I need someone to make a PowerPoint presentation for me (sociology class)

We Are Not Dreamers Abrego, Leisy J., Negrón-Gonzales, Genevieve Published by Duke University Press Abrego, Leisy J. and Genevieve Negrón-Gonzales. We Are Not Dreamers: Undocumented Scholars Theorize Undocumented Life in the United States. Duke University Press, 2020. Project MUSE. muse.jhu.edu/book/77585. https://muse.jhu.edu/. For additional information about this book [ Access provided at 21 Apr 2021 03:50 GMT from Middle Tennessee State University ] https://muse.jhu.edu/book/77585 The American debate on whether to grant undocumented immigrants legal status raises, at its heart, questions about the procedural fairness of the American immigration apparatus and how public perceptions of that apparatus manifest themselves in discourse. Procedural fairness, according to Tom Tyler, queries the “manner in which authorities [exercise] their authority—on the fairness of processes rather than the fairness of outcomes” (Tyler 2004, 440). In creating an immigration apparatus that aims to be procedurally fair, there are numerous interests that must be accounted for: administrative efficiency bound up in the state’s need to control its borders, residents and citizens’ sense of a national identity, and the humanitarian interests of immigrants, among others. Emily Ryo describes immigration law as occupying “a unique position in our legal system as the only domestic law that is largely directed at regulating the behavior of noncitizens” (Ryo 2013, 575). The way we marshal those competing interests, both as a political and, more centrally for the purposes of this chapter, as a linguistic maneuver, reveals how prima facie procedurally just immigration policy makes exclusion invisible to the bodies it excludes. This chapter investigates metaphor as it relates to the law, the theory, and the politics of immigration, with a focus on the deliberative space in which immigrant and anti-immigrant rights groups negotiate immigration reform. I take “immigration reform” to mean any significant piece of legislation passed at the federal level that directly responds to the presence of over eleven million undocumented persons in the United States. Though immigration reform joel sati 1
“Other” Borders The Illegal as Normative Metaphor 24 Joel Sati has been synonymous with granting residency and citizenship to undocumented immigrants—a term I call “regularization,” this chapter does not directly contend with this view; rather, my primary interest here is the political and epistemic climate in which such a debate takes place, and the role that metaphor plays in constructing the debate. That said, I argue that when it comes to discussions of procedural fairness, undocumented persons are at a disadvantage when perceptions of procedural fairness are applied to deliberations on immigration policy. Said differently, the metaphors used against undocumented immigrants are an important dimension in making certain anti-immigrant measures salient in political discourse.1 An example would be the metaphor of “illegals” as an indiscernible mass (are they asylum seekers or isis fighters?) undergirding policies such as building a wall and other draconian measures. In addition to imbalances related to the availability of resources and lack of legal status, undocumented immigrant groups suffer from a more dangerous disadvantage: the metaphors that carry weight in policy discussions have the ability to warp the very narratives necessary for immigration relief. In other words, it is not only the issue of the presence of metaphor and narrative, but it is also the perspective of the people and entities creating them; this constitutes much of the disadvantage undocumented immigrants and other marginalized groups must contend with. In making this argument, I remark on the political climate that makes it difficult for undocumented immigrants to advocate for their interests. I am interested in how metaphor affects conceptions of procedural fairness, which I define as the extent to which American legal procedures of including and excluding immigrants are seen as legitimate. The central questions I contend with are: how do legal institutions—in particular, the courts—and the public political discussion figure into how undocumented immigrants make their claims for immigration reform? More centrally, how do the metaphors we live by in discussing immigration reform shape and constitute the responses that we devise for dealing with concerns of immigration reform? I respond by maintaining that procedural fairness plays a role in immigration discourse because either undocumented immigrants are accused of having seemingly flouted it (in, say, entering without authorization or overstaying their visa) or immigration reform that benefits undocumented immigrants is assumed to negatively impact considerations of procedural fairness vis-à-vis other groups (say, undocumented immigrants seemingly cutting in line for benefits legal residents have waited years for). Metaphor not only frames the issue; it does so in ways that maximize rhetorical value based on a group’s desired ends. “Other” Borders 25 In her paper, “Deciding to Cross: The Norms and Economics of Unauthorized Migration,” Emily Ryo concludes that “insofar as deterrence is an important goal in U.S. immigration policy, fostering greater perceptions of legitimacy (e.g., through promotion of greater procedural fairness) ought to be an urgent priority for U.S. policymakers” (Ryo 2013, 592). I am particularly interested in what she means by the phrase “fostering greater perceptions of legitimacy.” To whom is this procedural fairness accountable? Ryo appears to suggest that it is the appearance, not the existence of legitimacy that would