Weekly Memos

Memo #1

In the article Creating Crimmigration, Hernández provides a detailed analysis of the federal governments intertwinement of criminal law and immigration law. Specifically, he attempts to discern why this entanglement transpired when it did (2013:1459). While this article addresses several crucial features of crimmigration, I found it to be lacking in it’s attempt to use historical events in support of the incidents leading up to (and making up) the core foundation outlined. In addition, Hernández fails to utilize key historical proceedings in connecting the influx of immigration – which saw its peak in the late 2000s – to the rise of crimmigration. In discussion the criminalization of migration in the 1980s and 1990s, Hernández supplements the argument that “with time, immigration offenses began to fill a larger portion of the federal criminal docket” (2013:1472) with statistics surrounding the amount of charges and prosecutions that occurred in the 2000s. He notes that case filings for illegal entry or illegal reentry “continued to increase, topping off at 84,301 in 2009” (2013:1473). In trying to conduct a quick Google search to find the exact year that immigration peaked (which most sites agreed was right around the housing crisis, after which it began to decline), I came across an interesting article published by Pew Research Center, that included this chart:

This graphic is particularly interesting – and relevant – to this week’s readings because not only does it classify the deported immigrants by “criminals” and “non criminals,” it also produces evidence that shows that more “non criminals” were deported than “criminals.” This would appear to lend support to Escobar’s argument.

Either way, Hernández fails to adequately account for the rise of immigration that was experienced by the United States from the 1980s to the 2000s, whatever the cause. This is an important factor to take into consideration when trying to use statistics portraying increased rates of charges and prosecution. While it is true that the law shifted often as to who was granted permission to live in the United States, causing for increased numbers of those charged, it also dealt with an increased amount of immigrants. This was not emphasized enough by Hernández. Also, even though he touches on the internal issues being faced by each area that immigrants were leaving to come to the United States, Hernández could have made a stronger connection to the mass genocide that occurred centuries prior by Europeans to ensure the correlation.

I admit this is an extremely critical lens in which I am viewing this reading – this is due to the fact that Hernández otherwise provides a solid foundational approach to this topic. By addressing almost every other facet of the era – political discourse, baby boomer generation creating crime, criminalization – and even introduces a new concept I was unfamiliar with in noting the shift of power from judges to prosecutors. He cohesively makes the case of criminalization being wedged between undesirability and race which resulted in crimmigration law enforcement.

Each reading touches on the notion of morality that is found at the root of most social discourse, but Escobar solidifies this case in challenging notions of American exceptionalism and the ideal citizen. Particularly, she notes that immigrants that strive to be considered deserving members of society thus engage in “conformity to racialized, gendered, sexualized, and class-based expectations that uphold existing hierarchical relationships of power” (2016:77). In classifying themselves as hard workers who pay taxes, own homes and cars, and have bright children they assert that they are innocent, deserving immigrants. Ultimately, this problematizes the criminalization that has already taken place in American culture which labels those who are “not white” as undesirable from the beginning. The graphic above would provide backup for that argument, as well. Escobar also adequately draws on notions of biopolitcs and necropolitcs and how these two concepts are exemplified in the experiences of women of color. Finally, by addressing the separation of productive and reproductive labor, gendered lines are drawn along with racial ones.

Memo #2

I was particularly intrigued by the contributions made by Joseph Margulies in our readings for this week. I thought that we were getting to the root of this issue last week by dealing with ‘national security,’ but Margulies filled in a gap that I was not even aware existed by analyzing the rhetoric surrounding the American Creed and national identity. This is an extremely crucial contribution, as it can be applied to both times of peace and war in the United States, and to almost any period in history. His argument that “national identity is forever a work in progress” (8) might seem simple enough on the surface; however, once applied to different eras in the history of the United States, this notion becomes foundational.

By utilizing the lens of national identity and the American Creed, Margulies is able to show how the South was able to act ‘constitutionally’ throughout most of the Jim Crow era. This was actually quite frustrating, as I felt they should not be able to use these arguments in their favor – i.e. “civic virtue, equal rights, and limited government” (48). I am conflicted by the fact that after I read the line “indeed, responsible scholars continue to argue that anti discrimination legislation is unconstitutional” (55), I struggled greatly with whether or not anti discrimination legislation was constitutional. On the one hand, it ensured life, liberty, and property, but through what means? I bet John Stuart Mill would have had a field day with that type of legislation.

