Policing the Migrant “Crisis”

How U.S. Immigration Policy Criminalizes and Racializes Black Migrants at the U.S./Caribbean Border

Bibliographic Data

ID8249372
AuthorsJ N Gow (0000-0001-7267-0853, Bowdoin College, corresponding author)
Year2025
Volume11
Issue4
Pages540-555
Publication date2025-10-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueSociology of Race and Ethnicity (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 2332-6492 • E-ISSN: 2332-6506
PublisherSAGE Publications (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.1177/23326492251328907
OpenAlexW4408908300
LanguageEN
Citations received1
References cited73

Borders and bordering practices reveal how migrants become racialized and divided into binaries of Us/Them, native/foreign, citizen/noncitizen, or legal/illegal. In the United States, much of this research centers around the U.S./Mexico border, and to a lesser extent the U.S./Canada border. However, less attention is paid to the watery, “third” border separating the United States from the Caribbean and Latin America. I draw on examples from Afro-descent Haitian, Cuban, Jamaican, and Dominican diasporas to show how bordering practices target and criminalize Black migrants through the rhetoric of “crisis,” “threat,” and racialized “crimmigration.” Together, the U.S./Caribbean border and the policies generated from it externalize the reach of U.S. border practices into the Caribbean. Like the U.S./Mexico border, it is a racialized space where bordering practices mediate, reinforce, and reimagine race, nation, legality, and citizenship

Development economics · Economics · Immigration · Immigration policy · Political science · Homelessness and Social Issues · Law · Migration and Labor Dynamics · Migration, Refugees, and Integration

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