The criminalization of immigration has garnered a great deal of attention in the United States and abroad. Most research, however, examines the political and legal shifts that produced the contemporary system, as well as the implications of these shifts for immigrant communities. The cultural changes that have occurred for frontline immigration agents as an occupational group have not received the scrutiny they deserve. I argue that the control culture of immigration enforcers is a critical mechanism that stifles the viability of humanitarian-minded legal reforms in the U.S. immigration system. I call for a cultural sociology of immigration control work, with an emphasis on the perceptions, skills, and normative valuations of frontline immigration enforcers, and identify three specific areas for future research: (1) studying immigration enforcers as social control agents, (2) expanding analyses of immigration implementation beyond discretionary decision-making, and (3) disrupting the tendency to take the nation-state as the primary unit of analysis in migration studies. By pursuing this agenda on immigration agents’ work lives, we will better understand the rationalities that underlie their behaviors and shape immigration law in action.
AbregoL.ColemanM.MartínezD. E.MenjívarC.SlackJ. (2017). Making immigrants into criminals: Legal processes of criminalization in the post-IIRIRA era. Journal on Migration and Human Security, 5, 694-715.
2.
AndreasP. (2009). Border games: Policing the U.S.-Mexico divide. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.
3.
ArmentaA. (2012). From Sheriff’s deputies to immigration officers: Screening immigrant status in a Tennessee Jail. Law and Policy, 34, 191-210.
4.
ArmentaA. (2016). Between public service and social control: Policing dilemmas in the era of immigration enforcement. Social Problems, 63, 111-126.
5.
ArmentaA. (2017). Protect, serve, and deport: The rise of immigration policing as immigration enforcement. Berkeley: University of California Press.
6.
ArmentaA.AlvarezI. (2017). Policing immigrants or policing immigration? Understanding local law enforcement participation in immigration control. Sociology Compass, 11, e12453.
7.
BigoD. (2002). Security and immigration: Toward a critique of the governmentality of unease. Alternatives, 27(Suppl.), 63-92.
8.
BosworthM.ParmarA.VasquezY. (2018). Race, criminal justice, and migration control: Enforcing the boundaries of belonging. Oxford, England: Oxford University Press.
9.
BrashearsM. E.GenkinM.SuhC. S. (2017). In the organization’s shadow: How individual behavior is shaped by organizational leakage. American Journal of Sociology, 123, 787-849.
10.
CalavitaK. (1992). Inside the state: The Bracero Program, immigration, and the I.N.S. New York, NY: Routledge.
11.
ChaconJ. (2007). Unsecured borders: Immigration restrictions, crime control and national security. Connecticut Law Review, 39, 1829-1891.
12.
ColemanM. (2012). The “local” migration state: The site-specific devolution of immigration enforcement in the U.S. South. Law & Policy, 34, 159-190.
13.
CorreaJ. G.ThomasJ. M. (2015). The rebirth of the US-Mexico Border: Latina/o enforcement agents and the changing politics of racial power. Sociology of Race and Ethnicity, 1, 239-254.
14.
Côté-BoucherK.InfantinoF.SalterM. B. (2014). Border security as practice: An agenda for research. Security Dialogue, 45, 195-208.
15.
DauvergneC.EllermannA.GravelleM. (2012). Studying migration governance from the bottom-up. In AndersonB.GibneyM.PaolettiE. (Eds.), The social, political, and historical contours of deportation (pp. 59-77). New York, NY: Springer.
16.
DekkersT. J. M.Van der WoudeM. A. H.Van der LeunJ. P. (2016). Exercising discretion in border areas: On the changing social surround and decision field of internal border control in the Netherlands. International Journal of Migration and Border Studies, 2, 382-402.
17.
DiMaggioP. (1997). Culture and cognition. American Review of Sociology, 23, 263-287.
18.
DowlingJ.IndaJ. (2013). Governing immigration through crime: A reader. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.
19.
DunnT. (1996). The militarization of the U.S.-Mexico Border, 1978-1992: Low-intensity conflict doctrine comes home. Austin, TX: Center for Mexican American Studies.
20.
EllermannA. (2006). Street-level democracy: How immigration bureaucrats manage public opposition. West European Politics, 29, 293-309.
21.
EllermannA. (2009). States against migrants: Deportation in Germany and the United States. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press.
22.
FassinD. (2005). Compassion and Repression: The Moral Economy of Immigration Policies in France. Cultural Anthropology, 20(3), 362-387.
23.
Federal Law Enforcement Training Centers. (2018a). Immigration & customs enforcement, basic immigration enforcement training program. Glynco, GA: Author.
24.
Federal Law Enforcement Training Centers. (2018b). United States Border Patrol integrated. Glynco, GA: Author.
25.
