Once again, the holiday season is upon us. Whether we choose to celebrate Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa—or simply participate in ongoing festivities—we can all agree that it’s a special time of the year, graced by extended time with family and friends, good food, and merrymaking. For obvious reasons already enumerated in countless media outlets, it can also be a stressful time, a lonely time, and a sad time. This year, but a few weeks after the 2024 Presidential Elections, the stakes are even higher. The probability of uncomfortable dinners has grown, perhaps exponentially, as we take stock of how deeply divided our nation truly is.
2025 will bring us Trump Show 2.0, with the president-elect promising mass deportations of undocumented immigrants, many from Latin America. Indeed, immigration was THE issue of the 2024 presidential election, so conditions should be ideal for Christmas dinners, family get-togethers, and champagne toasts to be riven by divergent opinions on the influx of newcomers to the U.S., whose growth over the past years was significant enough to be labelled, at least by some news outlets, a “surge.”
How can we talk productively about our historical moment and ourselves as we sip eggnog beside the yule log and under the mistletoe? How can we gift our interlocutors with arguments wrapped not in vitriol but rather, history? How can we look beyond the ill-willed gaslighting particular to once-a-year family reunions? For some of us talking more cogently about these delicate topics may lessen the pressures of the holiday season. For others, a more humane and reasoned public discourse may be a matter of life and death. After all, nothing less than the weight of history itself has brought them here.
Migrants and residents, undocumented and documented individuals, are living the same neoliberal moment, in which wages are pushed down, the informal economy grows, and workers experience a new flexibility as precariousness.
While I teach Spanish and Latin American culture at the collegiate level during the day, I teach both ESL and a Spanish-language version of the GED during the evening hours. These two roles inform how I think through our present moment. Let’s give ourselves the gift of both history and experience for Christmas—headlines and heartbeats, doubt and decisions.
First is the formidable list of number ones we enjoy in the United States. We are both number one in terms of consumption and, less joyfully, prisons. We are simultaneously the biggest mall and the biggest jail the world has ever known. We are a nation defined by emphatic commerce on one hand and, on the other hand, consequences for those who don’t follow along.
Our bounties are especially notable in terms of foodstuffs and, perhaps even more notable in terms of who produces our food. Latinos make up roughly one-third of those employed in the poultry industry—a major economic force for documented and undocumented workers alike in places like rural Missouri, Virginia’s Eastern Shore, and Mississippi. Slaughtering chickens is no easy task, but catching chickens may be even more difficult. Latinos also have a foothold in the dairy industry; cows can, in fact, be milked three times a day, so those working will have to be available during the early morning hours. Gardening, construction, and drywall are also significant employers of Latino labor in the United States.
Beyond what newspapers and anthropologists tell us, I know that my ESL and GED students—some of them documented, some of them not—often work in these sectors. They also work in places that are closer to home for most of us: restaurants, hotels, and even Walmart. Indeed, the behemoth retailer Walmart was sued once some 20 years for abusing undocumented workers. If I am listening to my students correctly, it may be time again to examine the chain’s labor practices. Staffing agencies seem to be crucial in allowing the continued employment of undocumented labor: They provide a means to muddle up paperwork, intake non-English speakers, and forge employer-employee connections.
In both of my evening classes, my Latino students come and go. Their enthusiasm is palpable, but so is their exhaustion. Almost no one enjoys perfect attendance given the heinous flexibility of their jobs. Roofers can’t lay shingles in the rain. Housekeepers don’t clean rooms where guests haven’t slept. But when they are called in, they seemingly can’t afford to say no. Their education, naturally, is pushed on the proverbial backburner. It’s no fun being fungible.
In my GED class, we have studied how to develop arguments for the expository essay section. When asked to justify their claims in writing, my Latino students inevitably signal financial concerns as paramount. No matter the prompt and no matter what issue students are asked to weigh in on—junk food in high schools, obligatory military service, the humaneness of zoos, etc.—students consistently turn to personal finances to back their arguments. Maybe junk food is a low-cost alternative to cooking? Does the army pay well? Can zoos be self-funded? For my students, personal financial matters are preternaturally totalizing and give me a glimpse as to what they are really thinking about on a daily basis.
But again: the specter of deportation and possibility of changing hearts at the dinner table.
What the current debate misses is the deep history of these contemporary phenomena. Few Americans are aware of the Bracero Program or Operation Bootstrap, two accords (one between the U.S. and Mexico, another between the U.S. and Puerto Rico) that first brought thousands of workers to the lower 48. As American servicemen and women fought in two theaters overseas during World War II, workers were still needed to operate wood lathes, pull weeds, and lay railroad tracks. The briefest survey of amazing photographs culled from this mid-century moment make plain how we should think about that time. For Latino workers, it was a story of both commerce and control, opportunity and degradation, pride and poverty. Above all, what we should remember at the dinner table was that it was an invitation—an offer to enter the world’s largest mall and its biggest prison. During downturns—or, after soldiers returned to the U.S.—these actions were reversed.
The next bit of history that helps to explain our present moment takes us to 1994.
The late 1990s and early 2000s were a pivotal time in the southwestern United States borderlands. The passage of NAFTA in 1994 marked a new era of trade between the United States, Mexico, and Canada, aimed at boosting the flow of goods by loosening trade restrictions. This shift allowed the U.S. economy to dominate the Mexican market, leading to instability in Mexico’s labor force and driving many to seek opportunities in the U.S., resulting in a surge in undocumented crossings at the Southern border.
While NAFTA was intended to open borders for trade and close them for people, the increased migration highlighted the human impact of market policies. These changes coincided with a shift in U.S. border policy under President Bill Clinton, focusing on prevention through deterrence. This strategy involved concentrating surveillance forces in urban areas like El Paso and San Diego, pushing undocumented migrants into the harsh terrain of Arizona.
As immigration from Latin America has risen, anti-immigrant sentiment has also grown. You may see some of this at Christmas dinner. It has also led to stricter laws, a more controlled border, and U.S. pressure on Mexico to militarize. Discussion of building a wall on the U.S.-Mexico border may arise during your merrymaking, too. Most of us don’t realize that even in places with the roughest terrain, where building a fence would be amazingly difficult, individuals find ways to cross. Conversation may then turn to ideas about the “sovereignty” of a nation. But defining what a nation is has—and continues to be—a rather difficult task. Others gathered for the festivities may put forth that immigrants sap social services. The fact is, however, a great many undocumented workers pay taxes. Finally, others that are present at your Christmas gatherings may claim that migrants are stealing away jobs from other Americans. The truth may be, however, that migrants and residents, undocumented and documented individuals, are living the same neoliberal moment, in which wages are pushed down, the informal economy grows, and workers experience a new flexibility as precariousness.
Perhaps around the time that dessert comes out, you may introduce a bit of theory to your guests—the Foucauldian notion that workers, within capital, whether documented or undocumented, have been increasingly rendered “docile bodies” over the past 50 or so years: powerless, susceptible, and constantly in movement. This is not to say we should forever characterize migrants as passive agents, thrown to the wind, capable of little more than provoking liberal guilt. Rather, we should interrogate what about our present moment created the most flexible, most fungible, most vulnerable—and perhaps, most usable—population in the history of humanity.
I, for one, will raise a glass at the end of my Christmas meal, toasting my students, their work ethic, and their hopes for a better life. I hope they can return to my classroom in the New Year, not dragged off by the promise of another siding job, another garden gig, another chicken coop in the next state over.
