Film Analysis Of The Movie: Wet Back

Throughout the movie, “Wet Back”, several camera crews followed people from different countries, south of the United States border, as they made their attempt to immigrate into the United States. As we all know, coming into the United States without proper documentation is illegal. Although, this is illegal the immigrants want a better life for themselves and their family, so they take the many risks that are involved in this journey. Making this trip, illegally, through these countries you could imagine you must be very careful not to attract too much attention. With these thoughts in mind, the few groups of people this documentary followed attempting to immigrate into the United States let camera crews follow them on this journey. Having

These immigrants and vigilantes were not just handed cameras and told “Go do what you normally do, just make sure you get it on tape.” These groups of people had camera crews, who would be considered the researchers, following them around throughout the environments they had to travel through. This type of research is considered participant observation or fieldwork. Depending on the setting in which the research is conducted, this type of research can be very dangerous. In the case of “Wet Back”, this would definitely qualify as being a risky or dangerous research setting. We learned in this movie, that throughout Mexico the law enforcement is not similar to the law enforcement in the United States. These people could possibly assault, rob, or rape you. These are most certainly not things that the United States police participate in, at least most of them do not. With that being said, these researchers are really taking a risk when conducting participant observation in these settings. If they were to be seen at the wrong place, at the wrong time they could be subjected to all of these negative circumstances. Another thing that puts these camera crews at risk is the chance of interaction with gangs of central America. These organizations could do all the things the police would do and also possibly