FineG. A.HallettT. (2014). Group cultures and the everyday life of organizations: Interaction orders and meso-analysis. Organization Studies, 35, 1773-1792.
26.
FitzGeraldD. S.Cook-MartínD. (2014). Culling the masses: The Democratic origins of racist immigration policy in the Americas. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
27.
GilboyJ. A. (1991). Deciding who gets in: Decisionmaking by immigration inspectors. Law and Society Review, 25, 571-600.
28.
GilboyJ. A. (1992). Penetrability of administrative systems: Political “casework” and immigration inspections. Law and Society Review, 26, 273-314.
29.
Golash-BozaT. (2009). The immigration industrial complex: Why we enforce immigration policies destined to fail. Sociology Compass, 3, 295-309.
30.
GuiraudonV.LahavG. (2000). A reappraisal of the state sovereignty debate: The case of migration control. Comparative Political Studies, 33, 163-195.
31.
HerbertS. (1996). Morality in law enforcement: Chasing “bad guys” with the Los Angeles Police Department. Law and Society Review, 30, 799-818.
HeymanJ. (2004). Ports of entry as nodes in the world system. Identities: Global Studies in Culture and Power, 11, 303-327.
34.
HeymanJ. M. (1995). Putting power in the anthropology of bureaucracy: The Immigration and Naturalization Service at the Mexico–United States border. Current Anthropology, 36, 261-287.
35.
HeymanJ. M. (2000). Respect for outsiders? Respect for the law? The moral evaluation of high scale issues by U.S. immigration officers. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, 6, 635-652.
36.
HeymanJ. M. (2001). Class and classification at the U.S.-Mexico border. Human Organization, 60, 128-140.
37.
HeymanJ. M. (2002). U.S. immigration officers of Mexican Ancestry as Mexican Americans, citizens, and immigration police. Current Anthropology, 43, 479-507.
38.
HeymanJ. M. (2009). Trust, privilege, and discretion in the governance of the US borderlands with Mexico. Canadian Journal of Law and Society, 24, 367-390.
39.
HiemstraN. (2014). Performing homeland security within the U.S. immigrant detention system. Environment and Planning: Society and Space, 32, 571-588.
40.
JohnsonC.DowdT. J.RidgewayC. L. (2006). Legitimacy as a social process. Annual Review of Sociology, 32, 53-78.
41.
JonesR. (2014). Border wars: Narratives and images of the US-Mexican border on TV. ACME: An International E-Journal for Critical Geographies, 13, 530-550.
42.
KoulishR. (2007). Blackwater and the privatization of immigration control. Thomas Law Review, 20, 462-488.
43.
LamontM.SwidlerA. (2014). Methodological pluralism and the possibilities and limits of interviewing. Qualitative Sociology, 37, 153-171.
44.
LauE. (2006). Paper families: Identity, immigration administration. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
45.
LeerkesA.VarsanyiM. W.EngbersenG. (2012). Local limits to migration control: Practices of selective migration policing in a restrictive national policy context. Police Quarterly, 15, 446-475.
46.
LewisP. G.ProvineD. M.VarsanyiM. W.DeckerS. H. (2012). Why do (some) city police departments enforce federal immigration law? Political, demographic, and organizational influences on local choices. Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory, 23, 1-25.
47.
LewisP. G.RamakrishnanS. K. (2007). Police practices in immigrant-destination cities political control or bureaucratic professionalism?Urban Affairs Review, 42, 874-900.
48.
LipskyM. (2010). Street-level bureaucracy: Dilemmas of the individual in public services (30th anniv. ed.). New York, NY: Russell Sage Foundation.
LoftusB. (2015). Border regimes and the sociology of policing. Policing & Society, 25, 115-125.
51.
LongazelJ. G.van der WoudeM. (2014). The negotiated expansions of immigration control. Law & Social Inquiry, 39, 555-559.
52.
Lytle-HernandezK. (2010). Migra! A history of the U.S. Border Patrol. Berkeley: University of California Press.
53.
MagañaL. (2003). Straddling the border: Immigration policy and the I.N.S. Austin: University of Texas Press.
54.
MartínezD. E.CantorG.EwingW. (2014). No Action Taken: Lack of CBP Accountability in Responding to Complaints of Abuse. Washington DC.
55.
McLeodA. M. (2012). The US criminal-immigration convergence and its possible undoing. American Criminal Law Review, 49, 105.
56.
MeissnerD.KerwinD. M.ChishtiM.BergeronC. (2013). Immigration enforcement in the United States: The rise of a formidable machinery. Washington, DC: Migration Policy Institute.
57.
MenjívarC. (2014a). Immigration law beyond borders: Externalizing and internalizing border controls in an era of securitization. Annual Review of Law and Social Science, 10, 353-369.
58.
