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Full-Text Articles in Social and Behavioral Sciences
“We Like Mexican Laborers Better”: Citizenship And Immigration Policies In The Formation Of Puerto Rican Farm Labor In The United States, Ismael Garcia-Colon
“We Like Mexican Laborers Better”: Citizenship And Immigration Policies In The Formation Of Puerto Rican Farm Labor In The United States, Ismael Garcia-Colon
Publications and Research
This paper examines how colonialism and immigration policies define the citizenship of Puerto Rican farmworkers in relation to the immigration policies of guestwork. The Jones Act created in practice an ambiguous status for Puerto Rican migrants by granting U.S. citizenship to colonial subjects in a time when citizenship still meant being White and Anglophone. In addition, the importation of Mexican braceros tended to shape people’s perceptions of farmworkers as “foreign.” Puerto Ricans were and are constantly asked, challenged, and suspected by mainstream society of being “illegal aliens.” These perceptions had a lasting effect through World War II, the H-2 Program, …
Confronting The Present: Migration In Sidney Mintz’S Journal For The People Of Puerto Rico, Ismael Garcia-Colon
Confronting The Present: Migration In Sidney Mintz’S Journal For The People Of Puerto Rico, Ismael Garcia-Colon
Publications and Research
Sidney Mintz’s field journal for The People of Puerto Rico, published in 1956, is a valuable source for historical anthropological work. Until now, however, it has remained a hidden treasure for the anthropology of migration. By the late 1940s and 1950s, migration was central to the lives of Puerto Rican sugarcane workers and their families, and Mintz recorded important details of it. His journal shows how people maneuvered within fields of power that were full of opportunities and constraints for people seeking to make a living by migrating. Thanks to Mintz, anthropologists can learn about working-class Puerto Ricans’ experiences, lives, …