Hostname: page-component-7479d7b7d-68ccn Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-07-08T05:51:54.097Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Relief or removal: State logics of deservingness and masculinity for immigrant men in removal proceedings

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2024

Dylan Farrell-Bryan
Dylan Farrell-Bryan*
Affiliation:
Department of Sociology, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA
*
Dylan Farrell-Bryan, Department of Sociology, University of Pennsylvania, 343 McNeil Building, 3718 Locust Walk, Philadelphia, PA 19104, USA., Email: dfb@sas.upenn.edu
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

In recent years, there has been an unprecedented rise in the number of immigrants facing removal from the United States, many of whom make a case for their right to be granted relief from removal and stay in the country. While immigrant men of color are disproportionately represented in both removal proceedings and contemporary sociopolitical constructions of immigrant criminalization, existing literature has largely overlooked the state's cultural logics involved in decision-making about immigrant relief or removal. Drawing on theories of racialized masculinity and state gendering, I analyze how judges in immigration court utilize a politicized discourse of masculinity to justify legalization for immigrant men through their relational ties to US citizens. Using ethnographic observations of hearings for the Cancellation of Removal and the judicial decisions that support immigrant removal or relief, I develop a conceptual framework of “relational masculinity,” in which judges evaluate men as emotionally involved parents and partners in traditional family arrangements, raising culturally integrated Americans, and as economic providers of upward social mobility, to determine their deservingness for relief. These findings suggest that, alongside widespread gendered and racialized criminalization, the state also engages in an evaluation process to assess the masculinity of immigrant men who may be formally admitted into the United States. I argue that adherence to these gendered and racialized norms plays a key role in determining migrants' deservingness and membership, with important implications for how the state actively manages immigrant masculinity and bolsters caregiving support for US citizens, alongside heightened criminalization.

Type
Articles
Information
Law & Society Review , Volume 56 , Issue 2 , June 2022 , pp. 167 - 187
Copyright
© 2022 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

How to cite this article: Farrell-Bryan, Dylan. 2022. “Relief or Removal: State Logics of Deservingness and Masculinity for Immigrant Men in Removal Proceedings.” Law & Society Review 56(2): 167-187. https://doi.org/10.1111/lasr.12604

