Monica W. Varsanyi

Rescaling the “Alien,” Rescaling Personhood: Neoliberalism, Immigration, and the State

Through an exploration of relevant legislation and court cases, this article discusses the contemporary constitution of neoliberal subjects via the devolution of select immigration powers to state and local governments by the federal government of the United States. Since the latter decades of the nineteenth century, the federal government has had plenary power over immigration, which has enabled it to treat “people as immigrants” (or as “nonpersons” falling outside of many Constitutional protections), simultaneously requiring that states and cities treat “immigrants as people” (or as persons protected by the Constitution). Beginning in the mid-1990s, however, the devolution of welfare policy and immigration policing powers has challenged the scalar constitution of personhood, as state and local governments have newfound powers to discriminate on the basis of alienage, or noncitizen status. In devolving responsibility for certain immigration-related policies to state and local governments, the federal government is participating in the rescaling of membership policy and, by extension, the rescaling of a defining characteristic of the nation-state. This recent rescaling is evidence of the contemporary neoliberalization of membership policy in the United States, and specifically highlights the legal (re)production of scale.

A Multilayered Jurisdictional Patchwork: Immigration Federalism in the United States

This paper focuses on the immigration-related demands currently being placed on local police in the United States, and the emergence of what we call a “multilayered jurisdictional patchwork” (MJP) of immigration enforcement. The evolving relationship between layers of government involved in enforcing immigration laws, sometimes dubbed “immigration federalism,” has so far received more attention from legal scholars than from social scientists. Against this backdrop, we report results from nationwide surveys of city police chiefs and county sheriffs and intensive fieldwork in three jurisdictions. The enforcement landscape we describe is complicated by the varying and over-lapping responsibilities of sheriffs and city police, and by the tendency for sheriffs to maintain closer relationships with federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) authorities. We highlight the contradictions inherent in this patchwork through case studies of Mesa, Arizona; New Haven, Connecticut; and Raleigh, North Carolina. We conclude by reflecting on the implications of the MJP - for immigrants, for their communities, and for the evolving relationship between levels of government in the federal system.

On the frontier of local law enforcement: local police and federal immigration law

Purpose – Some local governments are asking their police departments to enforce federal immigration law more aggressively. However, there is little research or policy guidance available to assist police in balancing local immigration enforcement with the norms of community-oriented policing. Methodology – This paper presents results from a national survey of municipal police chiefs. Findings – The survey responses indicate substantial differences in the way that police departments are approaching unauthorized immigration. Implications – The highly varied nature of policing practice on this issue is a function of the lack of clear policy guidance and models for local enforcement of immigration law.

Local Limits to Migration Control: Practices of Selective Migration Policing in a Restrictive National Policy Context

Governments are increasingly developing policies to apprehend and deport unauthorized migrants. Compared to the United States, the legal and administrative framework in Western European countries generally allows for a stricter interior policing of unauthorized migrants. This article describes and explains the limits to in-country migration policing in the Netherlands. On the basis of extensive urban field research in the country’s two largest cities, as well as national police apprehension data, it is shown that even in a restrictive policy context immigration rules are not categorically enforced; assumed “deviant” unauthorized migrants run much higher apprehension risks than “nondeviant” unauthorized migrants. However, unauthorized migrants run much higher interior apprehension risks than in the United States. It is argued that the selective interior enforcement of immigration rules can be understood by taking into consideration the interests and values of three local agents that structure in-country migration policing: regular police, neighborhood residents, and city governments.

The rise and fall (and rise?) of non-citizen voting: Immigration and the shifting scales of citizenship and suffrage in the United States

Abstract Using non-citizen voting (or ‘alien suffrage’) as a case study, this article traces the long role which immigration has played in reshaping the boundaries around the citizenry and the population of eligible voters in the US. The paper discusses the gradual ‘territorialisation’ of citizenship and suffrage from the late 1700s to the mid 1960s and then addresses the current ‘deterritorialisation’ of these institutions vis-à-vis the growing population of non-citizens. It concludes with a discussion of contemporary attempts to reinstate non-citizen voting at the local scale, as a means of addressing the widening gap between popular and territorial sovereignty.

“Getting out the Vote” in Los Angeles: The Mobilization of Undocumented Migrants in Electoral Politics

This chapter illuminates a paradox in the contemporary political mobilization of new Americans. On the one hand, as in the past, organizations such as labor unions are taking an increasingly active role in the successful mobilization of foreign-born residents in formal :ampaign politics (see, e.g., Wong, 2001). As a result, many immigrants are becoming “active citizens” and making their voices heard in electoral politics. Immigrant participation in electoral politics is not i new phenomenon, per se: political parties and (more infamously) Dolitical machines are well known to have employed various tactics to get immigrants to the ballot box in, for instance, Chicago, New York, ind Boston during the last “great wave” of immigration (Allswang, 1986; Erie, 1988; Sterne, 2001). While some claim that the era of machine politics and union political mobilization is over and that the contemporary “dearth of mobilization in immigrant ethnic communities has been well documented” (DeSipio, 2001: 90), this chapter demonstrates that a number of progressive labor unions are again coming to terms with both the growing immigrant workforce and the need to organize these new workers.