TY - JOUR
T1 - Latino immigrants' perceptions of crime and police authorities in the United States
T2 - A case study from the Phoenix Metropolitan area
AU - Menjívar, Cecilia
AU - Bejarano, Cynthia L.
N1 - Funding Information:
This article is based on a larger project concerning contemporary Latino migration to Phoenix funded with grants to the first author from the Center for Urban Inquiry and Dean’s Incentive Grants from the College of Public Programs at Arizona State University, and with a summer Graduate Scholars Grant from the Center for Urban Inquiry to Eugene Arene, Cindy Bejarano and Emily Skop. Thanks go to them as well as to Michelle Moran-Taylor for their participation in data collection. Special thanks go to Edwardo Portillos for assistance with data collection, and for valuable suggestions and comments on this piece. We would also like to express our gratitude to Nancy Jurik and Marjorie Zatz for their comments on earlier drafts, and to Mary Fran Draisker for preparing this manuscript. The errors remaining are, of course, the authors’.
PY - 2004/1
Y1 - 2004/1
N2 - Many studies that link immigration and crime focus on assessing rates and explaining incidence. In this article we attempt to elucidate the immigrants' fear of crime and their perceptions of U.S. authorities as these impinge on their relations with the police and on their own insertion in the host society. Based on sixty-one in-depth interviews with immigrants from Cuba, El Salvador, Guatemala, and Mexico and on participant observation conducted in Phoenix, Arizona, we identify three immigrant-specific factors that affect immigrants' perceptions of crime and the police. These are: a bifocal lens, that is, the immigrants' former experiences with crime and their homelands' justice system; contacts with U.S. immigration officials; and the social networks through which they learn what to expect in the United States from U.S. police authorities, as well as when and where to expect criminal activity, and who may be a potential criminal.
AB - Many studies that link immigration and crime focus on assessing rates and explaining incidence. In this article we attempt to elucidate the immigrants' fear of crime and their perceptions of U.S. authorities as these impinge on their relations with the police and on their own insertion in the host society. Based on sixty-one in-depth interviews with immigrants from Cuba, El Salvador, Guatemala, and Mexico and on participant observation conducted in Phoenix, Arizona, we identify three immigrant-specific factors that affect immigrants' perceptions of crime and the police. These are: a bifocal lens, that is, the immigrants' former experiences with crime and their homelands' justice system; contacts with U.S. immigration officials; and the social networks through which they learn what to expect in the United States from U.S. police authorities, as well as when and where to expect criminal activity, and who may be a potential criminal.
KW - Crime
KW - Immigrants
KW - Immigration
KW - Latinos
KW - Law enforcement
KW - Phoenix
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U2 - 10.1080/0141987032000147968
DO - 10.1080/0141987032000147968
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:10744232247
SN - 0141-9870
VL - 27
SP - 120
EP - 148
JO - Ethnic and Racial Studies
JF - Ethnic and Racial Studies
IS - 1
ER -