They Will Destroy Themselves Wanting Purely American

Labor and Carceral Immigration Enforcement in the U.S. Pacific Northwest

Bibliographic Data

ID7635001
AuthorsLeah Montange (0000-0002-1335-4786, University of Toronto, corresponding author)
Year2023
Volume113
Issue2
Pages409-424
Publication date2023-02-07
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueAnnals of the American Association of Geographers (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 2469-4452 • E-ISSN: 2469-4460
PublisherInforma UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/24694452.2022.2104689
OpenAlexW4296657806
LanguageEN
Citations received2
References cited47

This article examines the upheaval associated with the extension of carceral immigration enforcement into a particular rural county in Washington State. Migrant workers in shellfish, cranberry, and tourism industries began to leave the county, either through the forced mobility of deportation or quasi-voluntarily, to rejoin deported family or to avoid deportation. This process simultaneously constrained the agency of undocumented workers and presented employers with a destabilized race and labor regime that they represented as a labor shortage. In this situation, the local race and labor regime was destabilized, to the detriment of local capitals. This article extends the understanding of the regulation of labor via carceral immigration enforcement, arguing for an understanding of the place-specific and conjunctural nature of the articulation of immigration control and labor regimes. Such an approach reveals how immigration enforcement’s many functions, including the sovereignty-producing and political capital-producing functions, can work in contradiction with the labor regulating, social control functions

Deportation · Enforcement · Geography · Immigration · Immigration law · Immigration policy · Political economy · Political science · Politics · Sociology · Sovereignty · Employment and Welfare Studies · Homelessness and Social Issues · Law · Migration, Refugees, and Integration

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