Analytical Essay Enrique’s Journey Media Portrays - Law Assignment Help

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Introduction
Sonia Nazario’s “Enrique’s Journey” honors the story of one individual and his family. Her first-hand account gives voice to and humanizes the tens of thousands of men, women, and children who are coming to America, helping the reader recognize them as individuals with stories to tell, stories that are far more complex than what the media portrays.
On the other hand, Enrique’s Journey helps the reader understand that immigration to the United States is part of a much larger story of global migration, a story that every citizen and resident’s family has contributed to at some point in history. It also helps the reader learn the story of one young man whose personal experience sheds light on the assumptions that many people in this country make about individuals who may be in the country without documentation. It also makes the reader consider how learning one individual’s story can humanize and complicate an issue that is too often reduced to sound bites and data sets.
Enrique’s Journey also examines the impact that migration has on family relationships and the challenges that parents and children face if and when they are reunited after years of separation. "He [Enrique] and his mother are strangers. But he can feel her love.", (Nazario, (2nd ed.), 2013, p. 145). This book also explores these complex human relationships and helps the readers to consider the ways in which human migration can affect newcomers and their descendants, as well as their countries of origin and the countries where they settle. While immigration policy is an important and legitimate topic of investigation and debate, this book focuses instead on giving voice to the people whose stories are often left untold or reduced to a single story of threatening outsiders.
Enrique’s Journey invites the reader to empathize with Enrique. He, like all of us, has flaws. He struggles at times to navigate family relationships, dating, prejudice, and the challenge of forging his own path in this world. By learning his story, the readers come to a better understanding of who they are and how the places they live can impact their identities and the choices available to them. They will better understand the choices they can make and the steps they can take to create kind and inclusive communities that welcome and support everyone, regardless of where they come from and where they are headed.
"I began to retrace his [Enrique’s] steps, making the journey as he had made it a few weeks before.”, (Nazario, (2nd ed.), 2013, p.11). Nazario’s first-hand account of Enrique’s perilous journey sheds light on why many people, especially mothers, choose to leave their countries for the opportunity of a new life elsewhere, even when the choice means leaving behind their homes and loved ones. "I was stuck by the choice mothers face when they leave their children. How do they make such an impossible decision?.”, (Nazario, (2nd ed.), 2013, p.5). Nazario adds in p. 15, “For Latina mothers coming to the United States, my hope is that they will understand the full consequences of leaving their children behind and make better-informed decision.”

