Inés Valdez

Punishment, Race, and the Organization of U.S. Immigration Exclusion

Although the punitive character of the U.S. immigration enforcement regime has been noted, less research has inquired into the productivity of punishment beyond detention and deportation, the particular rationale of punishment, and the way in which punitive enforcement shapes (rather than targets) race. By analyzing antimigrant rhetoric and the practices of immigration enforcement, I argue that punishment is best understood as a violent material reassertion of the narrative of the United States as a nation of laws. My biopolitical approach to immigration innovates by (1) conceptualizing the process through which race becomes a biopolitical divide, (2) noting that the construction of race also shapes the meaning of whiteness, and (3) showing the particular ways in which sovereignty, discipline, and biopower are combined in the U.S. immigration enforcement regime. I illustrate these claims by examining policies and practices that characterize contemporary immigration enforcement and find that punishment fulfills functions of regeneration, discipline, or moralization, among others, and treats different subpopulations of migrants differently. Even inclusionary interventions involve processes of subjectification among the beneficiaries. I conclude by examining the implications of this framework for understanding the current political stalemate.

Missing in Action: Practice, Paralegality, and the Nature of Immigration Enforcement

Abstract U.S. immigration control is typically understood in terms of enforcement practices undertaken by federal officers guided by legislation and court decisions. While legislation and court opinions are important components of the immigration control apparatus, they do not adequately account for immigration control ‘on the ground.’ To explore this problem, we advance the concept of paralegality, the practices and operations that constitute a dynamic system of actions and relationships that are not simply linear applications of legislation or judicial decisions but may in fact extend or counter these texts. We illustrate the importance of paralegality by reconstructing the evolution of the §287(g) and Secure Communities programs, both of which have shape-shifted dramatically since their inception. Our account of immigration control highlights the problem practice poses for law, proposes a theoretical alternative to textual-law-centric research on immigration and law enforcement, and contributes to scholarship on everyday citizenship.

Nondomination or Practices of Freedom? French Muslim Women, Foucault, and The Full Veil Ban

This article proposes a conception of freedom understood as practices. Based on Michel Foucaults work on the ethics of the self, I develop a conception of freedom that exceeds liberation and distinguishes between genuine practices of freedom and practices of the self that are unreflective responses to systems of government. I develop and illustrate this conception through an engagement with the recent French ban on full veils in public spaces and the ethnographic literature on European Muslim revival movements. I reconstruct how Muslim women relate to alternative discourses through specific practices of the self. These practices reveal that French Muslim women actively contest discourses of secularism and liberation that construct them as inherently passive and in need of tutelage. The conception I develop sheds light on some shortcomings of Philip Pettits notion of freedom as nondomination. I argue that the proposed account is useful to, first, criticize the centrality of the opposition between arbitrary and nonarbitrary power in the definition of freedom. Second, I show that the predominant engagement with the external dimension of freedom in Pettit makes it difficult to capture the particular subjective practices that make up freedom and its development in the presence of power and/or attempts at domination.

It's Not about Race: Good Wars, Bad Wars, and the Origins of Kant's Anti-Colonialism

This article offers a new interpretation of Kants cosmopolitanism and his anti-colonialism in Toward Perpetual Peace. Kants changing position has been the subject of extensive debates that have, however, not recognized the central place of colonialism in the political, economic, and military debates in Europe in Kants writings. Based on historical evidence not previously considered alongside Perpetual Peace, I suggest that Kants leading concern at the time of writing is the negative effect of European expansionism and intra-European rivalry over colonial possessions on the possibility of peace in Europe. Because of the lack of affinity between colonial conflict and his philosophy of history, Kant must adjust his concept of antagonism to distinguish between war between particular dyads, in particular spaces, and with particular non-state actors. I examine the implications of this argument for Kants system of Right and conclude that his anti-colonialism co-exists with hierarchical views of race.

Reel Latinas? Race, gender, and asymmetric recognition in contemporary film

This article argues that idealized portrayals of immigrants prevalent in political discourse must be scrutinized for their support of gender and racial nationalism and the effects they have on our understanding of (Latina/o) immigrant inclusion and democracy. Through the examination of three contemporary films with Latina leads – Real Women Have Curves, Spanglish, and Quinceañera – the article argues that these discourses rely on an asymmetric recognition of Latina/os. This form of recognition involves the denial by dominant groups of their inter-dependency with other groups and the imposition on Latina/os of an identity that does not threaten their privileged standing. The films offer views of Latina/o culture as overtly traditional; a “culture” that must either be abandoned or appropriated by anti-feminist (postfeminist) agendas in order to assuage anxieties regarding the transformations of the heteronormative middle-class family. The article concludes by drawing parallels between the positive portrayals of Latinas in these films and prominent arguments in the immigration debate that rely on constructions of deserving immigrants to push for extensions of membership.