The most thought-provoking piece of this reading, however, was the charts included in Chapter 7. One of my strong suits is to analyzing representations of data in such a way, and so I halted my reading to interpret the information being presented to me. I was quite proud when I came to the same conclusions that Margulies did; I was equally struck by the sheer number of people that had moved from either the ‘favorable’ or ‘unfavorable’ opinion of Islam to the ‘don’t know’ category (141). I agreed with Margulies that it was fascinating that it had become culturally inappropriate to have an unfavorable opinion of Islam – especially considering the onslaught of anti-Islam rhetoric that prevailed for the following decade.

Interestingly enough, I had recently starting watching (another) new late-night talk show on Netflix. I had finished this reading on Sunday evening, and when I was finished, I decided to watch the latest episode of this talk show. It is called “Patriot Act” and features the comedian Hasan Minaj as its star. The title of this week’s episode was ‘Immigration Enforcement’ (I am not joking!) and it honestly talked about not only what we read about this week, but pretty much what we have been learning about for the past 4 weeks. I was stunned. In 24 minutes, this guy was able to condense all of this information and disperse it to the general public. I was actually jealous! Granted, he did not go into detail as much as I would have liked; what he did do was provide a perfect example of the discourse employed by the religious right that Margulies talks about in this week’s readings. However, he is able to take it a step farther. The main contributions he uses are from DJT’s White House Senior Policy Advisor Stephen Miller.

Hasan Minaj actually goes back in time to look at Stephen Miller’s past, which helps explain why he has supported family separation, DACA negotiations, and ending birthright citizenship.  While in college at Duke, Stephen Miller had a website called “TerrorismAwareness.org” and was featured on Fox&Friends promoting this website and encouraging other college students to go to it and start a chapter at their school. I was able to find the website through archive.org, and here is a screenshot of something written by Stephen Miller on the website, which I think summarizes all of this quite nicely:

Memo #3

The key terms and concepts found in Mark Neocleous’s the Fabrication of Social Order generally lend us to rethink the idea of power in policing. Both policing and power are included in the key terms and concepts, as well as the state, class, labor, crime, poverty, and morality. Neocleous suggests that “policing took the form of a range of institutions concerned with far more than crime” (x), and consequently, “the constitutive power of the state can be understood as the policing of civil society by the state” (xiii). After the collapse of feudalism, the rise of two separate classes (the proletariat and the bourgeoisie) led to social problems. This led to the notions the “police project is intimately connected to the fabrication of an increasingly bourgeoisie order, achieved through the exercise of state power” (5). After determining which classes were in need of discipline and punishment, it became clear the role of policing was to help control labor and to “help fashion a labour force outside the institution by making the able-bodied beggar and vagrant offer their labour power for sale on the market” (19). By distinguishing the poor as criminal through poor laws, which were “explicitly designed to enforce wage-labour on the working population by disallowing out-relief to all but the truly destitute” (69). This allowed the state to label the poor as vagrants, and “since vagrants were potential criminals, relieving the casual poor was a key policing mechanism” (68). Laborers turned to taking what they believed to be their customary rights (in non-monetary form) from their employers. Because of this, “employers therefore began a more concerted attempt to enforce the moral sanction against such perks and to ensure that such activities were properly criminalized” (71). The inherent character of the laboring class was also associated with poor sanitation, “the logic was that the task of cleaning dirt and filth from the street was the task of cleaning moral filth and social dirt from those same streets; the ideal city is not only physically clean, but socially clean too” (86).

Neocleous argues that “the core of the police project remains the question of poverty and thus the condition of the class of poverty, and since state institutions for the administration of poverty are generally understood by the term ‘social policy’ and administered through the institutions of the welfare state, the expanded concept of police shall be thought of as social police and presented as the project of social security” (xi). Essentially, he is arguing that the state utilizes multiple forms of policing in an effort to maintain their sense of order. This includes realms of policy, administration, law, discipline, property, and security. By enacting policies and laws to target specific classes of people and subjecting them to wage-labor and consequences of “social” order, the state polices its citizens to benefit the wealthier, property-owning class.

