. immigration policies enacted between 1986–1996—largely for symbolic domestic political purposes—harm the interests of Mexico, the United States, and the people who migrate between them. The costs have been high. The book documents how the massive expansion of border enforcement has wasted billions of dollars and hundreds of lives, yet has not deterred increasing numbers of undocumented immigrants from heading north. The authors also show how the new policies unleashed a host of unintended consequences: a shift away from seasonal, circular migration toward permanent settlement; the creation of a black market for Mexican labor; the transformation of Mexican immigration from a regional phenomenon into a broad social movement touching every region of the country; and even the lowering of wages for legal U.S. residents. What had been a relatively open and benign labor process before 1986 was transformed into an exploitative underground system of labor coercion, one that lowered wages and working conditions of undocumented migrants, legal immigrants, and American citizens alike. Beyond Smoke and Mirrors offers specific proposals for repairing the damage. Rather than denying the reality of labor migration, the authors recommend regularizing it and working to manage it so as to promote economic development in Mexico, minimize costs and disruptions for the United States, and maximize benefits for all concerned. This book provides an essential "user's manual" for readers seeking a historical, theoretical, and substantive understanding of how U.S. policy on Mexican immigration evolved to its current dysfunctional state, as well as how it might be fixed.
Download or read book Extinct Lands Temporal Geographies written by Mary Pat Brady and published by Duke University Press. This book was released on 2002-11-15 with total page 289 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A train station becomes a police station; lands held sacred by Apaches and Mexicanos are turned into commercial and residential zones; freeway construction hollows out a community; a rancho becomes a retirement community—these are the kinds of spatial transformations that concern Mary Pat Brady in Extinct Lands, Temporal Geographies, a book bringing together Chicana feminism, cultural geography, and literary theory to analyze an unusual mix of Chicana texts through the concept of space. Beginning with nineteenth-century short stories and essays and concluding with contemporary fiction, this book reveals how Chicana literature offers a valuable theoretics of space. The history of the American Southwest in large part entails the transformation of lived, embodied space into zones of police surveillance, warehouse districts, highway interchanges, and shopping malls—a movement that Chicana writers have contested from its inception. Brady examines this long-standing engagement with space, first in the work of early newspaper essayists and fiction writers who opposed Anglo characterizations of Northern Sonora that were highly detrimental to Mexican Americans, and then in the work of authors who explore border crossing. Through the writing of Sandra Cisneros, Cherríe Moraga, Terri de la Peña, Norma Cantú, Monserrat Fontes, Gloria Anzaldúa, and others, Brady shows how categories such as race, gender, and sexuality are spatially enacted and created—and made to appear natural and unyielding. In a spatial critique of the war on drugs, she reveals how scale—the process by which space is divided, organized, and categorized—has become a crucial tool in the management and policing of the narcotics economy.
Download or read book Latino Religions and Civic Activism in the United States written by Gaston Espinosa and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2005-08-11 with total page 367 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Latino community in the United States is commonly stereotyped as Roman Catholic and politically passive. Latino Religions and Civic Activism in the United States challenges and revises these stereotypes by demonstrating the critical influence of Latino Catholics, Evangelicals, Pentecostals, Mainline Protestants, and others on political, civic, and social engagement in the United States and Puerto Rico. It also revises the ostensibly secular narrative of Latino history and politics. The authors analyze the critical role that institutional, popular, and civil religion have played in Latino activism. This timely book offers readers a new framework by which to understand and to interpret the central importance of religious symbols, rhetoric, ideology, world-views, and leaders to Latino religions and politics over the past 150 years.
Download or read book The Gang Paradox written by Robert J. Durán and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2018-09-04 with total page 276 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The areas along the U.S.-Mexico border are commonly portrayed as a hot spot for gang activity, drug trafficking, and violence. Yet when Robert J. Durán conducted almost a decade’s worth of ethnographic research in border towns between El Paso, Texas, and southern New Mexico—a region notorious for gang activity, according to federal officials—he found significantly less gang membership and activity than common fearmongering claims would have us believe. Instead, he witnessed how the gang label was used to criminalize youth of Mexican descent—to justify the overrepresentation of Latinos in the justice system, the implementation of punitive practices in the school system, and the request for additional resources by law enforcement. In The Gang Paradox, Durán analyzes the impact of deportation, incarceration, and racialized perceptions of criminality on Latino families and youth along the border. He draws on ethnography, archival research, official data sources, and interviews with practitioners and community members to present a compelling portrait of Latino residents’ struggles amid deep structural disadvantages. Durán, himself a former gang member, offers keen insights into youth experience with schools, juvenile probation, and law enforcement. The Gang Paradox is a powerful community study that sheds new light on intertwined criminalization and racialization, with policy relevance toward issues of gangs, juvenile delinquency, and the lack of resources in border regions.
Download or read book Handbook of International Migration written by Steven J. Gold and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2013-05-02 with total page 628 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This revised and expanded second edition of Routledge International Handbook of Migration Studies provides a comprehensive basis for understanding the complexity and patterns of international migration. Despite increased efforts to limit its size and consequences, migration has wide-ranging impacts upon social, environmental, economic, political and cultural life in countries of origin and settlement. Such transformations impact not only those who are migrating, but those who are left behind, as well as those who live in the areas where migrants settle. Featuring forty-six essays written by leading international and multidisciplinary scholars, this new edition showcases evolving research and theorizing around refugees and forced migrants, new migration paths through Central Asia and the Middle East, the condition of statelessness and South to South migration. New chapters also address immigrant labor and entrepreneurship, skilled migration, ethnic succession, contract labor and informal economies. Uniquely among texts in the subject area, the Handbook provides a six-chapter compendium of methodologies for studying international migration and its impacts. Written in a clear and direct style, this Handbook offers a contemporary integrated resource for students and scholars from the perspectives of social science, humanities, journalism and other disciplines.
