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We explore the criminalization of Latina immigrants through the interwoven network of social control created by law, the justice system, and private corporations—the immigration industrial complex. Considerable scholarly research has focused on understanding the overtly coercive practices of deportation and the consequences for families and communities; less attention has been devoted to the social control mechanisms of detention facilities and “Alternative to Detention Programs” (ATD programs) operating in the United States. We know relatively little about the consequences for immigrant populations, especially of the purported “humane” practices in the enforcement apparatus. Based on existing documents produced by governmental offices, including Department of Homeland Security, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Border Patrol, Government Accountability Office, nonprofit organizations, advocacy groups, and private correctional facilities, we conducted semistructured interviews with 11 immigration lawyers who have access to women who are and/or have been detained, are in supervised ATD programs, are/were in deportation proceedings, or attempt(ed) to claim asylum. An examination of immigration confinement, especially the laws and policy decisions behind the exponential increase in these detentions, reveals important gender dynamics in these practices. The subtle and benevolence-signaling discourse evoking “family,” “motherhood,” and the care of children masks the harsh “business as usual” tactics that treat women and their children in ways indistinguishable from those used in the criminal justice system. We contend that this feminized and infantilized language functions to conceal widespread civil and human rights violations, physical and sexual violence, and mistreatment reproduced by the immigration detention system today.

While many scholars assert the importance of the narrative mode in historical inquiry, none have demonstrated how it is used specifically to analyze historical events and social action in processual, action-oriented ways. In this essay, we examine recent research on capitalstate relations and urban development to demonstrate how political sociologists and urban sociologists are using narrative mode to examine the interconnectedness of human agency and social structure and the temporality of historical events in processual ways. We find that this newest research is utilizing narrative to generate new meanings of causality and to redefine the role of theory and explanation. We conclude by considering the implications of these developments for the future of sociology.In the last two decades, considerable debate has taken place over the meaning of causality, the role of theory, and the relative merits of narrative analysis in sociohistorical inquiry (Griffin ). In history, a paradigmatic shift is currently underway as textual deconstruction and the deciphering of meaning, rather than causal explanation, has become the dominant mode of historical inquiry (Appleby, Hunt, and Jacob 1994;Fox and Lears 1993;Koditschek 1993;White 1987). In historical sociology, scholars are increasingly moving away from the grand theorizing and totalizing modes of explanation toward temporality and narrative analysis. This "new" historical sociology is converging on a broad understanding that what demarcates the historical from the nonhistorical in sociological explanation is "the use of narrative mode to examine and exploit the temporality of social action and historical events" (Griffin 1992, p. 405). Yet, while many scholars assert the importance of the narrative mode in historical inquiry, none have systematically demonstrated how it is actually being used to analyze historical events and human agency in processual, action-oriented ways (Abbott 1992a). In this essay we examine two areas of recent research-capital-state relations and urban development and poverty-to demonstrate how political sociologists and urban sociologists are using narrative mode to examine the interconnectedness of human agency and social structure and the temporality of historical events in processual ways. Our objective is to show that the develop-"Direct all correspondence to Kevin Fox Gotham.

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Taking its cue from Black's The Behavior of Law, this article tests a number of hypotheses concerning the relationship between legal and nonlegal social control in the juvenile justice system. Data collected on a cohort of youth, randomly sampled from eight California counties, is analyzed using a multivariate modeling technique. The results indicate that the quantity of law afforded to offenders at three juvenile justice processing points is dependent, in part, on the amount of nonlegal social control they are already subject to.