Search results

This chapter argues that the crimmigration system is a social control apparatus that disproportionately punishes and racializes Latino immigrants, with important implications for research on assimilation.

We support our argument with research in sociology, geography, political science, anthropology, criminology, and law.

This chapter outlines how two spheres of the US legal system – immigration law and criminal law – have converged into a crimmigration system that punishes Latinos and their descendants. Migration scholars have historically relied on theories of assimilation to explain the fate of immigrants and their descendants. In today’s era of immigration enforcement, we argue that it is critically important for scholars to consider how the crimmigration system racializes Latinos, defines them as undeserving of national membership, and hardens racial boundaries.

By bringing together research on international migration, race, crimmigration, and assimilation, this chapter integrates various substantive areas that are not often in conversation with one another.

It has been argued that the UK has the reputation of operating a complex set of immigration laws to the extent that the constantly changing laws and regulations lead much to confusion and lack of accountability. It has further been argued that the ever-increasing and shifting pattern of deportation laws (some of which are retroactive) violates the basic principles of human rights norms. This paper aims to raise the query as to whether legislation associated with deportation is constantly enacted and revised to achieve deportation without regard to the remit of the doctrine of legitimate expectation encapsulated under the principle of legal certainty.

This research applies the doctrinal research methodology in addition to somewhat reliance on anecdotal evidence. Doctrinal research is library-based and reliance will be placed on primary and secondary materials such as legislations, case laws, soft laws on the one hand and textbooks, journals, articles, legal encyclopaedia, databases and many valuable websites on the other hand.

While it is accepted that the State enjoys the discretion or prerogative to deport migrants that violate the State’s immigration laws, the author posits that the issue of constant changes breed uncertainty, which in turn breeds unpredictability leading to unaccountability. Drawing on the UK’s state practice, the author will submit that contrivance of deportability and/or removability is adumbrated by the legal production of migrant irregularity exemplified by inconsistent and uncertain laws that vary like the “Chancellor’s foot”. In addition, the research found that crimmigration heightened the velocity of deportation by expanding deportability grounds by way of triggering broader, harsher and more frequent criminal consequences leading to conviction, thereby creating a suitable avenue for deportation and reducing the scope for challenging deportation decisions.

The research is an original piece of work that contributes to scholarship and knowledge in the area of migration as it concerns international human rights law given that wider matters within the boundaries of immigration and nationality laws do have effect on individual possession of rights to be in the UK, by way of lawful presence or as a matter of discretion.

Immigration detention exists within many paradigms that have enabled private corporations to capitalise on immigration detention. These include the terrorism–immigration nexus, ‘crimmigration’ and a hostility discourse present in UK politics. This chapter argues that these themes have fed into the facilitation of an ‘immigration–industrial complex’, strictly through three defining features as identified by Golash-Boza. The three features are (a) a rhetoric of fear; (b) the confluence of powerful interests; and (c) a discourse of otherisation. It will be argued that the narrative surrounding immigration is irrational and unfounded and thus should be substituted for one of compassion in order to challenge the profit-generating business of treating migrant detainees as commodities.

As the US criminal justice system and immigration system increasingly interconnect, even immigration policy that is facially race-neutral may involve biased practices. The purpose of this paper is to examine how institutional racism in criminal legal processes creates particular barriers for many individuals of Latin American and/or African descent facing deportation proceedings in US immigration courts, particularly in assertions regarding gang affiliation.

This research is based on ethnographic observation. The work utilized a grounded theory approach. The observation took place at public master calendar hearings at a Midwestern immigration court between 2013 and 2015, yielding over 400 pages of fieldnotes that were coded and analyzed for patterns.

Non-citizens in the USA, including lawful permanent residents, are subject to deportation if labeled “criminal.” Racial profiling and criminalization of communities of color create heightened risk of deportation. Assumptions that common tattoos or urban fashion indicate criminality, reliance on Facebook posts to “prove” gang membership, and the use of arrest records as evidence of criminality even if charges were dropped all put immigrants of Latin American and/or African descent at heightened risk.

The ethnographic method used has strong validity but weaker reliability and generalizability.

This paper can help analysts, policymakers and advocates consider how to adapt systems to increase equity.

This research provides direct examples and ethnographic evidence of how race and cultural bias in criminal legal processes and immigration policies can affect people in deportation proceedings.

Migration has a strong political significance and a crucial constitutive role for identity. The liminal status and exclusion of migrants delimits the inside/outside of political communities and allows for the constitution and coherence of identity. Migration is also a challenge: while it is often presented as a managerial issue related to states’ economic and labour considerations, it essentially challenges and undermines their national and cultural self-image. Migration management also reflects the values and qualities communities identify in themselves; thus immigration policies put communities and states to the test for the way such values are upheld. This contribution explores migration’s constitutive role for European identity and the challenges it presents it with. Explaining the securitisation of migration management in Europe and its racial and dehumanising characteristics, it argues that the two-tier human rights system created in the European space affecting migrants undermines European identity value claims and threatens to undo them. It claims that the time has come to acknowledge European identity’s historical constitution in colonialism, and to envisage it as a fluid, open-ended project accommodating in earnest racial and cultural diversity, pluralism and difference.

Feminist criminologists are well acquainted with how their research on sexual harms and gendered forms of victimisation may serve as powerful levers for punitive agendas. In recent years, culturalist interpretations of sexual violence have become key themes in debates on migration and integration in liberal welfare democracies, such as Denmark, Norway and Sweden. In this, complex issues of gender, ethnicity and power are involved, and the balancing of these, both analytically and ethically, poses a challenge to feminists in their attempts to contribute to social change. This chapter will, based on examples from debates in Sweden, present and discuss how argumentation about sexual freedom and integrity is enlisted in attempts to reinforce borders and ideas about dangerous Others, and outline how a fruitful meeting between criminology and feminism can advance the scholarship on sexual violence.