make immigration policy more procedurally just. There exists a loose metaphorical relationship between appearance and reliability; in other words, if we see things as legitimate, then they are in fact legitimate—seeing is believing, the relationship would proceed.2 Recognizing how we can move from the appearance of legitimacy to actual legitimacy is critically important for those in immigrant rights. Examining immigrant rights campaigns and their appeals to legitimacy (for example, Clean Development, Relief and Education for Alien Minors [dream] Act legislation as aligning with core American values),3 without a substantive analysis of whether the legislation that results will actually help immigrants, will put an already-compromised community into further, unconscionable harm (United We Dream 2017). That is not to say that appearance of legitimacy is bad per se; however, it is dangerous to take the state’s self-assessment as legitimate as the only word on the matter. Language is important, metaphors matter, and both can efface the distinction between mere appearance of legitimacy, stifling critique from at-risk groups before it has a chance to begin. This chapter proceeds in three parts. In the first section, I explain that metaphors are much more than linguistic flourishes; they structure our thinking at a fundamental level (Lakoff and Johnson 1980). Indeed, we do not think about metaphor; rather, we think in metaphor. In addition, metaphors also shape how we think about policy. Thus, through highlighting some aspects and eliding others, metaphors make certain policies palatable in political discourse. Given this power, I focus on the pragmatics of metaphors rather than their truth-value. In the second section, I explore some of the most influential metaphors in the American immigration context, with particular focus on the “Illegal Immigrant as Alien” conceptual metaphor. Further, I use the metaphor of the “Immigrant as Dreamer” to argue that immigration reform politics is not an example of an egalitarian meaning-making contest. In making appeals for relief, immigrant rights activists are constricted in the kinds of appeals they can make due to more powerful anti-immigrant interests having their cognitive structures legitimated by the state. In addition, the narratives deployed by 26 Joel Sati immigrant rights activists serve to undermine undocumented immigrants’ push toward immigration reform. Let us take “Illegal Immigrant as Alien” as an example of the above. Since the late eighteenth century, the legal term “alien” refers to a foreign individual. However, in the mid-twentieth century, science fiction writers appropriated the term to discuss extraterrestrial, nonhuman beings (think green monsters with tentacles). Given the interchange of law and culture in this example, the term “alien” not only carries the legitimacy reinforced by case law, but also the valences attached to it by the prevailing culture.4 Thus, it makes it easier to conceive of immigrants as foreign and nonhuman, contributing to their place outside the polity. Then-Justice Rehnquist, in his dissent in Sugarman v. Dougal (1973), writes that aliens are unlike naturalized citizens who have assimilated “to our patterns of living and attitudes, and have demonstrated a basic understanding of our institutions, system of government, history, and traditions.”5 Undocumented immigrants become alien not only as a matter of phenotype, but also as a matter of understanding—citizenship is impossible for illegal aliens because they do not operate in the same cognitive, moral, or political space as citizens do. 6 The urgency that derives from this characterization and its implications is that because common understanding is incommensurable, the American way of life is under existential threat. professor Kenneth Cunningham-Parmeter examines the normative policy consequences of the “Illegal Immigrant as Alien” conceptual metaphor and resulting cognitive structure: “if immigrants are viewed as illegal alien criminals, then they should be captured and deported. If immigration is an invasion from the south, then the government should construct a virtual fence across the border to resist the Mexican offensive. These ‘common sense’ responses are made possible by selective metaphoric framing” (Cunningham-Parmeter 2011, 1550). The interchange of the unfamiliar and familiar within the two valences of the term “alien” is particularly interesting for this reason: the unfamiliar alien as nonhuman, foreign being is placed in terms of the legalized familiar, the alien as foreigner. Those who advocate for the expulsion of immigrants can draw on the legal import of the term alien while also drawing on its cultural import as green-monster-with-tentacles bent on destroying those considered humans—in this case, those who are citizens. Alienage and the term “alien” have proven a unique ability to conceptualize foreignness in both the legal and cultural consciousness. In utilizing metaphor to convey an existential threat, the state can manipulate the cultural valence and legal import of alienage to push a protectionist policy agenda vis-à-vis immigration. “Other” Borders 27 In the third section, I gesture toward an account of oppositional meaningmaking through conceptual metaphor. My goal is to expose and dismiss the pernicious metaphors used to frame the immigration debate. I argue that the metaphors and frames used in the dreamer narrative pacified the immigrant rights movement and made it much more difficult to push for more comprehensive immigration reform. In other words, undocumented immigrants were made to grovel for a humanity that ought to be presupposed (Sati 2017). This is important because, if we assume that procedural fairness is valuable in itself and