Not Really Single: The Deportation to Welfare Pathway for U.S. Citizen Mothers in Mixed-Status Marriage

Abstract

Working-class, Latin American men are increasingly removed from their families and exploited by the global market-driven for-profit detention system and then deported from the United States. Using gendered and racialized deportation regimes and neoliberal paternalism this research qualitatively analyzes the financial and emotional consequences of deportation for 17 U.S. citizen mothers who are part of a mixed-status marriage (primarily white non-Latina citizens, married to undocumented Latin American men). The state uses strict deportation policies as a mechanism to “protect” citizens from so-called dangerous criminals, most who have not committed a crime. This supposed safeguard suggests that citizens need to be protected from their own husbands and fathers. Citizens are suddenly cast into the role of single parent and sole provider and often rely on public assistance to replace their husband’s income, in what I call the deportation to welfare pathway.