For another anthropology class, I recently read an ethnography called "Labor and Legality: An Ethnography of a Mexican Immigrant Network", about a group of undocumented, male, Mexican busboys working in an Italian restaurant in Chicago. The author, Ruth Gomberg-Muñoz, looks at various themes, including the ways that they form community and support each other, and their relationships with the US and their home countries.

 At the end of the book, she counters a few popular anti-immigration arguments, including the argument that people who are not citizens or residents should not receive public services. She says "But what makes citizenship status an accurate reflection of a person's worth? Most of us reject the idea that characteristics such as race, sexual orientation, religious affiliation, ethnicity, or even age are legitimate bases for excluding people from necessary resources." In other words, citizenship has become just another arbitrary classifier of people, that, unlike race or religious affiliation, is somehow accepted as a legitimate determinant of personal worth.

I've been thinking about this in the context of our readings and discussion in class, and how we interpret, give meaning to, and promote borders and gates, whether physical or perceived. Gomberg-Muñoz, in this context, might argue that borders--or gates, in the smaller microcosm of a gated community--go farther than describing where someone is from or belongs, but how they should interact with (and deserve to be interacted with by) the rest of the world. How do borders and gates change the way we would interact with someone, solely based on our respective locations? To what degree is citizenship, or other forms of recognized inclusion, a determinant of a person's individual worth?

- Rebecca Willett