only needs to be reworked, immigrant rights activism’s push for more humanizing metaphors is likely to contribute to positive changes to immigration law, as well as changes in attitudes toward immigrants that also take into account other displaced and marginalized peoples. This chapter’s implications, I argue, are as follows: how we think about immigrants shapes how immigrants are viewed, how immigrants view the world, and ultimately, what policies become all too real in the lives of undocumented immigrants. Metaphor, Cognitive Structures, and Policy Deliberation In Metaphors We Live By, linguist George Lakoff and philosopher Mark Johnson argue that metaphor is not just a flourish of language; it is human cognition, and the interpretations and actions derived from it are structured through metaphors. Lakoff and Johnson develop what they call the “experiential” account of metaphor; because the mind “operates in conjunction with a physical body that dwells in the physical world. Physical and spatial perceptions largely determine our metaphoric understandings” (Lakoff and Johnson 1980). Thus, when Lakoff and Johnson speak of metaphor, they move past the general definition of metaphor as a linguistic term and instead speak of “conceptual metaphor,” which emphasizes the cognitive potentialities of the concept (Lakoff and Johnson 1980, 6). As Lakoff and Johnson note, we humans “typically conceptualize the nonphysical in terms of the physical—that is, we conceptualize the less clearly delineated in terms of the more clearly delineated” (Lakoff and Johnson 1980, 59). A conceptual metaphor’s power lies in its ability to emphasize aspects of the unfamiliar and intangible in terms of the familiar in such a way as to shape the target of the metaphor (i.e., the unfamiliar). In that process, the very systematic nature that allows humans to understand one aspect of a concept in terms of another necessarily emphasizes one aspect while eliding others (Lakoff and Johnson 1980, 10). Metaphors, therefore, exert influence by instantiating frame-consistent cognitive structures—that means that a particular metaphor can manifest 28 Joel Sati itself in a variety of contexts, a phenomenon that becomes all too clear in our speech. As an example of what I mean by “cognitive structure,” consider the conceptual metaphor “Time is a Valuable Commodity.” From this metaphor, we can speak of wasting time, spending time, budgeting time, making things worth one’s time, living on borrowed time, investing time, and so forth (Lakoff and Johnson 1980, 10). The cognitive structure molds our conception of time to that of a limited, zero-sum commodity that must be invested well; this happens in various contexts, each one consistent with the larger frame the metaphor instantiates. Thus, the ways in which we speak of time comprise the cognitive structure that the conceptual metaphor underpins. The best way to appreciate the importance of these cognitive structures is that they do not structure our thoughts about time; rather they structure our conception of what time actually is. As I apply the time example to matters of law and politics, I want to note Lakoff and Johnson’s point that metaphors possess a self-fulfilling quality. That is, because metaphors serve as a guide for future actions that fit the metaphor, this will, in turn, reinforce the metaphor’s ability to give coherence to one’s experience. In this sense, “metaphors can [have] self-fulfilling properties” (Lakoff and Johnson 1980, 156). The suggestion that the powerful and privileged can easily create and impose metaphors underlies the integral role of metaphors in creating the public discursive space. Metaphors, as conceptual schema, thus structure how we view certain issues as salient; that is, metaphors not only define an issue for us, but they also inform us how much we should care about it and how we should approach it through policy. Legal scholars have explored how metaphors and their resulting cognitive structures are employed in policing and crime control. In their paper, “Metaphors We Think With: The Role of Metaphor in Reasoning,” cognitive scientists Thibodeau and Boroditsky (2011) reveal that linguistic framing shapes reasoning and that systems of power (i.e., the legal system and the political process) consolidate meaning instantiated by metaphor. These authors argue that the cognitive structure inherent in a metaphorical system may undergo what they call analogical transfer. Analogical transfer “can license the transfer of inferences from one domain to the other, and the most striking or stable structural similarities can be highlighted and stored in memory” (Lakoff and Johnson 1980, 9). Repeated analogical transfer from the source domain to the target domain reifies structural similarity between them. In other words, the transfer from the familiar to the unfamiliar becomes seamless such that we cease to think of one thing in terms of another and think of one thing as another. “Other” Borders 29 Thus, I argue that metaphors not only determine how we make sense of issues, but how we seek out information in constructing possible policy responses. Before delving into that further, I should note the following: metaphors about immigration rarely stand up to scrutiny. As a test case, consider the metaphorical frame “The Immigration System is a Line One Waits In.” Part of why that metaphor sticks is its simplicity; think of how angry you would be if you were cut in line for something. However, on the other hand, the metaphor is pernicious in its simplicity. The processes of immigration and naturalization cannot be conceptualized in terms of a line, and even if it could be, it would be a slow-moving one that leaves those waiting for naturalization for up to two decades. Lastly, the