Hostname: page-component-7479d7b7d-wxhwt Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-07-12T06:28:24.450Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

On the Radar: System Embeddedness and Latin American Immigrants' Perceived Risk of Deportation

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2024

Asad L. Asad Open the ORCID record for Asad L. Asad [Opens in a new window]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Drawing on in-depth interviews with 50 Latin American immigrants in Dallas, Texas, this article uncovers systematic distinctions in how immigrants holding different legal statuses perceive the threat of deportation. Undocumented immigrants recognize the precarity of their legal status, but they sometimes feel that their existence off the radar of the US immigration regime promotes their long-term presence in the country. Meanwhile, documented immigrants perceive stability in their legal status, but they sometimes view their existence on the radar of the US immigration regime as disadvantageous to their long-term presence in the country. The article offers the concept of system embeddedness—individuals' perceived legibility to institutions that maintain formal records—as a mechanism through which perceived visibility to the US immigration regime entails feelings of risk, and perceived invisibility feelings of safety. In this way, the punitive character of the US immigration regime can overwhelm its integrative functions, chilling immigrants out of opportunities for material and social well-being through legalization and legal status. More broadly, system embeddedness illuminates how perceived visibility to a record-keeping body that combines punitive and integrative goals represents a mechanism of legal stratification for subordinated populations—even absent prior punitive experiences with other social control institutions that might otherwise be thought to trigger their system avoidance.

Type
Articles
Information
Law & Society Review , Volume 54 , Issue 1 , March 2020 , pp. 133 - 167
Copyright
© 2020 Law and Society Association.

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

I am grateful to Stefanie DeLuca and Kathryn Edin, the co-principal investigators of the How Parents House Kids Project (HPHK), for their generous leadership; the HPHK researchers for their teamwork; and the Annie E. Casey Foundation and the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation for their financial support. I acknowledge additional financial support from the National Science Foundation, and the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University. Monica Bell, Matthew Clair, Tomás Jiménez, and Helen Marrow graciously offered incisive comments on previous versions of this article. I also thank Sarah Brayne, Hana Brown, Hilario Dominguez, Filiz Garip, Shannon Gleeson, Beth Lyon, Tiffany Joseph, Mario Small, Jessica Tollette, Mary Waters, Bill Wilson, and Alix Winter, as well as the Law & Society Review editor Rebecca Sandefur and anonymous reviewers, for helpful feedback or support on this project. Audiences at Cornell University, Harvard University, Rice University, Stanford University, Yale Law School, and the Universities of Michigan, Pennsylvania, Toronto, and Wisconsin also provided helpful suggestions. Any errors are my own.