• Enrique’s Journey Theme Analysis:
• The themes in Enrique’s Journey include poverty and immigration, family separation and abandonment, perseverance, determination and survival, compassion and faith, as well as humanization and dehumanization. This paper will focus on analyzing the first two major themes: 1) poverty and immigration, and 2) family separation and abandonment, due to their importance in this book.
• Major Theme #1: Poverty and Immigration
• Poverty is the main theme in this book. It is what drives the actions of almost all characters. Mothers leave their children behind because they need to find a way to feed them, but the children feel abandoned, and they resent their mothers. “Latina migrants ultimately pay a steep price for coming to the United States. They lose their children’s love.”, (Nazario, (2nd ed.), 2013, p. 15).
• On the other hand, Enrique’s story opens up the broader discussion of immigration and immigration reform in the United States and allows for a detailed understanding of the problems that immigrants face. The business of illegal immigration, and the corruption of the system built up to control immigration is on display in the way that having some money allows Maria Isabel, Enrique's girlfriend and the mother of their daughter, Jasmin, to make a journey that took Enrique 120 days and nearly cost his life in a relatively easy few weeks. At the same time, Maria Isabel and Enrique clearly have not been able to bring Jasmin to the United States as quickly as they had hoped, and Enrique’s emotional connection to his daughter, at least as far as his daughter sees it, is slight.
• Enrique’s Journey delves into the complications of immigration and shows both the harm and the good that it can carry, and outlines particular positions on immigration policy. “Many immigration observers believe U.S. officials have pursued a purposefully schizophrenic immigration policy. The government has added Border Patrol agents along the nation’s southwestern border and walled off seventy-six miles of that divide. Politicians talk tough about catching illegal immigrants.” (Nazario, (2nd ed.), 2013, p. 238).
• Nazario concludes that the immigration problem can be solved by helping bolster the economies of the countries from which immigrants come. Since the reasons for immigrating are economic, she argues, the solution to keep immigrants at home must be economic. “What would it take to keep people from leaving? There would have to be jobs. Jobs that pay okay. That's all.”, Eva, Maria Isabel’s mother, (Nazario, (2nd ed.), 2013, p. 242).
• Major Theme #2: Family Separation and Abandonment
• The events depicted in Enrique’s Journey are set in motion by an initial instance of abandonment: Lourdes’ difficult decision to leave Enrique and his sister Belky in Honduras, while she seeks work in the United States to send money back to her family. Leaving her children is a painful choice that haunts her throughout her time in the United States. Abandonment, in this case, is harsh but necessary. The layers of family disintegration run deeper than this single decision, though. “The children are usually very angry with their mothers. They feel abandoned.”, (Nazario, (2nd ed.), 2013, p. 15). For migrants, the financial and material benefits drive their decision to come to the United States, but the psychological trauma of family separation that often occurs should not be underestimated as it can create life-long problems for children and parents. “Enrique’s aunt Rosa Amalia thinks the separation has caused Enrique and his sister Belky deep emotional problems. To her it seems that they each struggle with an unavoidable question: How can I be worth anything if my own mother left me?.”, (Nazario, (2nd ed.), 2013, p.24)
• After Lourdes leaves, Enrique’s father, Luis, also walks out on the family, forming a new one with another woman and leaving his son in the care of his grandmother, Maria. When Enrique begins to rebel in response to his complicated feelings of abandonment, his grandmother also rejects him. By an early age, Enrique has felt the pain of being deserted by his family members three times. 
• Conflict Theory
• Though this book deals with a multitude of social issues and problems, from a sociological perspective, I believe the most prominent theory that applies to Enrique’s journey is the conflict theory, Hayes (2020). Poverty is very outspread, especially in Latin America Hardoy et al. (2011), and in 2008 it was estimated that roughly 180 million people live in poverty, while some 70.4 million people live in extreme poverty. Broadly speaking, the conflict is between the poor and rich. One could argue that the rich elites in Honduras, as well as the rest of the world, are a barrier to opportunity for Enrique’s mother as they are the ones who have created economic systems that benefit the rich at the expense of the poor, leaving Enrique’s mother with little choice but to migrate, unless she wants to keep on struggling and barely making it. Furthermore, it is worth noting that this conflict is also present when considering education, as poor people generally tend to graduate at a much lower rate than those from more financially stable families. The conflict theory can also be used to describe the issue of racism towards illegal immigrants, Network Advocates. (2021). The conflict is mainly between illegal immigrants who migrate for a variety of reasons, and prejudiced white people residing legally in the United States, perhaps partially brainwashed by media propaganda. Lastly, in terms of illegal immigration, the conflict theory can also be applied here, as it is a conflict between government regulations and tendencies and disadvantageous migrants from Central America.
• Conclusion
• Solutions to the issue of illegal immigration can be too complex to deal with in a simple matter. However, the author's succeeded in drawing attention to the plight of refugees and illegal migrants in the United States. Her work creates emotions in the reader and empathy for Enrique and other young migrants from Central America.
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• Cited Sources
• Hardoy, Jorgelina, and Almansi, Florencia. (2011). Poverty in Latin America. JSTOR. International Institute for Environment and Development. Retrieved from: www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/resrep01278.5.pdf.
• Hayes, Adam. (2020). Conflict Theory. Investopedia. Retrieved from: https://www.investopedia.com/terms/c/conflict-theory.asp
• Nazario, Sonia. 2nd ed. (2013). Enrique's Journey: The True Story of a Boy Determined to Reunite with His Mother. Adapted for Young People. Random House Children’s Books.
• Network Advocates. (2021). The Impact of Racism on U.S. Immigration Past and Present. Retrieved from: https://networkadvocates.org/recommittoracialjustice/impact/

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