line metaphor gives too much credence to the procedure and the institution that operationalizes it. The immigration regime, which many activists rightly rail against, is given a prima facie legitimacy that forestalls critiques of detention, family separation, and restrictionist policy and rhetoric. Another aspect that affects the salience of metaphor is whether the public will use a certain cognitive structure if experts reinforce its meaning. “Experts” here refers to legal officials: judges, lawyers, politicians, bureaucrats, and so on.7 Experts are in a unique position to manipulate metaphors and cognitive structures in one of two, non-mutually exclusive ways: (1) experts do not know all the metaphors they use, but they can still deliberately pick which ones to use at times, or (2) experts may not be aware of the metaphors they use, but they still unconsciously select and use metaphors that are advantageous to themselves due to their position as experts (for more information, see Putnam 1973). And, as I will argue later, the products of such manipulation—cognitive structures finding their way into judicial decisions, legislation, or the administrative state’s modus operandi—provide the underwriting necessary for the polity at large to structure their normative policy goals according to the promulgations of the state. That said, what is most important about these metaphors is not about whether they are accurate, but why they exist. In this sense, the metaphor’s importance moves from the meanings metaphors instantiate to their pragmatic value. Finn Makela, epistemologist of law, characterizes this as “refocus[ing] the analysis of law from what metaphors mean to what metaphors do” (Makela 2011, 407).8 The importance of understanding metaphors and the cognitive structures they instantiate only ratchets up in a society such as ours, where the myth of objectivity has such controlling power. In a culture where the myth of objectivism is a constitutive part of Western culture “and truth is always absolute truth, the people who get to impose their metaphors on the 30 Joel Sati culture get to define what we consider to be true—absolutely and objectively true” (Lakoff and Johnson 1980, 160). All of this suggests that the importance of metaphors for policy discussions hinges on their ability to galvanize public and institutional support for certain policy positions. The resulting influence of cognitive structures in politics not only shapes how we view policy, but how we think we should view policy. A critically important consequence of metaphors and the cognitive structures they instantiate is that they influence our conception of what truth is. According to Lakoff and Johnson, what matters is not “[the] truth or falsity of a metaphor but the perceptions and inferences that follow from it and the actions that are sanctioned by it” (Lakoff and Johnson 1980, 158). Cunningham-Parmeter also comes to the conclusion that “the more we repeat, circulate, and repackage certain metaphors, the more our conceptual domains become tied to a limited set of associations” (Cunningham-Parmeter 2011, 1548). And the more that the law sanctions these limited sets of associations, metaphors and their resulting cognitive structures cease to be ways we view law and instead become the law. I use this example to contend that given metaphor’s unique ability to corrupt notions of procedural fairness, we can assess the utility of procedural fairness in two ways: either procedural fairness is problematic insofar as it serves as an ideological frame that legitimates the unfair implementation of state authority (so notions of procedural fairness are a kind of dominance framework), or procedural fairness is corrupted in a particular political context because it does not account for the input of noncitizens. The former possibility suggests that procedural fairness is itself a suspect idea, while the latter case suggests that oppositional movements can potentially reconstitute procedural fairness and popular understandings of it to make good on the promise that public discussion on political issues claims it holds. Therefore, for this chapter I will work on the latter possibility and analyze its use in the immigration reform context. Immigration Metaphors and Cognitive Structures In the face of competing ideas of the ideal society, and the differing opinions among people as to how immigrants figure into conceptions of the ideal society, immigration policy debates become meaning-making competitions among interest groups. “Metaphors play a critical role in making meanings for the groups that use them; those who oppose immigration have an interest in propagating metaphors that emphasize the undesirable aspects of immigrants and hide other aspects. The metaphor ‘immigration as a wave’ will “Other” Borders 31 emphasize the destructive force of migration while hiding the fact that migrants are human beings” (Santa Ana, 2002). It also makes a certain policy proposal—that of a physical bulwark (i.e., a wall)—appear to be a reasonable goal. Just like it would be absurd to deal with a wave at the molecular level, the metaphor of “Immigration as a Wave” makes it absurd to look at immigration at the level of the immigrant (see Santa Ana 2002 for more on the “immigration as a wave” metaphor). The metaphor characterizes the problem in a way that implies, or makes necessary, a certain solution. Voters and policymakers who strongly support immigration restrictions might view procedural fairness as summary deportation and use the metaphor to achieve their policy aim. If we take political and legal disputes to be meaning-making competitions, those competing in the political process seek the state’s legitimacy for their policy proposals in line with