The economics of state violence: Explaining mass deportation

Abstract

Over the past twenty years, the U.S. government has deported approximately 5 million people, one of the largest forced population movements of modern times. Drawing on ethnographic and quantitative data from Southern California, I describe the devastating economic, social, and emotional impacts of deportation on families, households, and communities. High rates of deportation usually are framed by policymakers as a public good, but the data reported in this study suggest they may have widespread negative repercussions not just for the deported and their loved ones but for the country as a whole, especially in regions with large immigrant populations. In addition, I speculate about why such clearly damaging policies continue to exist despite their economic liabilities and how to understand the policy landscape that maintains them.

The Orange County gardeners of COVID‐19: Making breath in landscapes of racial suffocation

“…These Latinx workers toil in restaurants (Wilson, 2017), hotels (Hsieh et al., 2014), in janitorial services (Alvarez, 2022), and street vending (Rosales, 2020), to name a few occupations. Their experiences today are shaped by a deep regional history of anti‐migrant policies and sentiment (Chavez, 2008), much of which has been leveraged through public health institutions (Molina, 2006) as well as carceral (Hernández, 2017), and deportation regimes (Baker, 2021). Coupled with state‐produced illegality (De Genova, 2005), Latinx workers' lives, despite what their actual legal status may be, have been shaped through a cultural and late capitalist logic that defines the category of the Latinx worker as a vulnerable worker.…”

Toward a Du Boisian paradigm of family science

“…Without marginalized populations sharing their experiences, perspectives, and knowledge with social scientists, we would be unable to maintain research agendas that highlight inequality and the impact of the carceral state and racial capitalism. While IRBs struggle with dilemmas around compensation and to even define how compensation might lead to “coercion” or “undue influence” (Klitzman, 2013), we must recognize the devastating economic, social, and emotional ramifications of the carceral state on families, households, and communities (Baker, 2022; Baker & Marchevsky, 2019). Therefore, the crucial contributions of our research participants should be well compensated, without social scientists needing to go to extremes to make a case for this compensation to IRBs and funders.…”