Discipline and Commoditize: How U-Visas Exploit the Pain of Gender-Based Violence

• Author: Ghazah Abbasi
• Published date: 01 October 2020
• Date: 01 October 2020
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1177/1557085120923037
• Subject Matter: Articles

https://doi.org/10.1177/1557085120923037

Feminist Criminology

2020, Vol. 15(4) 464 –491

© The Author(s) 2020

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DOI: 10.1177/1557085120923037

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Article

Discipline and Commoditize:

How U-Visas Exploit the Pain

of Gender-Based Violence

Ghazah Abbasi1

Abstract

U-Visas are granted to immigrant survivors of gender-based crimes. I use critical

discourse analysis to examine 100 U-visa cases. I present two arguments. First, U-Visa

adjudication establishes a panoptics of pain that disciplines survivors. The panoptics

of pain transforms immigrant suffering into objects of scientific knowledge. Second,

U-Visas establish an economy of pain that commoditizes survivors’ suffering. The

economy of pain establishes transactional exchanges between immigrants and state

agencies while generating economic profits for carceral corporations. I conclude

with microlevel policy reforms to make U-Visas less exploitative of petitioners,

and macrolevel policy reforms to empower working-class immigrants and prevent

gender-based violence.

Keywords

gender-based violence, immigration, U-Visa, criminalization of immigration, crimmigration

Introduction

The United States witnessed spectacular state violence against immigrants under

Donald Trump’s presidential administration. Where previous presidential regimes

surreptitiously inflicted violence against immigrants under the guise of a progres-

sive immigration agenda, Trump’s regime has made a spectacle of institutional

xenophobia, using it to the fan the flames of a conservative voting base. Almost

since the day the President took office, images and sounds of children in cages and

1University of Massachusetts Amherst, USA

Corresponding Author:

Ghazah Abbasi, Department of Sociology, University of Massachusetts Amherst, Thompson Hall, 200

Hicks Way, Amherst, MA 01003, USA.

Email: gabbasi@umass.edu

923037FCXXXX10.1177/1557085120923037Feminist CriminologyAbbasi

research-article2020

Abbasi 465

crying parents have flooded news media. Under the Trump administration, state

agencies have enacted direct and indirect forms of violence against immigrants.

Direct forms of xenophobic state violence include the policy of family separation

at the border, and increased raids, detentions, and deportations. Indirect and

deeply gendered forms of state violence against immigrants include the repeal of

gender-based asylum and the constriction of the U-Visa program – policies that

have effectively caged immigrant women within abusive families and intimate

relationships.

The U-Visa is a 4-year visa granted to survivors of gender-based crimes who

assist in criminalizing their perpetrators. Created in 2000 through the Violence

Against Women Act, U-Visas reconcile divergent state imperatives to protect survi-

vors and punish perpetrators of gender-based violence. A cursory examination

reveals how the visa expands the state’s dominion over the perpetrators of gender-

based violence—Trump’s “bad hombres.” Petitioners are required to assist in crim-

inalization, and thus to indirectly further the state’s racialized and gendered regimes

of mass incarceration and mass deportation. This paper poses a different set of

questions—how do U-Visas expand the state’s dominion over the survivors of gen-

der-based violence—the very people they were designed to benefit? How does the

adjudication of U-Visas regulate immigrant entry into the state? How might adjudi-

cation processes empower immigration agencies while disempowering survivors of

gender-based violence? If petitioners are explicitly required to further the state’s

carceral agenda, what other agendas might U-Visas implicitly rope petitioners into?

This paper answers these questions through a critical discourse analysis of U-Visa

decisions authored by the Board of Immigration Appeals (BIA). My sample is com-

prised of 100 BIA decisions on petitioners’ appeals of U-Visa rejections. I argue that

U-Visas are fundamentally exploitative of the immigrant survivors they were designed

to benefit. I show how adjudication creates new opportunities for state agencies to

enact power over immigrant populations. Adjudication disciplines and commoditizes

immigrant petitioners, advancing the interests of state agencies and carceral corpora-

tions at survivors’ expense.

I structure my analysis around two key concepts: the panoptics of pain and the

economy of pain. The panoptics of pain transmutes individual pain into legally know-

able injury. Immigration agencies discipline survivors of gender-based violence by

knowing their deepest wounds and translating them into commoditizable objects of

knowledge. The economy of pain transmutes corporal pain into corporate profit.

U-Visas transactionalize gender-based violence against immigrants. Survivors sell

their pain to immigration agencies in exchange for legal status. Immigration agencies

discipline survivors into receiving pain by rewarding those who have endured unen-

durable violence with legal status. Carceral corporations exploit survivors’ pain to

incarcerate abusers and increase economic profits. I conclude the paper with micro-

level recommendations to make the U-Visa program less exploitative of petitioners

and macrolevel recommendations to empower working-class immigrant women and

reduce the incidence of gender-based violence.