References

REFERENCES

Abarca, Gray Albert and Coutin, Susan Bibler. 2018. “Sovereign Intimacies: The Lives of Documents within US State-Noncitizen Relationships.” American Ethnologist 45: 7–19.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Abrego, Leisy J. 2011. “Legal Consciousness of Undocumented Latinos: Fear and Stigma as Barriers to Claims-Making for First-and 1.5-Generation Immigrants.” Law & Society Rev. 45: 337–70.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
American Immigration Council. 2018. U.S. Citizen Children Impacted by Immigration Enforcement. Washington, DC: American Immigration Council.Google Scholar
Andrews, Abigail L. 2018. “Moralizing Regulation: The Implications of Policing ‘Good’ Versus ‘Bad’ Immigrants.” Ethnic and Racial Studies 41: 2485–503.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Aptekar, Sofya. 2015. The Road to Citizenship: What Naturalization Means for Immigrants and the United States. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press.Google Scholar
Armenta, Amada. 2017. “Protect, Serve, and Deport: The Rise of Policing as Immigration Enforcement.”CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Asad, Asad L. 2017. Reconsidering Immigrant Illegality: How Immigrants Perceive the Risk of Immigration Law and Enforcement. Cambridge, MA: Department of Sociology, Harvard University.Google Scholar
Asad, Asad L. 2019. “Deportation Decisions: Judicial Decision-Making in an American Immigration Court.” American Behavioral Scientist 63: 1221–49.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Asad, Asad L. and Clair, Matthew. 2018. “Racialized Legal Status as a Social Determinant of Health.” Social Science & Medicine 199: 19–28.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Asad, Asad L. and Eva, Rosen. 2019. “Hiding within Racial Hierarchies: How Undocumented Immigrants Make Residential Decisions in an American City.” J. of Ethnic and Migration Studies 45: 1857–82.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bean, Frank D., Brown, Susan K., and Bachmeier, James D. 2015. Parents without Papers: The Progress and Pitfalls of Mexican American Integration. New York, NY: Russell Sage Foundation.Google Scholar
Bell, Monica C. 2017. “Police Reform and the Dismantling of Legal Estrangement.” Yale LJ 126: 2054.Google Scholar
Board of Immigration Appeals. 1988. “Matter of Danesh.” Board of Immigration Appeals Decision #3068.Google Scholar
Bourgois, Philippe. 2003. In Search of Respect: Selling Crack in El Barrio, Vol. 10. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Brayne, Sarah. 2014. “Surveillance and System Avoidance Criminal Justice Contact and Institutional Attachment.” American Sociological Rev. 79: 367–91.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Brettell, Caroline B. and Nibbs, Faith G. 2011. “Immigrant Suburban Settlement and the “Threat” to Middle Class Status and Identity: The Case of Farmers Branch, Texas.” International Migration 49: 1–30.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Chacón, Jennifer M. 2014. “Immigration Detention: No Turning Back?” South Atlantic Q. 113: 621–8.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Chávez, Leo R. 2012 [1992]. Shadowed Lives: Undocumented Immigrants in American Society. Belmont, CA: Cengage Learning.Google Scholar
Chávez, Leo R. 2013. The Latino Threat: Constructing Immigrants, Citizens, and the Nation. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Coleman, Mathew. 2007. “Immigration Geopolitics Beyond the Mexico–US Border.” Antipode 39: 54–76.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Coleman, Mathew and Kocher, Austin. 2011. “Detention, Deportation, Devolution and Immigrant Incapacitation in the US, Post 9/11.” The Geographical J. 177: 228–37.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Coutin, Susan Bibler. 2003. Legalizing Moves: Salvadoran Immigrants' Struggle for USs Residency. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press.Google Scholar
De Trinidad Young, Maria-Elena and Wallace, Steven P. 2019. “Included, but Deportable: A New Public Health Approach to Policies That Criminalize and Integrate Immigrants.” American J. of Public Health 109: 1171–6.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Deterding, Nicole M. and Waters, Mary C. 2018. “Flexible Coding of In-Depth Interviews: A Twenty-First-Century Approach.” Sociological Methods & Research. https://doi.org/10.1177/0049124118799377.Google Scholar
Doherty, Caroll, Kiley, Jocelyn, and Johnson, Bridget. 2018. Shifting Public Views on Legal Immigration into the U.S. Washington, DC: Pew Research Center.Google Scholar
Donato, Katharine M. and Armenta, Amada. 2011. “What We Know About Unauthorized Migration.” Annual Rev. of Sociology 37: 529–43.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Donato, Katharine M., Durand, Jorge, and Massey, Douglas S. 1992. “Stemming the Tide? Assessing the Deterrent Effects of the Immigration Reform and Control Act.” Demography 29: 139–57.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Dreby, Joanna. 2010. Divided by Borders: Mexican Migrants and Their Children. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Enriquez, Laura E. 2017. “A ‘Master Status’ or the ‘Final Straw’? Assessing the Role of Immigration Status in Latino Undocumented Youths' Pathways Out of School.” J. of Ethnic and Migration Studies 43: 1526–43.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Espenshade, Thomas J. 1990. “Undocumented Migration to the United States: Evidence from a Repeated Trials Model.” Undocumented Migration to the United States: IRCA and the Experience of the 1980s: 159–81.Google Scholar
