Summary Of Immigrants At The Margins By Kitty Calavita
1382 Words6 Pages
Joselin Diaz
Social Change
Marcos Tejada
December 14, 2014
Is racism still alive in our societies today? Is racism really a part of our history? Kitty Calavita in her book Immigrants at the Margins: Law, Race and Exclusion in Southern Europe show us how racism is still embedded in our societies today. Furthermore, Calavita talks about criminalization through racial profiling, a current issue that is very relevant today in the United States. Through her research on how immigration laws create barriers for inclusion of immigrants in Spain and Italy, we learn about the social constructions of race and how culture and race play an integral part in the marginalization and profiling of “minorities”. Her research can be connected to the issues we…show more content… It thus has a structural/material dimension (subordination), an attitudinal one (prejudice), and a physical one (perceived bodily inscriptions). (Calavita, 153)
In other words, she says racism is the subjection of one group or person to another that is reasoned by the preconceived ideals they have about this group or persons. Calavita begins her book with examples of violent acts against immigrants. The first incident took place in Spain, where a group of men completely destroyed farms that belonged to African farmers and destroyed their properties. She notes that seventy people lost their lives and several were injured. The second incident was against Albanians taking place in Italy; allegedly some Albanian boys were looking at some girls the wrong way and this caused chaos amongst the Italians towards Albanians. These are evident cases of discrimination against a group of people because of where they come from. Hate crimes against minority groups happen often, this highlights the deeply rooted racism in our societies…show more content… In this essay Davis highlights the dramatic difference between the number of Black and Latino men in prison or jail versus white males. She states, “most recent report indicates that 32.2 percent Black men and 12.3 percent of Latino men between the ages of twenty to twenty-nine are in jail or prison or on parole. This is in comparison to 6.7 percent of white young men.” (1995) These statistics are astonishing and we can see the disparities between Black young men and White young men in the prison system. The author also