There is an overwhelming theme of order in Neocleous’s writing about policing, as well as the heavy influence of the state in determining that order. He notes that “the problem of police was conceptualized as the problem of the state: the condition of the order which was to be maintained by police was the order of the state” (8). He goes on to argue that “not only are both police and social policy ranged against the same group – the nascent working class – but that they both emerged to shape this very group in the first place as part of the coordinated attempt by the state to fashion the market and thus consolidate the fabrication of a truly bourgeoisie order” (65). This means that the “net effect of the first preventive police system was thus not just a defence of property, but the creation of social order founded on private property via the consolidation of the money wage and the commodification of labour” (74). Neocleous clarifies that “’order’ should be understood not just as the absence of riots or generalized peace and quiet on the streets, but as the acceptance of the capital-labour relation, the domination of capital over the working class” (78). Through policing measures (in various forms), the state seeks to maintain a sense of social order. This order directly benefits those in the bourgeoisie class, as they stood on the right side of the law, property ownership, and owning the means of production.

This text was perfectly situated next to the talk we heard by Alex Lubin in regards to the United States. The prevailing theme between both of them was that of state violence. In Neocleous, this was shown through various ways but perhaps the most notable point made by him was on the ‘war on crime’ perpetuated by earlier forms of the state. He notes that “this is a war which the state cannot win, for to win it would mean abolishing the condition of private property that gives rise to it, and thus abolishing itself as a state” (82). It seemed to be eerily connected to the arguments made by Lubin regarding the ‘war on terror’ initiated by the United States repeatedly. As the ‘war on crime’ allowed for the rapid economic development by utilizing wage-laborers, the ‘war on terror’ serves to forward the current state’s agenda of imperialism and national development. In searching for the loss of imperialistic power, the United States has launched a war on those oppressed by its imperial reach. In searching for a way to control the mass population of the working class, the United States launched a war on those oppressed by its dependency on wage-labor. This appears to be the narrative pervading the history of the United States and its efforts to police.

This text allowed me to fully understand the transition from feudalism to capitalism by explaining the crucial role of policing played by the state. The United States has been able to exercise control over its population by means of policy, law, violence, etc. and institute the social order surrounding capitalism. I am currently learning about both Europe and America in the age of capitalism and imperialism, and it felt as if something was missing until I read this text. I recommended it to my History of American Capitalism professor, and explained how policing fit perfectly into the puzzle of early state formation in the American colonies. Beginning in Europe before that, the ideals carried over when settlers came, and were thus instituted when forming the economy of the New World. Policing provides an explanation as to why so many immigrants from Europe came over to the New World. As I learned in that history course, most of them came under contracts of indentured servitude. These were directly caused by the poor laws and the labels of vagrant and poor which turned several laborers into lifetime wage-laborers. Policing smoothed the transition to capitalism.

The presentation offered by Mark Neocleous is timeless. It offers an inclusive overview of policing prior to the color line being instituted. This serves as a basis for the power of the state using policing to extend its reach into every fact of social life. The groundwork laid out by Neocleous is crucial in informing evaluations of policing, as it provides a comprehensive understanding of the various methods and uses of policing. This concepts and ideas carry over into the present day, as well as guiding us when critically thinking about the past. By providing a more holistic approach, Neocleous offers an expansive lens with which to view policing.