Espenshade, Thomas J. 1995. “Unauthorized Immigration to the United States.” Annual Rev. of Sociology 21: 195–216.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Fine, Lisa, R. 1997. “Preventing Miscarriages of Justice: Reinstating the Use of Judicial Recommendations Against Deportation.” Georgetown Immigration Law Journal 12: 491–510.Google Scholar
Flores, René D. and Schachter, Ariela. 2018. “Who Are the “Illegals” ? The Social Construction of Illegality in the United States.” American Sociological Rev. 83: 839–68.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fong, Kelley. 2019. “Concealment and Constraint: Child Protective Services Fears and Poor Mothers' Institutional Engagement.” Social Forces 97: 1785–809.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Foucault, Michel. 1991. The Foucault Effect: Studies in Governmentality. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
García, Angela S. 2019. Legal Passing: Navigating Undocumented Life and Local Immigration Law. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Garip, Filiz, Gleeson, Shannon, and Hall, Matthew. 2019. “How the State Criminalizes Immigrants and to What Effect: A Multidisciplinary Account.” American Behavioral Scientist 63: 1159–71.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
De Genova, Nicholas P. 2002. “Migrant ‘Illegality’ and Deportability in Everyday Life.” Annual Rev. of Anthropology 31: 419–47.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Goffman, Alice. 2009. “On the Run: Wanted Men in a Philadelphia Ghetto.” American Sociological Rev. 74: 339–57.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Golash-Boza, Tanya. 2013. “From Legal to ‘Illegal’: The Deportation of Legal Permanent Residents Form the United States.” In Constructing Immigrant ‘Illegality’: Critiques, Experiences, and Responses, edited by Menjívar, C. and Kanstroom, D., 203–22. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Golash-Boza, Tanya. 2015. Deported: Immigrant Policing, Disposable Labor and Global Capitalism. New York, NY: NYU Press.Google Scholar
Golash-Boza, Tanya and Hondagneu-Sotelo, Pierrette. 2013. “Latino Immigrant Men and the Deportation Crisis: A Gendered Racial Removal Program.” Latino Studies 11: 271–92.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gomberg-Muñoz, Ruth. 2016. Becoming Legal: Immigration Law and Mixed Status Families. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Gonzales, Roberto G. 2015. Lives in Limbo: Undocumented and Coming of Age in America. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gonzales, Roberto G., Terriquez, Veronica, and Ruszczyk, Stephen P. 2014. “Becoming DACAmented: Assessing the Short-Term Benefits of Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA).” American Behavioral Scientist 58: 1852–72.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hagan, Jacqueline. 1994. Deciding to Be Legal: A Maya Community in Houston. Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press.Google Scholar
Hagan, Jacqueline Maria and Baker, Susan Gonzalez. 1993. “Implementing the US Legalization Program: The Influence of Immigrant Communities and Local Agencies on Immigration Policy Reform.” International Migration Rev. 27: 513–36.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hagan, Jacqueline, Rodriguez, Nestor, Capps, Randy, and Kabiri, Nika. 2003. “The Effects of Recent Welfare and Immigration Reforms on Immigrants' Access to Health Care.” International Migration Rev. 37: 444–63.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hall, Matthew. 2013. “Residential Integration on the New Frontier: Immigrant Segregation in Established and New Destinations.” Demography 50: 1873–96.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Hallett, Miranda Cady. 2014. “Temporary Protection, Enduring Contradiction: The Contested and Contradictory Meanings of Temporary Immigration Status.” Law & Social Inquiry 39: 621–42.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Harvey, Hope, Fong, Kelley, Edin, Kathryn, and DeLuca, Stefanie. 2019. “Forever Homes and Temporary Stops: Housing Search Logics and Residential Selection.” Social Forces. https://doi.org/10.1093/sf/soz110.Google Scholar
Haskins, Anna R. and Jacobsen, Wade C. 2017. “Schools as Surveilling Institutions? Paternal Incarceration, System Avoidance, and Parental Involvement in Schooling.” American Sociological Rev. 82: 657–84.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Human Rights Watch. 2009. Forced Apart (by the Numbers): Non-Citizens Deported Mostly for Nonviolent Offenses. New York, NY: Human Rights Watch.Google Scholar
Jacobs, Elizabeth M. 2019. “Pathways to Permanence.” Frontiers in Sociology 4: 44.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Jain, Eisha. 2019. “The Interior Structure of Immigration Enforcement.” University of Pennsylvania Law Rev. 167: 1–50.Google Scholar
Japp, Klaus P. and Kusche, Isabel. 2008. “Systems Theory and Risk.” In Social Theories of Risk and Uncertainty: An Introduction. Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing.Google Scholar
Jiménez, Tomás R. 2010. Replenished Ethnicity: Mexican Americans, Immigration, and Identity. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Joseph, Tiffany D. 2018. “The Growing Citizen-Noncitizen Divide: Life Along the Documentation Status Continuum.” Working Paper. Northeastern University.Google Scholar
Kanstroom, Daniel. 2012. Aftermath: Deportation Law and the New American Diaspora. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Karoly, Lynn A. and Perez-Arce, Francisco. 2016. “A Cost-Benefit Framework for Analyzing the Economic and Fiscal Impacts of State-Level Immigration Policies.”CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Krogstad, Jens Manuel, Passel, Jeffrey S., and Cohn, D' Vera. 2019. 5 Facts About Illegal Immigration in the U.S. Washington, DC: Pew Research Center.Google Scholar
