Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects
Date of Degree
2-2019
Document Type
Thesis
Degree Name
M.A.
Program
Liberal Studies
Advisor
Michael Blim
Subject Categories
Politics and Social Change | Social and Cultural Anthropology | Social Influence and Political Communication
Keywords
nationalism, nativism, borderlands, immigration law, violence, public perception
Abstract
This thesis examines the refraction of immigration rhetoric in a local context through a collection of letters to the editor of southern Arizona’s largest and only daily newspaper, the Arizona Daily Star, for the period 2006-2010. The purpose is to further insight into the process by which xenophobic nationalism is both contested and legitimated ‘on the ground,’ within a violent paradigm of nativist rhetoric and exclusion. Findings reveal essential disjunctures between and within letter-writers’ conceptions of moral proximity and the social contract—as delimiting those obligations and expectations that inhere between society, the self and the stranger—as well as competing notions of legitimacy based, on the one hand, on an overarching and at times homogenizing myth of nation and, on the other, in rootedness to the cultural and historic particularities of place. These disjunctures point to a profusion of contradictory ideations, the struggle over which exposes the efforts of community members to contest and redefine the boundaries of societal norms within the context of emergent nationalism.
Recommended Citation
Duwel, Emily, "Refracting Immigration Rhetoric: The Struggle to Define Identity, Place and Nation in Southern Arizona" (2019). CUNY Academic Works.
https://academicworks.cuny.edu/gc_etds/3010
Included in
Politics and Social Change Commons, Social and Cultural Anthropology Commons, Social Influence and Political Communication Commons