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Immigration across the US-Mexican border may currently be a hot topic, but it is hardly a new one. Labor issues and civil rights have been interwoven with the history of the region since at least the time of the Mexican-American War, and the twentieth century witnessed recurrent political battles surrounding the status and rights of Mexican immigrants. In Mexican Inclusion: The Origins of Anti-Discrimination Policy in Texas and the Southwest, political scientist Matthew Gritter traces the process by which people of Mexican origin were incorporated in the United States' first civil rights agency, the World War II-era President's Committee on Fair Employment Practices (FEPC).
Incorporating the analytic lenses of transnationalism, institutional development, and identity formation, Gritter explores the activities and impact of the FEPC. He argues that transnational and international networks related to the US's Good Neighbor Policy created an impetus for the federal government to combat discrimination against people of Mexican origin. The inclusion of Mexican American civil rights leaders as FEPC staff members combined with an increase in state capacity to afford the agency increased institutional effectiveness. The FEPC provided an opportunity for small-scale state building and policy innovation.?Gritter compares the outcomes of the agency's anti-discrimination efforts with class-based labor organizing. Grounded in pragmatic appeals to citizenship, Mexican American civil rights leaders utilized leverage provided by the Good Neighbor Policy to create their own distinct place in an emerging civil rights bureaucracy.
Students and scholars of Mexican American issues, civil rights, and government policy will appreciate Mexican Inclusion for its fresh synthesis of analytic and historical processes. Likewise, those focused on immigration and borderlands studies will gain new insights from its inclusive context.
"An interesting historical study of the early development of federal anti-discrimination policy, "Mexican Inclusion "offers a detailed history of the FEPC that is rich in detail, focusing on the role of both Mexican and Mexican American leaders. This solid work of scholarship is an important contribution to our scholarly knowledge of the history of the political incorporation of Mexican Americans."--Edwina Barvosa, associate professor of Chicana and Chicano Studies, University of California, Santa Barbara and author, Wealth "of Selves: Multiple Identities, Mestiza Consciousness, and the Subject of Politics"
| List of Tables | p. vii |
| Acknowledgments | p. ix |
| Introduction | p. 1 |
| Transnational Networks and the Fair Employment Practices Committee: Mexican Consuls, FEPC Officials, and Mexican American Civil Rights Leaders Come Together | p. 21 |
| Identifying and Exploring: Discovering People of Mexican Origin | p. 42 |
| State Building on the Ground: The Institutional Development of the FEPC and People of Mexican Origin | p. 62 |
| Good Neighbors and Good Citizens: People of Mexican Origin and the FEPC | p. 80 |
| Laboratories of Democracy? People of Mexican Origin and Fair Employment in Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas | p. 103 |
| Conclusion | p. 120 |
| Notes | p. 133 |
| Bibliography | p. 151 |
| Index | p. 157 |
| Table of Contents provided by Ingram. All Rights Reserved. |
ISBN: 9781603447980
ISBN-10: 1603447989
Audience:
General
Format:
Hardcover
Language:
English
Number Of Pages: 160
Published: 1st September 2012
Publisher: Texas A & M University Press
Dimensions (cm): 22.9 x 15.2
x 1.8
Weight (kg): 0.408
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