preview

Castillo Family Essay

Decent Essays
Open Document

As expressed by Professor Waldinger, there are two factors that influence citizenship decision; cognitive and affective. Cognitive refers to does decisions that require critical thinking, it requires individuals to process things and making decisions based on the costs and benefits (Topic 8, Slide 34). The affective factor refers to those decisions made based on emotional costs and benefits and identity (Topic 8, Slide 34). Reflecting on these two concepts, Greta Gilbertson and Audrey Singer (2010) examines the reasons behind the Castillo family’s citizenship decision. With that in mind, this essay will seek to examine how cognitive and affective factors influence the citizenship decision of the Castillo Family.
To start off, according Professor …show more content…

With that idea, US citizenship provides limited access to the benefits that are only available to the members, such as welfare, food stamps, supplemental Social Security [SSI] (Gilbertson and Singer, 30). The decisions of the first cohort can be interpreted through the lenses of the cognitive factors. Due to the fact that migration history of the Castillo family is characterized by a chain migration, this suggest that even after migration the families are connected with those who stayed behind (31). Therefore, we can characterize this first cohort as transnational. As suggested by the authors with the first cohort, in specific men were hesitant to become US citizens, because they saw it as a betrayal nonetheless, it was the benefits behind the status that made them naturalize (37-9). In addition what helped trigger naturalization were the changes in immigration and welfare laws, Gilbertson and Singer state, “The uncertain impact of the new laws jeopardized immigrant's ability to travel and remain outside of the USA for long periods of time and pushed them to consider becoming and being a U.S. citizen” (37). For both women and men, one of the main reasons behind their citizenship

Get Access