Abstract
Prejudice remains an unpleasant experience in immigrants’ everyday lives, especially for those of stigmatized groups. In the recurring struggle of various immigrant groups, historical and contemporary events reveal the important role of language in the creation, transmission, and perpetuation of anti-immigrant prejudice. Living in an anti-immigrant climate, immigrants are frequently exposed to stigmatizing language in both political and social discourse. This may be a more significant and frequent experience for immigrants since the beginning of the 2016 United States presidential election. Although it has long been understood that language is inextricably linked with prejudice, the investigation of the role of language in creating, transmitting, and perpetuating anti-immigrant prejudice remains undeveloped in social work research. This paper provides a theoretical explanation of anti-immigrant sentiment by discussing how stigmatization has allowed for immigrants to be subjected to various forms of prejudice throughout history. Building upon prior theoretical concepts of stigma, this paper argues that being an immigrant is a stigma. This paper reviews historical and contemporary cases of prejudice against immigrants to provide evidence for how stigmatizing language transmits and perpetuates anti-immigrant prejudice in the United States and building upon prior stigma theories, defines one’s status of an immigrant to be form of stigma itself. The paper concludes with a call for appreciable attention to the role of language in anti-immigrant prejudice and the need for social workers to advocate for immigrants within higher education and in our communities to reduce such stigma though social work practice, education and research.
Highlights
From private charity organizations to settlement houses, social workers have been at the frontier of work with immigrants (Padilla et al 2008)
While German immigrants were referred to as traitors during World War I, while Muslim immigrants are referred to as terrorists. These assigned labels suggest a splitting in how Americans perceive these two groups in terms of their belonging to the United States, consistent with the definition of stigma by Crocker et al (1998)
This paper examines the dynamics of anti-immigrant prejudice in the United States and proposes that immigrant status constitutes stigma
Summary
From private charity organizations to settlement houses, social workers have been at the frontier of work with immigrants (Padilla et al 2008). Starr founded the Hull house in Chicago, and their efforts in the settlement house movement were a landmark in social work practice In her later practice, Jane Addams recognized the need for social workers to address social injustices experienced by immigrants in their everyday lives (Addams 1990; LaGumina 1999). As a foreign-born population, immigrants in the United States, are frequently exposed to stigmatizing language in political and social discourse in today’s anti-immigrant climate. This paper calls for appreciable attention to the role of language in anti-immigrant prejudice in social work practice and research. This is followed by an in-depth discussion about the role of language in prejudice with a focus on linguistic bias and the transmission of such bias through communication. This paper concludes with a call for appreciable attention to anti-immigrant prejudice and a need for advocacy within the social work field to reduce the stigmatization of immigrants both in social work practice and research
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