ABSTRACT
Anti-immigration or anti-immigrant legislation has been making its way through statehouses across the United States over the past two decades. This chapter demonstrates some ways to situate local anti-immigration legislation within that larger national context using the concepts and methods of anthropology. It then argues that anthropological perspectives can contribute to both academic and activist analyses of the most recent anti-immigrant legislation and that such analyses are particularly needed in southeastern US states like South Carolina, which has a rapidly growing new immigrant population from Latin America and other regions of the world. The chapter emerges from a long-term ethnographic research project on how individuals make sense of policies related to globalization, like the North American Free Trade Agreement, and anticipate the effects of those policies on their everyday lives. Lindsey Graham's legislative efforts on immigration succeeded only after the senator was told by his colleagues to focus on the need to secure the southern border.