MenjívarC. (2014b). The “Poli-Migra” multilayered legislation, enforcement practices, and can we learn about and from today’s approaches. American Behavioral Scientist, 58, 1805-1819.
59.
MenjivarC.KanstroomD. (Eds.). (2013). Constructing immigrant “illegality”: Critiques, experiences, and responses. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press.
60.
MeyersD. W.PapademetriouD. G.AleinikoffT. A. (1998). Reorganizing the U.S. immigration function: Toward a new framework for accountability. Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press.
61.
MotomuraH. (2010). The discretion that matters: Federal immigration enforcement, state and local arrests, and the civil-criminal line. UCLA Law Review, 58, 1819.
62.
NevinsJ. (2010). Operation Gatekeeper and beyond: The war on “illegals” and the remaking of the U.S.–Mexico Boundary. New York, NY: Routledge.
63.
OberfieldZ. (2011). Socialization and self-selection: How police officers develop their views about using force. Administration & Society, 46, 702-730.
64.
OberfieldZ. (2014). Becoming bureaucrats: Socialization at the front lines of government service. Pennsylvania: University of Pennsylvania Press.
65.
OuchiW. G.WilkinsA. L. (1985). Organizational culture. Annual Review of Sociology, 11, 457-483.
66.
Pallister-WilkinsP. (2015). The humanitarian politics of European Border policing: Frontex and border police in Evros. International Political Sociology, 9, 53-69.
67.
PattersonO. (2014). Making sense of culture. Annual Review of Sociology, 40, 1-30.
68.
PickeringS.HamJ. (2014). The Routledge handbook on crime and international migration. New York, NY: Routledge.
69.
PrietoG. (2015). “Traitors” to race, “traitors” to nation: Latina/o immigration enforcement agents, identification and the racial state. Latino Studies, 13, 501-522.
70.
ProvineD. M.VarsanyiM. W.LewisP. G.DeckerS. H. (2016). Policing immigrants: Local law enforcement on the front lines. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
71.
RabinN. (2013). Victims or criminals? Discretion, sorting, and bureaucratic culture in the US immigration system. Southern California Review of Law and Social Justice, 23, 195.
72.
RodriguezN.ParedesC. (2014). Coercive immigration enforcement and bureacratic ideology. In MenjívarC.KanstroomD. (Eds.), Constructing immigration “illegality”: Critiques, experiences, and responses (pp. 63-83). New York, NY: Cambridge University Press.
73.
SewellW. H. (1992). A theory of structure: Duality, agency, and transformation. American Journal of Sociology, 98, 1-29.
74.
StuartF.ArmentaA.OsborneM. (2015). Legal control of marginal groups. Annual Review of Law and Social Science, 11, 235-254.
75.
StumpfJ. P. (2006). The crimmigration crisis: Immigrants, crime, and sovereign power. American University Law Review, 56, 367-419.
76.
SuchmanM. C. (1995). Managing legitimacy: Strategic and institutional approaches. Academy of Management Review, 20, 571-610.
77.
SwidlerA. (1986). Culture in action: Symbols and strategies. American Sociological Review, 51, 273-286.
78.
TylerT. R.CallahanP. E.FrostJ. (2007). Armed, and dangerous (?): Motivating rule adherence among agents of social control. Law & Society Review, 41, 457-492. doi:10.1111/j.1540-5893.2007.00304.x
79.
UgelvikT. (2016). Techniques of legitimation: The narrative construction of legitimacy among immigration detention officers. Crime Media Culture, 12, 215-232.
80.
U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. (2016). USCIS Academy Training Center opening at FLETC–Charleston Campus. Washington, DC: Author.
81.
VaiseyS. (2009). Motivation and justification: A dual-process model of culture in action. American Journal of Sociology, 114, 1675-1715.
82.
ValdezI.ColemanM.AkbarA. (2017). Missing in action: Practice, paralegality, and the nature of immigration enforcement. Citizenship Studies, 21, 547-569.
83.
VarsanyiM. (2010). Taking local control: Immigration policy activism in U.S. cities and states. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.
84.
VegaI. I. (2018). Empathy, morality, and criminality: The legitimation narratives of U.S. Border Patrol agents. Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, 44, 2544-2561.
85.
WeissingerG. (1996). Law enforcement and the INS: A participant observation study of control agents. New York, NY: University Press of America.
86.
WellsM. J. (2004). Grassroots reconfiguration of U.S. Immigration Policy. International Migration Review, 38, 1308-1347.
87.
WimmerA.SchillerN. G. (2002). Methodological nationalism and beyond: Nation-state building, migration, and the social sciences. Global Networks, 2, 301-334.
88.
WongT. K. (2012). 287(g) and the politics of interior immigration control in the United States: Explaining local cooperation with federal immigration authorities. Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, 38, 737-756.
