Suchergebnisse

Central Americans historically have been denied U.S. asylum. From the moment they arrive, they become entangled in a punitive system that criminalizes them through an intricate network of social control sustained by state and private companies. Based on ethnographic fieldwork conducted in rural Kansas between 2016 and 2020 and interviews with Maya Guatemalan women and men asylum seekers, we examine the race and gender power dynamics reproduced through the asylum process that mimics the penal system. We examine three encounters with the asylum system: (1) the credible fear interview, (2) cash bonds, and (3) alternatives to detention programs. The asylum process (re)produces a continuum of state control that reflects the punishing tactics of the carceral state, leaving women and men embedded in the system and perpetually indebted. Maya Guatemalan women's and men's experiences navigating the asylum process underscore the intersecting mechanisms of race and gender at the center of the carceral state within the asylum system. Given the expansion of the punitive U.S. asylum bureaucracy, our findings will be relevant beyond our case study.

AbstractIn recent years, the deportation and detention of immigrants has become a common phenomenon around the world. In this article, we shed light on the global expansion of crimmigration (the increasingly blurring of lines between immigration and criminal laws) and examine in depth the United States as an example of this trend. Crimmigration scholarship has largely focused on the processes in which laws, media narratives, and political discourses criminalize undocumented immigrants. We summarize the literature that demonstrates how these processes are predicated on the racialization and gendering of certain immigrants, in the United States and elsewhere. Using the US case as an example, we discuss how criminalization practices are closely tied to for profit prison interests. Finally, we provide suggestions for future research to critically examine the criminalization of immigration and immigrants.

In the past two decades, the trend toward immigrant criminalization has increased dramatically. Drawing on analysis of recent immigration-related Executive Orders as well as interviews with Latino immigrants in Kansas, we argue that these expanded forms of immigrant criminalization amount to legal violence, with an unprecedented reach. Our focus on Kansas, a state that has not been at the forefront of anti-immigration laws like other states have, demonstrates this new reach. Our research demonstrates that the hypercriminalized immigration regime has direct implications for the everyday lives of immigrants.

How Latina girls and women become entangled in the criminal justice systemDespite representing roughly 16 percent of incarcerated women, Latina women and girls are often rendered invisible in accounts of American crime and punishment. In Latinas in the Criminal Justice System, Vera Lopez and Lisa Pasko bring together a group of distinguished scholars to provide a more complete, nuanced picture of Latinas as victims, offenders, and targets of deportation. Featuring Cecilia Menjívar, Lisa M. Martinez, Alice Cepeda, and others, this volume examines the complex histories, backgrounds, and struggles of Latinas in the criminal justice system. Contributors show us how Latinas encounter a variety of justice systems, including juvenile detention, adult court and corrections, and immigration and customs enforcement. Topics include Latina victims of crime and their perceptions of police officers; the impact of the US "crimmigration" system on undocumented Latina women; and help-seeking among Latina victims of intimate partner violence. Additionally, key chapters highlight the emergence of legal reforms, community mobilization efforts, and gender-sensitive alternatives to incarceration designed to increase equitable outcomes. Lopez and Pasko broaden our understanding of how gender, ethnicity, and legal status uniquely shape the experiences of system-impacted Latina girls and women. Latinas in the Criminal Justice System is a timely and much-needed resource for academics, activists, and policymakers