Linguistic dimensions of the crimmigration regime

Language ideological working conditions in US Immigration Court

Datos Bibliográficos

ID2290969
AutoresRao (0000-0003-4687-9690, American Bar Foundation Chicago Illinois USA)
Año2024
Volumen47
Número2
Páginas191-208
Fecha de publicación2024-11-01
Peer ReviewedSí
Open AccessSí
TipoARTICLE
RevistaPoLAR Political and Legal Anthropology Review (JOURNAL)
Identificadores de la revistaISSN: 1081-6976 • E-ISSN: 1555-2934
EditorialWiley (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1111/plar.12574
OpenAlexW4400369909
IdiomaEN
Citas recibidas5
Referencias citadas34

This essay uses an examination of communication in Los Angeles Immigration Court (2014-2017) to demonstrate how legal professionals' beliefs about language foster and entrench underexplored linguistic dimensions of the US crimmigration regime. Scholars have shown that within courtroom interactions, legal ideas about language hold back the administration of justice in asylum proceedings, and language interpretation itself can perpetuate the administrative violence of these proceedings. I combine ethnographic courtroom observations and critical examination of internal agency policy to show how ideas about language, inherited from legal professional culture and training, aggregate into adverse working conditions, allowing for only a performance of procedure, and amplifying the US crimmigration system. Of particular interest are ideologies of a monoglot standard and national language imaginaries, referentialism and referential transparency, and decontextualization. Abolitionist logics and reform of legal education offer possible strategies for structural intervention

Interpreting and Communication in Healthcare · Migration, Refugees, and Integration · Multilingual Education and Policy