Event

Abstract:

Changes to immigration enforcement policies and tactics have resulted in the expansion of deportation in the United States. However, little is known about the institutional dynamics and everyday enforcement practices that channel immigrants into the criminal justice system. Drawing on two years of fieldwork in Nashville, this article offers an on the ground account of police behavior, the first actors connecting immigrants to the criminal justice system. Building on theories of institutional and color-blind racism, I identify a system of “institutional nativism”—a set of policies and practices that work together to systematically detect, subordinate and expel noncitizens. I identify three mechanisms through which the unauthorized accrue additional disadvantage related to their alienage: 1) the local police department’s mandate that officers create contact with residents via traffic enforcement, inevitably puts offers in contact with immigrants, some of whom are unauthorized, 2) state laws prohibit unauthorized residents from obtaining driver’s licenses and identification cards, increasing their risk of arrest by local police, and 3) immigration screenings at the local jail. Local police are largely blind to their participation in deportation and explain their behavior through a color-blind ideology. This color-blind ideology obscures and naturalizes how organizational practices and laws converge to systematically criminalize unauthorized Latino residents.

From Amada Armenta's bio on the Penn Sociology website: 

"My research examines how the policies and practices of local law enforcement agencies in Nashville, Tennessee intersect with federal deportation policy. Relying on interviews and ethnographic observations with members of the police and sheriff’s department, and immigration advocacy groups, my work demonstrates how mundane decisions made by street-level bureaucrats can result in deportation for unauthorized migrants. More broadly, I seek to understand how government bureaucracies respond to the presence of Latino immigrants, and conversely, how Latino immigrants adapt to life in the U.S."