Rhetorical Barriers to Mobilizing for Immigrant Rights: White Innocence and Latina/o Abstraction

Background: Building on a broader sociological discourse around policing approaches towards vulnerable populations, increasing public health and human rights evidence points to policing practices as a key health determinant, particularly among street-based sex workers. Despite the importance of policing as a structural health determinant, few studies have sought to understand the factors that underlie and shape harmful policing practices towards sex workers. This study therefore aimed to explore the drivers for policing attitudes and practices towards street-based cisgender female sex workers. Methods: Drawing on ethnographic methods, 280 hours of observations with police patrol and 10 stakeholder interviews with senior police leadership in Baltimore City, USA were carried out to better understand the drivers for policing strategies towards cisgender female sex workers. Analysis was data-and theory-driven, drawing on the concepts of police culture and complementary criminological and sociological literature that aided exploration of the influence of the ecological and structural environment on policing practices. Results: Ecological factors at the structural (e.g., criminalization), organizational (e.g., violent crime control), community and individual level (e.g., stigmatizing attitudes) emerged as key to shaping individual police practices and attitudes towards cisgender female sex workers in this setting. Findings indicate senior police support for increased alignment with public health and human rights goals. However, the study highlights that interventions need to move beyond individual officer

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Behind Crimmigration

Arriaga

2023

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In recent years, dozens of counties in North Carolina have partnered with federal law enforcement in the criminalization of immigration—what many have dubbed "crimmigration." Southern border enforcement still monopolizes the national immigration debate, but immigration enforcement has become common within the United States as well. While Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) operations are a major part of American immigration enforcement, Felicia Arriaga maintains that ICE relies on an already well-established system—the use of local law enforcement and local governments to identify, incarcerate, and deport undocumented immigrants. Arriaga contends that the long-term partnership between local sheriffs and immigration law enforcement in places like North Carolina has created a form of racialized social control of the Latinx community. Arriaga uses data from five county sheriff’s offices and their governing bodies to trace the creation and subsequent normalization of ICE and local law enforcement partnerships. Arriaga argues that the methods used by these partnerships to control immigration are employed throughout the United States, but they have been particularly visible in North Carolina, where the Latinx population increased by 111 percent between 2000 and 2010. Arriaga's evidence also reveals how Latinx communities are resisting and adapting to these systems.

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Rhetorical Barriers to Mobilizing for Immigrant Rights: White Innocence and Latina/o Abstraction

Cited by 15 publications

References 17 publications

Narratives of worth: analyzing the effects of worthy and anti-immigrant narratives on immigration attitudes

Narratives of worth: analyzing the effects of worthy and anti-immigrant narratives on immigration attitudes

Legal Control of Marginal Groups

Behind Crimmigration

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