Illegality at Work: Deportability and the Productive New Era of Immigration Enforcement

Abstract

Our goal in this paper is to identify how recent escalations in immigration enforcement and changes in migration practices affect the ability of the state to continue to serve two of its key "productive" functions: protecting capital accumulation within industry and ensuring the state's own political legitimacy in the eyes of the public. We draw on our ethnographic research on Latino migrant dairy farm workers in Wisconsin to examine the ways in which a group of migrant workers experiences the process of being enforced as "illegal" bodies. We find that migrant dairy workers' palpable sense of "deportability" articulates with the specific structure of dairy work in ways that make the economically and politically "ideal" migrant: compliant at work and invisible otherwise.

The Socioeconomic Incorporation of Immigrant and Native‐born Day Labourers in Tshwane, South Africa

“…In response to constrained opportunities in the mainstream economy, many unauthorized immigrants turn to informal employment, despite the hardships they may experience as a result of the low wages and job instability that characterize this segment of the economy. There is ample evidence from Europe and the United States to substantiate such claims (see Bernhardt et al., ; Doussard, ; Harrison and Lloyd, ; Theodore et al., ; Wills et al., ; Woolfson et al., ).…”

What’s the story? Creating and sustaining environmental networks

“…The comparative lack of attention to labour within the alternative network itself stands in sharp contrast to critical discussions of agriculture where labour is routinely analysed in terms of economic success, gender equity, immigration, and other issues (Allen 1993, Guthman 2002, Allen et al 2003, Harrison and Lloyd 2012. Thus, although self-exploitation has long been identified as an Achilles heel of the family farm, the network narrative of labour in alternative agriculture in the United States is not providing a new story.…”

‘Horse tripping’: animal welfare laws and the production of ethnic Mexican illegality

“…Contrary to US popular media, which use the word 'illegal' as a naturalized and dehumanized marker of immigrant status, scholars conceptualize illegality as a sociopolitical category, constituted by the law, that marginalizes immigrants who reside within the USA, as well as their co-ethnics, to preserve the capacity for their economic exploitation and political disenfranchisement (De Genova 2002;Ngai 2004;De Genova 2005;Nevins 2010;Harrison and Lloyd 2012). De Genova (2005, 215) argues:…”