Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Julie A. Dowling is Assistant Professor of Latina/Latino Studies at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. Jonathan Xavier Inda is Associate Professor of Latina/Latino Studies at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign.

Auszug. © Genehmigter Nachdruck. Alle Rechte vorbehalten.

GOVERNING IMMIGRATION THROUGH CRIME

Stanford University Press

Contents

Acknowledgments............................................................................................................................................................................viiIntroduction: Governing Migrant Illegality Jonathan Xavier Inda and Julie A. Dowling......................................................................................................1Part I LAW AND CRIMINALIZATION............................................................................................................................................................371. The Legal Production of Mexican/Migrant "Illegality" Nicholas De Genova................................................................................................................412. The Crimmigration Crisis: Immigrants, Crime, and Sovereign Power Juliet P. Stumpf......................................................................................................593. The Security Myth: Punishing Immigrants in the Name of National Security Jennifer M. Chacón.......................................................................................77Part II MANAGING BORDERS..................................................................................................................................................................954. Constructing a Virtual Wall: Race and Citizenship in U.S.-Mexico Border Policing Josiah McC. Heyman....................................................................................995. Spectacle in the Desert: The Minuteman Project on the U.S.-Mexico Border Leo R. Chavez.................................................................................................1156. Bare Life: Border-Crossing Deaths and Spaces of Moral Alibi Roxanne Lynn Doty..........................................................................................................129Part III POLICING THE INTERIOR............................................................................................................................................................1457. The Rise and Fall of Employer Sanctions David Bacon and Bill Ong Hing..................................................................................................................1498. Arizona's SB 1070: Setting Conditions for Violations of Human Rights Here and Beyond Rogelio Sáenz, Cecilia Menjívar, and San Juanita Edilia García.....................1659. Immigration as Local Politics: Re-Bordering Immigration Through Deterrence and Incapacitation Liette Gilbert...........................................................................181Part IV DETENTION AND DEPORTATION.........................................................................................................................................................19510. Pursuant to Deportation: Latinos and Immigrant Detention David Manuel Hernández..................................................................................................19911. "¿Quien sabe?": Deportation and Temporality Among Transnational Mexicans Deborah A. Boehm........................................................................................21712. Exiled by Law: Deportation and the Inviability of Life Susan Bibler Coutin............................................................................................................233Part V IMMIGRANT CONTESTATIONS............................................................................................................................................................24913. (Re)Bordering the Civic Imaginary: Rhetoric, Hybridity, and Citizenship in La Gran Marcha Josue David Cisneros........................................................................25314. Left Out but Not Shut Down: Political Activism and the Undocumented Student Movement Roberto G. Gonzales..............................................................................26915. From Border Control to Border Care: The Political and Ethical Potential of Surveillance James P. Walsh................................................................................285Index......................................................................................................................................................................................303

Chapter One

Nicholas De Genova

Mexican migration to the United States is distinguished by a seeming paradox that is seldom examined: while no other country has supplied nearly as many migrants to the US as has Mexico since 1965, virtually all major changes in US immigration law during this period have created ever more severe restrictions on the conditions of "legal" migration from Mexico. Indeed, this seeming paradox presents itself in a double sense: on the one hand, apparently liberalizing immigration laws have in fact concealed significantly restrictive features, especially for Mexicans; on the other hand, ostensibly restrictive immigration laws purportedly intended to deter migration have nonetheless been instrumental in sustaining Mexican migration, but only by significantly restructuring its legal status as undocumented. Beginning in the 1960s, precisely when Mexican migration escalated dramatically—and ever since—persistent revisions in the law have effectively foreclosed the viable possibilities for the great majority who would migrate from Mexico to do so in accord with the law, and thus have played an instrumental role in the production of a legally vulnerable undocumented workforce of "illegal aliens"

This study elaborates on the historical specificity of contemporary Mexican migration to the US as it has come to be located in the legal (political) economy of the US nation-state, and thereby constituted as an object of the law, especially since 1965. More precisely, this chapter interrogates the history of changes in US immigration law through the specific lens of how these revisions have had a distinct impact upon Mexicans in particular. Only in light of this sociolegal history does it become possible to sustain a critical perspective that is not complicit in the naturalization of Mexican migrants' "illegality" as a mere fact of life, the presumably transparent consequence of unauthorized border crossing or some other violation of immigration law. Indeed, in order to sustain an emphatic concern to de-naturalize the reification of this distinction, I deploy quotes throughout this chapter, wherever the terms "legal" or "illegal" modify migration or migrants.

In addition to simply designating a juridical status in relation to the US nation-state and its laws of immigration, naturalization, and citizenship, migrant "illegality" signals a specifically spatialized sociopolitical condition. "Illegality" is lived through a palpable sense of deportability—the possibility of deportation, which is to say, the possibility of being removed from the space of the US nation-state. The legal production of "illegality" provides an apparatus for sustaining Mexican migrants' vulnerability and tractability—as workers—whose labor-power, inasmuch as it is deportable, becomes an eminently disposable commodity. Deportability is decisive in the legal production of Mexican/migrant "illegality" and the militarized policing of the US-Mexico border, however, only insofar as some are...