Abstract
Detaining the immigrant other is an edited book comprised of chapters based on a variety of countries that address the complexity of immigration policies, incarceration, dehumanization, and identity. In this way, Detaining the immigrant other, chapter by chapter, provides a global lens on immigration that is most often understood from the perspective of a single receiving nation and the associated country or limited geographic area (i.e., the northern Central American triangle) from which people emigrate. The contribution of each chapter assembles a puzzle of immigration policies and strategies that are remarkably similar in the process of dehumanizing and criminalizing of the immigrant other. Likewise, the factors that compel people to emigrate such as trauma experiences related to physical and sexual assaults related to identity bias (i.e., sexual and gender orientation and ethnicity) are similar across the immigrant experience. The authors are clear that even when emigration is related to economic need, this need is related to a global market place fraught with power dynamics and global politics. Ultimately, the reader is exposed to the complexities of global politics, identities, power, and resistance to power.
The contributors, who represent a variety of disciplines and theoretical perspectives, provide evidence that supports a critical feminist theoretical perspective about the way power is manipulated by the ruling elite to sustain their power. Authors provide example after example of laws, policies, and strategies that erode human rights protections for immigrant people. These strategies may include controlling the national narrative that casts immigrants as undeserving criminals, financially coopting poor countries to become stopgaps for the movement of people through their national boundaries prior to accessing the wealthier nation, and the use of the for-profit prison industry to provide the tools of incarceration. Each strategy overtly or covertly absolves countries from protecting the humanity of immigrant men, women, and children.
This book would be an excellent addition to social work programs as it provides students the opportunity to examine the replication and unique cultural applications of policies that, in the end, hope to detour immigration by making it as painful or distasteful as possible, given the cultural norms of the particular country where immigrants hope to land. As a text used in its entirety, it compliments policy examples by exposing the realities of selected country’s implementation strategy by including chapters that use qualitative research to understand the actual consequences of the policies on immigrant people.
It would make an excellent addition to policy courses in that it broadens our policy perspective to include an international context that is so often missing from policy courses. In addition, the international and interdisciplinary perspective that is captured expands our language about immigration, investigates the intent of immigration incarceration, and reveals the humanity of the people affected by global politics.
Perhaps the strongest aspect of this books is that, after educating the reader about the international context of immigration, we are left with smart questions about the role of policy, the exporting of political perspectives (i.e., neoliberalism), and the impact on a citizenry that passively supports the stripping away of rights, identities, and dignities through detainment and incarceration.