Immigrants as Symbolic Assailants

• Author: Jize Jiang,Edna Erez
• Published date: 01 March 2018
• Date: 01 March 2018
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1177/1057567717721299
• Subject Matter: Articles

Article

Immigrants as Symbolic

Assailants: Crimmigration

and Its Discontents

Jize Jiang

1

and Edna Erez

1

Abstract

Despite little evidence of an immigration-crime nexus, many American jurisdictions have adopted a

punitive approach to undocumented immigrants and an increasingly restrictive and exclusive system

of immigration control. The extensive deployment of criminal justice measures to address the

immigration “problem” led to the growth of a crimmigration apparatus—a mesh of immigration and

criminal justice systems. Drawing on extant literature and applying the framework of the penal field,

the article examines the social dynamics, processes, and consequences of crimmigration. It is argued

that the portrayal of immigrants as “symbolic assailants” has facilitated the creation and operation of

crimmigration under the guise of crime prevention rather than for addressing terrorism and national

security—the presumed purpose of utilizing crimmigration practices. The current configuration of

crimmigration across the United States is the interactive product of minority threat, partisan pol-

itics, and federalism of the American government system, which have jointly formed a “multilayered

patchwork” of immigration control. The article first outlines the analytical framework; reviews the

social construction of immigrant “criminality”; and describes the punitive and exclusive laws, poli-

cies, and enforcement practices established as responses to this “threat.” The dilemmas, contra-

dictions, and contestations associated with crimmigration, including collateral impacts on

immigrants, their families and communities, and the criminal justice system, are analyzed; and policy

implications are drawn and discussed.

Keywords

crimmigration, criminal justice, immigration policy, immigrant communities, punishment

Influxes of migrants to the United States and other Western countries in recent decades have

triggered public debates over the relationship between immigration and crime, with political rhetoric

and public perceptions connecting them. These perceptions have also influenced U.S. government

affairs, which tend to join criminality and immigration in law and practice.

1

Department of Criminology, Law, and Justice, University of Illinois at Chicago, Chicago, IL, USA

Corresponding Author:

Jize Jiang, Department of Criminology, Law, and Justice, University of Illinois at Chicago, 1007 W. Harrison Street (MC 141),

Chicago, IL 60607, USA.

Email: jjiang25@uic.edu

International CriminalJustice Review

2018, Vol. 28(1) 5-24

ª2017 Georgia State University

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DOI: 10.1177/1057567717721299

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In regard to the law, the merger of criminal and immigration law—two systems of exclusion and

inclusion that create insiders and outsiders and “distinguish between guilty versus innocent, admit-

ted versus excluded, legal versus illegal” (Stumpf, 2006, p. 380)—has led to an increase in

immigration-related offenses. In immigration law, the approach has moved from merely barring

the entry of foreigners with criminal convictions to current practices of defining many immigration

violations as criminal offenses and applying the penalty of deportation. The recent concern with

terrorism has added reasons for regulations and exclusion or removal (Stumpf, 2006), leading to

various restrictions on permits to enter the United States.

The second domain is evident in everyday criminal justice practices: The growing engagement of

criminal justice in immigrant control ranges from enhanced border monitoring and the militarization

of the U.S.-Mexico border, increased policing of immigrants at the state and local level through

workplace audits, a harshening effect of immigrant status on sentencing outcomes (Light, 2014), and

denial of rights and benefits for new immigrants, to detention and deportation (Nevins, 2010).

Notwithstanding prevailing rhetoric that links immigration to crime, research has demonstrated

that immigration has not increased, and in some cases has decreased, crime (Ousey & Kubrin, 2018).

There is a consensus among researchers that “open doors don’t invite criminals” (R. J. Sampson,

2006), immigrants are less likely than natives to commit crime, and communities with large con-

centrations of immigrants are some of the safest places to live (Lee & Martinez, 2009).

Yet, the misconception of “immigrant criminality” has continued to be widely embraced, as

evidenced in recent statements made in the 2016 election campaign,

1

with social energies and public

resources being mobilized to address the perceived threat (Alba, Rumbaut, & Marotz, 2005). The

resultant “governance of immigration through crime” (Dowling & Inda, 2013) or the emergence of a

“crimmigration regime”—the convergence of immigration and criminal justice systems (Stumpf,

2006)—is currently practiced in cities and towns throughout the United States (M. Varsanyi, 2010).

The growing anti-immigration sentiments, fears, and rhetoric and the drawing of boundaries for

the nation have solidified the “reality” of immigrants as “symbolic assailants.”

2

Immigrants are

currently perceived and constructed as threats to the social order, employment options, and political

organization, warranting a strict immigration control regime (Provine & Doty, 2011). The crimmi-

gration regime has had adverse impacts on immigrants and their families and communities as well as

law enforcement and other criminal justice practices. At the same time, resistance to the crimmi-

gration apparatus by immigrants and their supporters has demonstrated that these symbolic bound-

aries are not clear-cut or immutable, but rather fluid and contested, placing unauthorized

immigrants—semilegal, quasi-legal, or illegal citizens (Armenta, 2017)—in a state of “protracted

vulnerability” (De Genova, 2002, p. 429).

The construction of immigrants as symbolic assailants, evidenced in the organization, operation,

and contestation of crimmigration, reflects an interplay of demographic changes related to recent

immigration and fears about their impact on American cultural identity, as expressed in political

debates and legal dynamics (Wong, 2016). Tensions and contradictions in contemporary immigra-

tion governance are represented by the increasing economic liberalization along with growing

punitive and restrictive immigration control (Calavita, 2010; T. M. Golash-Boza, 2015). As a socio-

demographic transformative force, the large flow of recent (minority) immigrants into U.S. society

has triggered a constellation of sensibilities, symbols, and meanings attached to those newcomers,

which are largely shaped by economic conditions and racial/ethnic relations in the United States

(Espenshade & Calhoun, 1993). New political alignments and policy initiatives have developed as

adaptive responses to these contextual shifts. These lines of thinking and actions about recent

immigration have worked their way in and through state and legal institutions, giving rise to new

politics of immigration and policy strategies regarding immigration control. Images and rhetoric of

“public security” and “national identity” have been harnessed and mobilized in a political process

that resulted in laws, policies, and implementation practices. With both coercive force and symbolic

6International Criminal Justice Review 28(1)