Summary Of Shadowed Lives: Undocumented Immigrants

When some people hear rite of passage they might think of someone making a spiritual walk in to something that will change their lives. These people would not be wrong either. As discussed in class a rite of passage are rituals that mark key transitions in life. In the book, Shadowed Lives: Undocumented Immigrants in American Society, they talk about a rite of passage that these undocumented Mexican immigrants make to America to find work so they can send money back home to their families. In this passage these immigrants go through three key phrases. These key phases are, separation, transition, and incorporation. The first key phrase, separation, would be the migrant workers leaving their families and friends back home in their country while

“Incorporation occurs when the participant acquires the appropriate knowledge, experiences, and behaviors and then successfully completes the proper rituals”(Chavez 2013:5) Coming into America and figuring out the ways of work and lifestyle is not easy for anyone. The main elements of incorporation as described by Chavez are economic, social, linguistic, cultural, and personal. In economic would be the steady employment for the Mexican immigrant community. Most of their work is either short-lived due to finding small side jobs or being caught and getting deported. For social it would be the children of the Mexican immigrant workers. These children either had no choice in coming to America or were born here but are still not citizens because they do not have a birth certificate. Linguistic would be the language barrier that can really get in the way of work and just living in America. The language barrier is huge for the older immigrant community because they rely on their children as their interpreter, which then can get in the way of them getting a work or trying to describe something and the point is not getting across, as they would like too. The cultural aspect is the children are now becoming part American and part Mexican. Children are quicker than their parents when it comes to learning the local culture and the English language. The parents then do realize that their child is changing and adapting and slowly they do to

The hardships they have faced and the strategies they have used to adapt to the American way of life. Being a Mexican immigrant worker is already hard enough when looking for jobs in America and then to be undocumented is even harder. These workers put their lives on the line because the work back home in their homeland is not economically stable for them and the only way to provide for their family is to cross the boarder. The physical and emotional toll on these workers to make this passage is almost now a way of life for most people living in poverty in Mexico and other Central American countries. By knowing the lives of the immigrant workers and seeing the hardships that they had to go through in order just to make a living for themselves and their family would be a passage that no one wants to take. In reality though this still happens today and the undocumented immigrants have to go through these three passages in order to fulfill the rite of