The Racialized Dimensions of Contemporary Immigration and Border Enforcement Policies and Practices

• Published date: 01 May 2022
• Author: Daniel E. Martínez
• Date: 01 May 2022
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/puar.13496

598 Public Administration Review • May | June 2022

Public Administration Review,

Vol. 82, Iss. 3, pp. 598–603. © 2022 by

The American Society for Public Administration.

DOI: 10.1111/puar.13496.

Daniel E. Martínez

University of Arizona

The Racialized Dimensions of Contemporary Immigration

and Border Enforcement Policies and Practices

Abstract: Immigration policies in the United States have not been explicitly race-based since the mid-20th Century.

Nevertheless, the effects of contemporary US immigration enforcement practices are highly racialized. The further

development of a “race conscious” approach in public policy and administration will help expand our understanding

of the racialized dimensions of these policies and practices. Specifically, I call attention to how current approaches to

immigration control disproportionately negatively affect non-White immigrants from the so-called “Global South,”

contribute to racialization processes, and perpetuate racial inequality in the United States. Examples include the ways

that undocumented immigration status is leading to the emergence of a new “underclass” in the United States, the

separation and dissolution of Latino families through mass deportation, and the systematic criminalization of non-

White undocumented immigrants from Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador.

Recently, the editors for the Public Administration

Review and other public administration

scholars have called for developing a more

race-conscious understanding within the discipline

(Moynihan, Herd, and Gerinza2022; Pandey,

Bearfield, and Hall2022; Roberts2020). In this

Viewpoint essay, I echo these calls and argue that both

public policy and administration1 stand to benefit from

the further development of a “race conscious” approach

to specifically understanding how immigration

policy—though supposedly “race neutral”—is

racialized in practice. An expanded “race conscious”

approach will (1) enhance our understanding of the

racialized dimensions of contemporary immigration

and border enforcement policies (Asad and Clair2018;

García2017; Menjívar2021; Patler2014), and

(2) shed additional insights on the (re)production

of ethno-racial inequality in the United States

(Massey2014). I contribute to this development by

drawing on my experience conducting research along

the US-Mexico border over the past two decades

and bring to bear historical and sociological insights

that further support a much-needed “race conscious”

perspective. I also argue that the United States

constitutes a racialized project with current approaches

to immigration control, which disproportionately

restrict the human mobility of racialized “others” from

the so-called “Global South” and former colonies,

representing central aspects of this project and the

continuation of race-making in US society.

As social scientists, it is imperative that we

challenge the “race neutral” frame that underpins

US immigration policies and enforcement

practices, recognize the racialized dimensions of

these draconian practices, and acknowledge how

they perpetuate racial stratification in the United

States. Such practices include but are not limited

to increased border enforcement efforts initiated in

the early 1990s, the mass deportation of immigrants

from the United States beginning in the mid-1990s

(Golash-Boza2015; Martínez, Slack, and Martínez-

Schuldt2018b), “zero-tolerance” policies aimed

at criminalizing undocumented border crossers

(Martínez, Slack, and Martínez-Schuldt2018a), and

expanded immigration enforcement in the interior

United States (Abrego et al.2017). A common

feature of these immigration enforcement practices

is that they disproportionately negatively affect

non-White immigrants, the vast majority of which

are from Latin America, and to a lesser extent, Asia.

Increased border enforcement, in particular, has

contributed to the creation of a system of “global

apartheid” (Nevins and Aizeki2008; Spener2009),

and has resulted in the deaths of more than 3,300

mestizo and indigenous undocumented border

crossers in southern Arizona alone since the early

1990s (Martínez et al.2021).

Nearly three decades ago, Nagle(1994) detailed how

immigration policies shape and reshape a country’s

ethnic landscape. After all, today’s immigrant groups

become tomorrow’s ethno-racial groups (Hein1994;

Nagle1994, 157). When immigrants arrive to the

United States, they are ascribed to pre-existing racial

categories, undergo a process of racialization, and

Daniel E. Martínez is an associate

professor in the School of Sociology

and a co-director of the Binational

Migration Institute at the University

of Arizona. His research and teaching

interests include the sociology of race

and ethnicity, undocumented immigration

and deportation, migrant deaths, the

criminalization of immigration, and the

association between immigration and

public safety.

Email: mada0102@email.arizona.edu

Viewpoint Article