{"id":1429,"date":"2017-04-18T08:30:11","date_gmt":"2017-04-18T13:30:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/trot\/?p=1429"},"modified":"2017-04-17T10:24:45","modified_gmt":"2017-04-17T15:24:45","slug":"border-walls-and-symbolic-boundaries","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/trot\/2017\/04\/18\/border-walls-and-symbolic-boundaries\/","title":{"rendered":"Border Walls and Symbolic Boundaries"},"content":{"rendered":"<figure id=\"attachment_1433\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-1433\" style=\"width: 600px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/jonathanmcintosh\/4042930016\/\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-large wp-image-1433\" src=\"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/trot\/files\/2017\/04\/4042930016_15b99d24d1_z-600x401.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"600\" height=\"401\" srcset=\"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/trot\/files\/2017\/04\/4042930016_15b99d24d1_z-600x401.jpg 600w, https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/trot\/files\/2017\/04\/4042930016_15b99d24d1_z-300x201.jpg 300w, https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/trot\/files\/2017\/04\/4042930016_15b99d24d1_z.jpg 640w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 600px) 100vw, 600px\" \/><\/a><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-1433\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Wall Mural in Nogales. Photo by Jonathan McIntosh, Flickr CC<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">&#8220;I will build a great, great wall on our southern border, and I will make Mexico pay for that wall. Mark my words.&#8221; These were the words that\u00a0<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">President Donald Trump<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.cbsnews.com\/pictures\/wild-donald-trump-quotes\/14\/\"> said<\/a> when he first announced his candidacy. Since his inauguration, Trump has continued to talk about\u00a0his intentions of building the wall, with many companies allegedly <\/span><a href=\"http:\/\/insider.foxnews.com\/2017\/03\/23\/companies-bidding-contracts-build-donald-trumps-mexico-border-wall\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">bidding for the contract<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">,<\/span> <span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">despite its many obstacles. Many <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">leaders in Latin America<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> have <a href=\"http:\/\/www.aljazeera.com\/blogs\/americas\/2017\/01\/latin-america-leaders-condemn-trump-mexico-wall-celac-summit-170125171847714.html\">publicly stated<\/a> that building the wall would not only change\u00a0the relationship with Mexico, but it would change relationships with the rest of Latin America as well. Trump&#8217;s\u00a0wall would create a physical barrier between the US and Mexico, but it would also intensify what social scientists call <em>symbolic <\/em>boundaries.<\/span><\/p>\n<h5><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The border acts as the physical manifestation of and &#8220;us versus them&#8221; mentality\u00a0by reinforcing<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0differences between\u00a0groups, which often limits positive contact between groups and can lead to negative stereotypes<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">. For example, physical borders create symbolic boundaries that reinforce\u00a0national identities by marking the geographic territory where one nationality resides. This often creates tensions by giving further attention to perceived group differences. In the case of Trump\u2019s wall, part of the underlying purpose is to intensify the symbolic boundary between Anglo-Americans in the industrialized world and the Hispanic inhabitants of a developing nation.<\/span><\/h5>\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/news.uchicago.edu\/article\/2015\/04\/09\/donald-levine-sociologist-and-former-dean-college-1931-2015\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Donald N. Levine<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">. 1996. \u201c<\/span><a href=\"http:\/\/onlinelibrary.wiley.com\/doi\/10.1111\/j.1475-682X.1996.tb00220.x\/full\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Sociology and the Nation-State in an Era of Shifting Boundaries<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">.\u201d <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Sociological Inquiry <\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">66(3): 253-266.<\/span><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/scholar.harvard.edu\/lamont\/home\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Michele Lamont<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> and <\/span><a href=\"http:\/\/www.newschool.edu\/nssr\/faculty\/?id=4e44-4179-4e7a-4d3d\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Virag Molnar<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">. 2002. \u201c<\/span><a href=\"http:\/\/www.annualreviews.org\/doi\/abs\/10.1146\/annurev.soc.28.110601.141107\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The Study of Boundaries in the Social Sciences<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">.\u201d <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Annual Reviews of Sociology <\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">28: 167-195.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h5><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Symbolic boundaries use specific cultural distinctions in order to distinguish one group from another, often along racial, ethnic, and religious lines. In the United States for example, Christians believe having religion creates a morality that is the basis for civic society. Atheists, who have no religion, are believed to lack that morality. This has resulted in atheists being unfairly cast as the\u00a0symbolic representation of anti-American values. Like the physical wall Trump keeps threatening, these same types of symbolic boundaries work to keep many immigrants, refugees, and other religious minorities from being fully accepted in the U.S.<\/span><\/h5>\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/scholars.duke.edu\/person\/christopher.bail\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Christopher A. Bail<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">. 2008. \u201c<\/span><a href=\"http:\/\/journals.sagepub.com\/doi\/pdf\/10.1177\/000312240807300103\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The Configuration of Symbolic Boundaries against Immigrants in Europe.<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u201d <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">American Sociological Review <\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">73(1): 37-59.<\/span><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/cla.umn.edu\/about\/directory\/profile\/edgell\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Penny Edgell<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">, <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/cla.umn.edu\/about\/directory\/profile\/gerte004\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Joseph Gerteis<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">, and <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/cla.umn.edu\/about\/directory\/profile\/hartm021\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Douglas Hartmann<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">. 2006. \u201c<\/span><a href=\"http:\/\/journals.sagepub.com\/doi\/abs\/10.1177\/000312240607100203\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Atheists As \u201cOther\u201d: Moral Boundaries and Cultural Membership in American Society<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">.\u201d <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">American Sociological Review <\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">71(2): 211-234.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>&#8220;I will build a great, great wall on our southern border, and I will make Mexico pay for that wall. Mark my words.&#8221; These were the words that\u00a0President Donald Trump said when he first announced his candidacy. Since his inauguration, Trump has continued to talk about\u00a0his intentions of building the wall, with many companies allegedly [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1957,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15,13,85,14],"tags":[40594,38543,38541,69,90,38546,38542,96426,96428],"class_list":["post-1429","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-culture","category-inequality","category-politics","category-race","tag-border-wall","tag-culture","tag-inequality","tag-latin-america","tag-mexico","tag-politics","tag-race","tag-symbolic-boundaries","tag-trumps-wall"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/trot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1429","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/trot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/trot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/trot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1957"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/trot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1429"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/trot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1429\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1434,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/trot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1429\/revisions\/1434"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/trot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1429"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/trot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1429"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/trot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1429"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}