(Un)making illegality

Border control, racialized bodies and differential regimes of illegality in Morocco

Dados Bibliográficos

ID3141185
AutoresLorena Gazzotti (0000-0002-3353-6018, Lucy Cavendish College and CRASSH, University of Cambridge, UK, autor correspondente)
Ano2021
Volume69
Fascículo2
Páginas277-295
Data de publicação2021-03-01
Peer ReviewedSim
Open AccessSim
TipoARTICLE
PeriódicoThe Sociological Review (JOURNAL)
Identificadores do periódicoISSN: 0038-0261 • E-ISSN: 1467-954X
EditoraSAGE Publications Inc (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1177/0038026120982273
OpenAlexW3118778530
IdiomaEN
Citações recebidas21
Referências citadas37

What role does race play in the construction of illegality in the face of pervasive border control? Sociologists and anthropologists of migration have apprehended illegality as a constructed category, produced by immigration policies and laws aimed at 'illegalizing' established mobility flows. 'Illegality' operates as an exclusionary category not only because it is constructed by law, but also because it is activated by racialized forms of prejudice which structure societies according to hierarchies of dangerousness, visibility and deservedness. Scholars, however, have tended to examine the entanglement between race and illegality by focusing mostly on the experience of black and brown people, especially those coming from poor countries in the Global South, thus overlooking how whiteness influences and alters the workings of border control. Drawing on qualitative data gathered between 2013 and 2019 in Morocco, this article questions the category of 'illegality' as it is policed at the street level and experienced by different groups of foreigners in Morocco. Building on Sara Ahmed's understanding of whiteness as an 'orientation', in this article the author argues that illegality is a label which is racially altered and expanded by border bureaucrats, who use it to differentially police the presence of migrant bodies pre-emptively visualized as legal or illegal. Whereas black people undergo pervasive containment procedures, white privilege allows white migrants to be oblivious of the border, even when their administrative situation is not compliant with migration law

Criminology · Face (sociological concept) · Immigration · Immigration law · Political science · Prejudice (legal term) · Privilege (computing) · Race (biology) · Racialization · Social science · Sociology · White (mutation) · White privilege · Gender Studies · Law · Migration and Labor Dynamics · Migration, Identity, and Health · Migration, Refugees, and Integration