Lageson, Sarah Esther. 2016. “Found Out and Opting Out: The Consequences of Online Criminal Records for Families.” The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 665: 127–41.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lopez, Mark Hugo and Rohal, Molly. 2017. Latinos and the New Trump Administration. Washington, DC: Pew Research Center.Google Scholar
Luhmann, Niklas. 1993. Communication and Social Order: Risk: A Sociological Theory. Berlin, Germany: Transaction Publishers.Google Scholar
Marrow, Helen B. 2009. “Immigrant Bureaucratic Incorporation: The Dual Roles of Professional Missions and Government Policies.” American Sociological Rev. 74: 756–76.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Massey, Douglas S. 2007. Categorically Unequal: The American Stratification System. New York, NY: Russell Sage Foundation.Google Scholar
Massey, Douglas S. 2008. New Faces in New Places: The Changing Geography of American Immigration. New York, NY: Russell Sage Foundation.Google Scholar
Massey, Douglas S. and Bartley, Katherine. 2005. “The Changing Legal Status Distribution of Immigrants: A Caution.” International Migration Rev. 39: 469–84.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Massey, Douglas S., Durand, Jorge, and Malone, Nolan J. 2002. Beyond Smoke and Mirrors: Mexican Immigration in an Era of Economic Integration. New York, NY: Russell Sage Foundation.Google Scholar
Massey, Douglas S., Durand, Jorge, and Pren, Karen A. 2016. “Why Border Enforcement Backfired.” American J. of Sociology 121: 1557–600.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Menjívar, Cecilia. 2006. “Liminal Legality: Salvadoran and Guatemalan Immigrants' Lives in the United States.” American J. of Sociology 111: 999–1037.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Menjívar, Cecilia and Abrego, Leisy. 2012. “Legal Violence: Immigration Law and the Lives of Central American Immigrants.” American J. of Sociology 117: 1380–421.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Menjívar, Cecilia, Abrego, Leisy J., and Schmalzbauer, Leah C. 2016. Immigrant Families. Malden, MA: John Wiley & Sons.Google Scholar
Menjívar, Cecilia and Lakhani, Sarah M. 2016. “Transformative Effects of Immigration Law: Immigrants' Personal and Social Metamorphoses Through Regularization 1.” American J. of Sociology 121: 1818–55.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Moinester, Margot. 2018. “Beyond the Border and into the Heartland: Spatial Patterning of US Immigration Detention.” Demography 55: 1147–93.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2015. “The Integration of Immigrants into American Society.” In Panel on the Integration of Immigrants into American Society. Cambridge, MA: National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine.Google Scholar
Patler, Caitlin, Hamilton, Erin, Meagher, Kelsey, and Savinar, Robin. 2019. “Uncertainty About DACA May Undermine its Positive Impact on Health for Recipients and Their Children.” Health Affairs 38: 738–45.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Patler, Caitlin and Pirtle, Whitney Laster. 2018. “From Undocumented to Lawfully Present: Do Changes to Legal Status Impact Psychological Wellbeing among Latino Immigrant Young Adults?” Social Science & Medicine 199: 39–48.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Pickett, Justin T. 2016. “On the Social Foundations for Crimmigration: Latino Threat and Support for Expanded Police Powers.” J. of Quantitative Criminology 32: 103–32.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Portes, Alejandro and Rumbaut, Ruben G. 2006. Immigrant America: A Portrait. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Prieto, Greg. 2018. Immigrants Under Threat: Risk and Resistance in Deportation Nation. New York, NY: NYU Press.Google Scholar
Rosenblum, Marc R. and McCabe, Kristen. 2014. Deportation and Discretion: Reviewing the Record and Options for Change. Washington, D.C: Migration Policy Institute.Google Scholar
Ryo, Emily. 2018. “Representing Immigrants: The Role of Lawyers in Immigration Bond Hearings.” Law & Society Rev. 52: 503–31.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ryo, Emily. 2019. “Predicting Danger in Immigration Courts.” Law & Social Inquiry 44: 227–56.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Small, Mario Luis. 2009. “How Many Cases Do I Need? On Science and the Logic of Case Selection in Field-Based Research.” Ethnography 10: 5–38.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Stumpf, Juliet P. 2006. “The Crimmigration Crisis: Immigrants, Crime, and Sovereign Power.” American University Law Rev. 56: 367.Google Scholar
Theodore, Nik and Habans, Robert. 2016. “Policing Immigrant Communities: Latino Perceptions of Police Involvement in Immigration Enforcement.” J. of Ethnic and Migration Studies 42: 970–88.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Waters, Mary C. and Kasinitz, Philip. 2015. “The War on Crime and the War on Immigrants: Racial and Legal Exclusion in the Twenty-First-Century United States.” In Fearn, Anxiety, and National Identity: Immigration and Belonging in North America and Western Europe, edited by Foner, N. and Simon, P., 115–42. New York: Russell Sage Foundation.Google Scholar
Watson, Tara. 2013. “Enforcement and Immigrant Location Choice.” National Bureau of Economic Research No. w19626.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Williamson, Abigail Fisher. 2018. Welcoming New Americans?: Local Governments and Immigrant Incorporation. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wong, Tom K. and García, Angela S. 2016. “Does Where I Live Affect Whether I Apply? The Contextual Determinants of Applying for Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals.” International Migration Rev. 50: 699–727.CrossRefGoogle Scholar