%0 Journal Article
%T ¡°A Day Without Immigrants¡±
%A Benita Heiskanen
%J European Journal of American Studies
%D 2009
%I European Association for American Studies
%R 10.4000/ejas.7717
%X This article considers the debates surrounding the ¡°Day Without Immigrants¡± protests organized in major U.S. cities on 1 May 2006, prompted by H.R. 4437, the Border Protection, Anti-Terrorism, and Illegal Immigration Control Act of 2005, from the multiple perspectives of scholars, pundits, policy makers, and participants. Although much of these debates ostensibly centered around illegal Latino/a immigration to the United States, underneath the discussion ran a curious ideological thread, one that invoked groups¡¯ right to be in the United States in the first place. The article argues that the rhetoric used in these discourses pitted various class-based ethnoracial groups against each other not so much to tackle the proposed immigration bill but, rather, to comment on the ramifications of an increasingly multiracial United States.
%K immigration reform
%K class
%K labor
%K nativism
%K U.S. Latino/as
%K ethnoracial identity
%U http://ejas.revues.org/7717