Abstract
This article analyzes how Central American immigrants in tenuous legal statuses experience current immigration laws. Based on ethnographic observations and over 200 interviews conducted between 1998 and 2010 with immigrants in Los Angeles and Phoenix and individuals in sending communities, this study reveals how the convergence and implementation of immigration and criminal law constitute forms of violence. Drawing on theories of structural and symbolic violence, the authors use the analytic category "legal violence" to capture the normalized but cumulatively injurious effects of the law. The analysis focuses on three central and interrelated areas of immigrants' lives-work, family, and school-to expose how the criminalization of immigrants at the federal, state, and local levels is not only exclusionary but also generates violent effects for individual immigrants and their families, affecting everyday lives and long-term incorporation processes.
Original language | English (US) |
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Pages (from-to) | 1380-1421 |
Number of pages | 42 |
Journal | American Journal of Sociology |
Volume | 117 |
Issue number | 5 |
DOIs | |
State | Published - Mar 2012 |
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- Sociology and Political Science