Institutions of Poverty in Guadalupe and Chavez - Essay Example

Institutions of Poverty in Guadalupe and Chavez In Guadalupe and Chavez, the institutions of poverty originated from the social, political and cultural interactions in their community. According to Dohan, there are three institutions including: Subcultures, Social network, and Indigenous organizations (p217). These institutions act on and hold strong influence on the life style of Guadalupe and Chavez people. They are associated with the latter de-industrialization which influences poverty in many ways.

The manner in which each institution acts on the society is controlled by numerous factors. This is aimed at separating individuals who earn their income using unlawful means from ones who with legal sources of income. This is therefore what is represented by the indigenous organizations. This separation is in regard to the geographic means since these institutions put into consideration areas with more security and ones with high crime rates. Normally, illegal groups live in the crime ridden areas because they won't have to care about the police.

This is due to the fact that there is no constant presence of police officers. On the other hand, social networks are organizations that aim at helping people to find jobs. One thing that is being noticed is that there are certain jobs which are exclusive to a certain ethno-racial group, since what really matters is the number of that group. Third institution, the local subculture, is responsible of controlling means through which a family gets aid (219). That is, needs and mentality of the family are the main factors that will determine whether the family will be given the welfare’s aid or not.

Usually, size and the role of each family member define structure of the family. Neighborhood, ethnic group, and family structure are the other factors which influence these three institutions. First, existence of police officers in certain neighborhoods provides the chance for the illegal networks to work away from police-view. Second, ethnicity is the major factor which the social networks put into consideration (who works where). This is according to its assertion above that every certain race dominates certain kind of jobs.

Furthermore, a big role is played by the family structure in the subcultures and determines the manner through which aid would be distributed among the members. When putting into consideration similarities between Guadalupe and Chavez, the structure of the social network, in general, looks pretty much the same, as the low salary employments are controlled by networks built by the people from the same barrio. Nevertheless, a worth-noting thing is that there are some popular Mexican-American families and individuals who influence the community at large particularly educational and employment sectors (12).

Nevertheless, in Guadalupe, the social networks include transnational relations to connect with their relatives in Mexico but there is no existence of such a thing in Chavez (13). In Chavez community, people do not consider low salary jobs as a means of upward social mobility but in Guadalupe, people consider these job opportunities as a hope. Relatively to the illegal networks, in Guadalupe, most people who came from Mexico are involved illegally in the economic structure (14). This is because Indigenous organizations are trying to manipulate the law in order to legalize their actions by destroying differences between the legal and illegal economy by using power.

In contrast, people in Chavez are commonly involved the construction of the illegal economy. Indigenous organizations in Chavez established an administration that helps residents in their involvement, by providing them with the money they need to continue participating in this economy so as to ensure that this involvement sustain the moves which are trying the kill their actions. The subcultures and their influence on the community’s view of the welfare aid recipients and how to treat them has grown rampant.

Neither Guadalupe nor Chavez considers the welfare’s aid as a reliable source of income. Actually, they look upon the aid's recipients with a weird look and treat them in an abnormal way. Nevertheless, there are some differences between the two barrios about this issue. In Chavez, people depend on the aid in a long term period and consider their dependence as a help to lift their social status while in Guadalupe, people only consider the aid for a short period. That is, they only turn to aid when there is a strong necessity for it, and they consider reliance on the aid as a negative thing in their process of having better social status (14).