a group’s interests. Metaphor plays a critical role in this process; a particular metaphor’s endorsement through its use in establishing precedent and grounding legislative discussion gives the metaphor a kind of “legitimacy-at-first-glance” and, through its constant framing of a certain issue, actually becomes socially desirable. It is safe to assume that in conversations about immigration reform, the political interests of residents and citizens will outweigh those of undocumented immigrants.9 From this assumption, I argue that undocumented immigrants do not have as much access to the political process as is necessary to ensure an outcome they would view as procedurally fair. This is because the metaphors that the courts and politicians use to refer to undocumented immigrants normalize a particular way of speaking to and about those without status, and the inability of undocumented migrants to contend with this discourse politically exists in large part because of such metaphors. Metaphors become a tool of exclusion that, by the time deliberation occurs on undocumented immigration, renders their exclusion as given. In answering how political institutions consolidate the instantiation of meaning in the political context, my contention is that legal and political institutions (i.e., the courts and the legislature) not only imbue the meanings of political metaphors but, due to their position, play a unique role in accelerating the salience of certain metaphors—I focus on immigration metaphors—as tools of political exclusion.10 Cunningham-Parmeter provides a convincing account of the staying power of metaphors and their ability to warp, irreversibly, lay views on immigrants. He finds that “the more we repeat, circulate, and repackage certain metaphors, the more our conceptual domains become tied to a limited set of associations”(Cunningham-Parmeter 2011, 1548). Placed in the immigration context, the constant propagations of the “Nation as Body” or the “Illegal Alien 32 Joel Sati as Pathogen” metaphors by the courts, the legislature, and interest groups (i.e., those with the power to determine and influence law and policy) become the best way to characterize the political situation that unauthorized immigration presents, thus fueling their continued use. Assuming that deliberations about procedural fairness between proponents and opponents of regularizing undocumented immigrants require that they have equal access to the tools of political participation, there exists an unfairness in deliberation whereby undocumented immigrants and the groups that work in their interest have fewer opportunities to deliberate about immigration reform than legal residents and citizens. And, say, if a candidate for political office who supports immigration restrictions thinks it procedurally fair to build a wall, that might carry more weight in discourse relative to the policy ideas of undocumented immigrants and their interest groups. Conversely, undocumented immigrant interest groups, who have to first fight to be recognized as human, have a difficult time erasing their association with aliens and alienage. For example, suppose undocumented immigrant groups wage a campaign against the term “alien” because it is dehumanizing; immigrants are not extraterrestrial monsters with green skin and tentacles (drawing on the cultural valence of the term). However, the legal tradition the term “alien” carries makes that difficult. This is a prime example of the reifying power inherent in political metaphors. Thus, in its interaction with systems of power, metaphor plays a critical role in establishing the normativity of cognitive structures, which in turn influence the salience and the perceived normativity of certain policy positions. Here, “perceived normativity” is equivalent to what Ryo and the procedural justice literature label as “perceptions of greater procedural fairness.” Grounding this view is the assumption that the appearance of fairness in an immigration system is sufficient for the policy to be desired. Lakoff and Johnson (1980) note as much; they argue, “Metaphors may thus be a guide for future action. Such actions will, of course, fit the metaphor. This will, in turn, reinforce the power of the metaphor to make experience coherent,” harkening back to the invidious cycle that Lakoff and Johnson note (156). Metaphor is integral in constructing what law promulgates as procedurally fair, which, in turn, shapes the polity’s conception of procedural fairness. Take, for example, the metaphor of the “Nation as Body.” In the cognitive structure this metaphor creates, undocumented immigrants are a foreign invasion that pose an existential threat to the health of the nation qua body (Chavez 2013). When a pathogen is detected, the body unleashes a swift, fatal response to what it perceives as a threat. Further, given how much weight this “Other” Borders 33 metaphor carries in political discourse, swift responses to remove the invasive force that is undocumented immigration appear to be a fair response. People with significant political clout can employ this metaphor in rhetoric aimed at residents as well as in the written law, such that metaphor is indistinguishable from legal terms. If immigrants are metaphorically characterized as a pathogen, the policy idea of swift action—that is, summary deportation—fits the conceptual structure the metaphor creates. The metaphor characterizes the unfamiliar (undocumented immigrants) in terms of the familiar (a pathogen), and the prefigured response to immigrants as pathogens is tantamount to a swift, targeted, and decisive bodily reaction to an existential threat— think of penicillin responding to bacterial agents. Such a conception of dealing with the expulsion of noncitizens thus …