References

REFERENCES

Andrews, Abigail L. 2018. “Moralizing Regulation: The Implications of Policing ‘Good’ Versus ‘Bad’ Immigrants.” Ethnic and Racial Studies 41(14): 2485–503.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Asad, Asad L. 2019. “Deportation Decisions: Judicial Decision-Making in an American Immigration Court.” American Behavioral Scientist 63(9): 1221-49.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Barron, Pierre, Bory, Anne, Chauvin, Sébastien, Jounin, Nicolas, and Tourette, Lucie. 2016. “State Categories and Labour Protest: Migrant Workers and the Fight for Legal Status in France.” Work, Employment and Society 30(4): 631-48.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bhatia, Monish. 2020. “The Permission to be Cruel: Street-Level Bureaucrats and Harms Against People Seeking Asylum.” Critical Criminology 28(2): 277-92.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bhuyan, Rupaleem. 2008. “The Production of the ‘Battered Immigrant’ in Public Policy and Domestic Violence Advocacy.” Journal of Interpersonal Violence 23(2): 153-70.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Biland, Émilie, and Steinmetz, Hélène. 2017. “Are Judges Street-Level Bureaucrats? Evidence from French and Canadian Family Courts.” Law & Social Inquiry 42(02): 298–324.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Blankenhorn, D. 1995. Fatherless America: Confronting Our Most Urgent Social Problem.Google Scholar
Bosniak, Linda. 2008. The Citizen and the Alien: Dilemmas of Contemporary Membership.Google Scholar
Bridges, Tristan, and Pascoe, C. J. 2014. “Hybrid Masculinities: New Directions in the Sociology of Men and Masculinities.” Sociology Compass 8(3): 246-58.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Brown, Hana E. 2013. “Race, Legality, and the Social Policy Consequences of Anti-Immigration Mobilization.” American Sociological Review 78(2): 290–314.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Brown, Hana E., Jones, Jennifer A., and Becker, Andrea. 2018. “The Racialization of Latino Immigrants in New Destinations: Criminality, Ascription, and Countermobilization.” The Russell Sage Foundation Journal of the Social Sciences 4(5): 118-40.Google Scholar
Chacon, Jennifer M. 2009. “Managing Migration through Crime.” Columbia Law Review Sidebar 109: 135-48.Google Scholar
Chauvin, Sébastien, and Garcés-Mascareñas, Blanca. 2014. “Becoming less Illegal: Deservingness Frames and Undocumented Migrant Incorporation.” Sociology Compass 8(4): 422-32.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Chavez, L. 2008. “The Latino Threat: Constructing Immigrants, Citizens and the Nation.”Google Scholar
Chavez, Leo R. 2017. Anchor Babies and the Challenge of Birthright Citizenship. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.Google Scholar
Coleman, Mathew. 2008. “US Immigration Law and its Geographies of Social Control: Lessons from Homosexual Exclusion during the Cold War.” Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 26(6): 1096–114.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Connell, R. W. 1999. “Masculinities and Globalization.” Men and Masculinities 2(2): 3–23.Google Scholar
Connell, R. W., and Messerschmidt, James W. 2005. “Hegemonic Masculinity Rethinking the Concept.” Gender and Society 19(6): 829-59.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Curran, Laura, and Abrams, Laura S. 2000. “Making Men into Dads: Fatherhood, the State, and Welfare Reform.” Gender and Society 14(5): 662-78.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Das Gupta, Monisha. 2014. “‘Don't Deport our Daddies’: Gendering State Deportation Practices and Immigrant Organizing.” Gender and Society 28(1): 83–109.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Deeb-Sossa, Natalia, and Mendez, Jennifer Bickham. 2008. “Enforcing Borders in the Nuevo South: Gender and Migration in Williamsburg, Virginia, and the Research Triangle, North Carolina.” Gender and Society 22(5): 613-38.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dermott, E., and Miller, T. 2015. “More than the Sum of its Parts? Contemporary Fatherhood Policy, Practice and Discourse.” Relationships and Societies 4(2): 183-95.Google Scholar
Dowling, Julie A. and Inda, Jonathan Xavier. 2013. Governing Immigration through Crime: A Reader. Stanford Social Sciences, an imprint of Stanford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Eagly, Ingrid V., and Shafer, Steven. 2015. “A National Study of Access to Counsel in Immigration Court.” University of Pennsylvania Law Review 164(1): 1–92.Google Scholar
Edin, K. and Nelson, TJ. 2013. Doing the Best I Can: Fatherhood in the Inner City.Google Scholar
Emirbayer, Mustafa. 1997. “Manifesto for a Relational Sociology.” The American Journal of Sociology 103(2): 281–317.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Galli, C. 2020. “Humanitarian Capital: How Lawyers Help Immigrants Use Suffering to Claim Membership in the Nation-State.” Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies 46(11): 2181-98.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
García, Angela S. 2019. Legal Passing. Oakland, CA: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Garland, D. 1990. “Frameworks of Inquiry in the Sociology of Punishment.” The British Journal of Sociology 41: 1.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gavanas, A. 2004. “Domesticating Masculinity and Masculinizing Domesticity in Contemporary US Fatherhood Politics.” Social Politics: International Studies in Gender, State and Society 11(1): 246-66.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Glenn, EN. 2009. Unequal Freedom: How Race and Gender Shaped American Citizenship and Labor. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University 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(3): 271-92.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Griswold, R. L. 1993. Fatherhood in America: A History. New York: Basic Books.Google Scholar
Hagan, J., K. Eschbach, and N. Rodriguez. 2008. “U.S. Deportation Policy, Family Separation, and Circular Migration.” International Migration Review 42(1): 64–88. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1747-7379.2007.00114.x.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Haney, Lynne. 1996. “Homeboys, Babies, Men in Suits: The State and the Reproduction of Male Dominance.” American Sociological Review 61(5): 759-78.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pierrette, Hondagnneu-Sotelo, and Messner, Michael A. 1994. “Gender Displays and Men's Power: The ‘New Man’ and the Mexican Immigrant Man.” In Theorizing Masculinities, edited by Harry Brod and Michael Kaufman. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.Google Scholar
