Tuesday, June 25, 2013
5.55 (PC Hoofthuis)
The objective of this paper will be to examine the dynamics of political conflict surrounding immigration in the state of Arizona, in order to determine whether its racial dimension – implicit or explicit – has led or is likely to lead to political violence. A series of laws adopted by the state legislature between 2004 and the present, aiming to restrict the freedom of undocumented immigrants in seeking labor or even in circulating in the street, combined with the action of an elected sheriff in the state’s most populous county, have contributed to a strong perception of racial bias and racial profiling, to the dissatisfaction of many Latino citizens and others who defend immigrants’ rights, or civil rights more generally. Observation, including field work, have led me to the conclusion, to date, that when Hispanics/Latinos feel that their civil rights – or those of immigrants – are being abused, this rarely if ever has resulted in acts of violence against state or federal authorities. It could be argued that the main source of violence in these instances are the authorities themselves, that is state and certain county police forces in particular, in their aggressive enforcement of federal immigration law. When the same Arizona state authorities passed a law in 2010 to abolish the program of Mexican-American studies in certain schools of the Tucson Unified School District, this measure too provoked a great deal of resentment, some acts of civil disobedience, but nothing resembling organized political violence or underground action. Strict immigration enforcement measures and other measures tending to stigmatize people of Mexican or Central American origin have been combated, using peaceful and legal means, by broad civic coalitions which can hardly be qualified as ethnically closed, respectful of existing institutions and hardly inclined toward acts of violence.