Memo #4

Both Camp and Buff provide comprehensive analyses of revolutions and advocacy organizations. Essentially, both readings showcase activists in movements that brought to light the struggles of prisoners and immigrants (and those subjected to the woes of each system). Mutual terms are defined by each author; however, each have specific concepts in their own writing that serve to feed into this encompassing overview. Their respective terms will be identified and defined here, while their shared concepts will be addressed later on as themes. Camp focuses more on the carceral state, legitimization of state power, radicalism, criminalization, and isolation. The carceral state, according to Camp, is the prison explosion that occurred alongside “the fundamental changes in the social formation wrought by capital and the state’s response to the organic crisis of Jim Crow capitalism” (Camp, 2016:3). Camp uses Incarcerating the Crisis to show that “the racialization of groups deemed enemies of the U.S. state has been essential to the legitimation of neoliberal state formation” (Camp, 2016:5). To describe the radical social theory being studied by prisoners, Camp calls Angela Y. Davis to recall when “the radical prisoners were engaged in the study of radical social theory. ‘These ideas,’ Davis remembers, ‘were developed against the backdrop of progressive revolutions transforming the globe . . . We were part of a global revolution’” (Camp, 2016:78). Camp also notes how the dominant ideology “has depicted mass criminalization as an inevitable reaction to criminality or threats to public safety and national security” (Camp, 2016:5). A use of punishment by the state was isolation, which was a distinct form of the super-maximum prison that “confined prisoners to spaces of isolation as punitive and authoritarian responses to the rebellion, which for some leaders included being confined for more than twenty-three hours a day” (Camp, 2016:82). Buff, on the other hand, focuses on deportation, discourse, and rights. Buff describes deportation in the sense of the threats it yielded for foreign-born peoples: “physical removal, destruction of community, evisceration of leadership” (Buff, 2017:196). The specific discourse referred to here by Buff is drawn from the original presentation of Our Badge of Infamy written by CASA, highlighting the portions that brought together the Popular Front and the ACPFB under the umbrella of “the antiracist, internationalist discourse” (Buff, 2017:202). In reference to rights, Buff notes that “immigrant rights advocates drew on migrant imaginaries to navigate these swells” caused by the neoliberal transformation (Buff, 2017:196).

Some central themes to these texts into the rise of violence and law and order. Camp points out that “the use of the phrase ‘national security’ trouble the ways in which it had been deployed as a justification for state violence” (Camp, 2016:84). While Camp is referring to mass incarceration, Buff refers to the “proximity to the violence of deportation, [in which] migrants and immigrant rights advocates identified the the rise of new forms of neoliberal terror early” (Buff, 2017:196). In terms of law and order, Camp notes that “the making of the postwar carceral state was as much a product of civil rights struggles over policing and law and order in the 1940s and 1950s as it was a response to the prison rebellions of the 1960s and economic crisis of the 1970s” (Camp, 2016: 7). Buff points out that “by the late 1960s, military counterinsurgency strategies originating in the proxy wars of the Cold War era gained traction as a means of establishing ‘law and order’” (Buff, 2017:212).

Camp states the main argument very clearly in that “the suppression of the counterinsurgency against radical social movements in the United States, and a key moment in the development of more punitive carceral policies . . . the state’s response to a crisis of hegemony produced a solution – the super-maximum-security prison – that became a standard feature of neoliberal regimes of mass incarceration during the rise of Reaganism” (Camp, 2016:73). Buff’s main argument is that the “evisceration of rights presaged the direction of neoliberal global racial capitalism, in which corporations are free to move, while laborers and migrants find their access to mobility and rights restricted” (Buff, 2017:196). Both of these authors deal directly with the neoliberal transformation, which brought about rapid transformation to state power in both of these systems.

These two readings directly relate to The First Civil Right by Naomi Murakawa. In terms of Camp, Murakawa is actually referenced in the first chapter. However, I found notions of her argument flowing throughout the chapters read. This was also the case for Buff, although in a more conceptual way; surrounding law and order.

Recently I was watching a live feed of the Black Lives Matter protest after the Jason Van Dyke trial and one of the signs said “we stand with Black Lives Matter, too,” while being carried by people of differing ages, races, and genders. This reaffirmed in me the power of the movement, in the fact that it was questioning the state’s definition of a “human” in “human rights.” I also heard one of the speakers on the Netflix documentary note that the Black Lives Matter movement is arguing that all lives matter by saying that Black Lives Matter. By questioning the state’s definition of a person, a Black person, or even their value on human life, they are essentially carrying everyone with them in the movement to question the state’s narrative. Also, when I attended a Say Her Name march about a month ago, one of the speakers gave a very compelling argument for the subjugation of trans women of color by capitalism, and how patriarchy and dominant narratives overflowed into all areas of life. Their job as a movement is to actively question it and actively try to change it. It was extremely inspiring to hear this, and then to read this week’s texts and to feel confirmed in the intersectionality of such movements.