Jasso, Guillermina, Massey, Douglas S., Rosenzweig, Mark R., and Smith, James P. 2008. “From Illegal to Legal: Estimating Previous Illegal Experience among New Legal Immigrants to the United States.” International Migration Review 42(4): 803-43.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Johnson, Maria S., and Young, Alford A. 2016. “Diversity and Meaning in the Study of Black Fatherhood.” Du Bois Review: Social Science Research on Race 13(1): 5–23.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Jones, Nikki. 2014. “‘The Regular Routine’: Proactive Policing and Adolescent Development among Young, Poor Black Men.” New Directions for Child and Adolescent Development 2014(143): 33–54.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Kanstroom, Daniel. 2007. Deportation Nation. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kim, Allen, and Pyke, Karen. 2015. “Taming Tiger Dads.” Gender & Society 29(4): 509-33.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kim, Hyun Sook, and Puri, Jyoti. 2005. “Conceptualizing Gender-Sexuality-State-Nation: An Introduction.” Gender and Society 19(2): 137-59.Google Scholar
Lakhani, Sarah Morando. 2013. “Producing Immigrant Victims' ‘Right’ to Legal Status and the Management of Legal Uncertainty.” Law & Social Inquiry 38(2): 442-73.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Levine, JA and Pitt, EW. 1995. New Expectations: Community Strategies for Responsible Fatherhood.Google Scholar
Longo, Gina Marie. 2018. “Keeping it in ‘the Family’: How Gender Norms Shape U.S. Marriage Migration Politics.” Gender & Society 32(4): 469-92.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Maira, Sunaina. 2007. “Deporting Radicals, Deporting La Migra.” Cultural Dynamics 19(1): 39–66.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Marouf, Fatma E. 2011. “Implicit Bias and Immigration Courts.” New England Law Review 45: 417-48.Google Scholar
Marrow, Helen B. 2009. “New Immigrant Destinations and the American Colour Line.” Ethnic and Racial Studies 32(6): 1037-57.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Marsiglio, W., Roy, K., and Fox, GL. 2005. Situated Fathering: A Focus on Physical and Social Spaces.Google Scholar
Matlon, Jordanna. 2016. “Racial Capitalism and the Crisis of Black Masculinity.” American Sociological Review 81(5): 1014-38.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mendelson, Margot K. 2010. “Constructing America: Mythmaking in U.S. Immigration Courts.” The Yale Law Journal 119(5): 1012-58.Google Scholar
Menjívar, Cecilia. 2011. “The Power of the Law: Central Americans' Legality and Everyday Life in Phoenix, Arizona.” Latino Studies 9(4): 377-95.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Menjívar, Cecilia, and Abrego, L. J. 2012. “Legal Violence: Immigration Law and the Lives of Central American Immigrants.” American Journal of Sociology 117: 1380–421.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Moloney, D. M. 2012. National Insecurities: Immigrants and US Deportation Policy since 1882. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press.Google Scholar
Negrón-Gonzales, Genevieve. 2015. “Undocumented Youth Activism as Counter-Spectacle: Civil Disobedience and Testimonio in the Battle around Immigration Reform.” Aztlan: A Journal of Chicano Studies 40(1): 87–112.Google Scholar
Ordover, N. 2003. American Eugenics: Race, Queer Anatomy, and the Science of Nationalism.Google Scholar
Passel, Jeffrey S. and Cohn, Vera. 2009. A Portrait of Unauthorized Immigrants in the United States.Google Scholar
Pound, Roscoe. 1910. “Law in Books and Law in Action.” American Law Review 44: 12–36.Google Scholar
Randles, Jennifer. 2018. “‘Manning up’ to be a Good Father: Hybrid Fatherhood, Masculinity, and U.S. Responsible Fatherhood Policy.” Gender and Society 32(4): 516-39.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Randles, Jennifer M. 2013. “Repackaging the ‘Package Deal’: Promoting Marriage for Low-Income Families by Targeting Paternal Identity and Reframing Marital Masculinity.” Gender & Society 27(6): 864-88.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rios, VM. 2011. Punished: Policing the Lives of Black and Latino Boys. New York: New York University Press.Google Scholar
Roy, Kevin M., and Dyson, Omari. 2010. “Making Daddies into Fathers: Community-Based Fatherhood Programs and the Construction of Masculinities for Low-Income African American Men.” American Journal of Community Psychology 45(1–2): 139-54.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Ryo, Emily. 2019. “Predicting Danger in Immigration Courts.” Law & Social Inquiry 44(1): 227-56.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ryo, Emily, and Peacock, Ian. 2019. “Beyond the Walls: The Importance of Community Contexts in Immigration Detention.” American Behavioral Scientist 63(9): 1250-75.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Solinger, R. 2013. Wake Up Little Susie: Single Pregnancy and Race before Roe v. Wade.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Stuart, Forrest, and Benezra, Ava. 2018. “Criminalized Masculinities: How Policing Shapes the Construction of Gender and Sexuality in Poor Black Communities.” Social Problems 65(2): 174-90.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Stumpf, Juliet. 2020. “Justifying Family Separation: Constructing the Criminal Alien and the Alien Mother.” Wake Forest Law Review 55: 1037-86.Google Scholar
Stumpf, J. 2006. “The Crimmigration Crisis: Immigrants, Crime, and Sovereign Power.” American University Law Review 56: 367.Google Scholar
Timmermans, Stefan, and Tavory, Iddo. 2012. “Theory Construction in Qualitative Research: From Grounded Theory to Abductive Analysis.” Sociological Theory 30(3): 167-86.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
TRAC. 2021. “The Impact of Nationality, Language, Gender and Age on Asylum Success.” Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse. https://trac.syr.edu/immigration/reports/668/Google Scholar
U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. 1952. Immigration and Nationality Act. United States Congress.Google Scholar
United States Department of Homeland Security. 2019. Yearbook of Immigration Statistics 2017.Google Scholar
Wadhia, Shoba Sivaprasad. 2009. “The Role of Prosecutorial Discretion in Immigration Law.” Connecticut Public Interest Law Journal 9(2): 243–300.Google Scholar

CASES CITED

Matter of Castillo-Perez 27 I&N Dec. 664 (A.G. 2018).Google Scholar
Matter of Monreal 23 I&N Dec. 56 (BIA 2001).Google Scholar
U.S. v. Jean-Baptiste, 395 F.3d 1190 (11th Cir. 2005)Google Scholar

STATUTES CITED

Immigration and Nationality Act § 212(a)(5)(A), 8 U.S.C. § 1192(a)(5)(A).Google Scholar