Hollow law and utilitarian law: The devaluing of deportation hearings in New York City and Paris

Abstract

How is law made worthless to the marginalized? Drawing on ethnographic observations in Paris and New York City, I establish a typology of devaluation practices in deportation hearings. I analyze how informal court practices devalue court actors, the hearing, and the law itself. Despite different levels of formal protections for migrants, deportation adjudication is pared down and devalued in both cities. This devaluation, however, followed distinct logics. New York hearings were characterized by a utilitarian law logic, where process and ritualistic elements deemed inessential were shed, leaving a stripped‐down core focused on case processing. The minimal protections available to migrants were weakened further. By contrast, hollow law emerged in Parisian hearings, where everyday court practices eroded the more generous protections granted to migrants through formal law. While analyses of immigration adjudication have focused on decision‐making, determinants of legal outcomes, and the interpretation of formal criteria, I instead conceptualize the courtroom as a space where value is actively unmade through informal practices, drawing on insights from the sociology of valuation and evaluation.

Frustration and fidelity: how public interest lawyers navigate procedure in the direct representation of asylum seekers

“…Here, the commitment to procedural fairness routinely proves "hollow or superficial" (Family 2015). Practices within deportation hearings perpetuate the devaluation of legal process, court actors, and the law itself (Dao 2023). The procedural rules of immigration courts are notoriously inconsistent, ephemeral, and frequently unwritten (Germain 2007).…”