Enforcement or Embrace? The Determinants of State-Level Immigration Policy in New Immigrant Destinations

• In Event: 215 - Section on Political Sociology Paper Session. The State and Racial Exclusion

Abstract

Recently, state and local governments around the United States have proposed a range of laws to curtail the rights of unauthorized immigrants. These racialized policy attacks have met disparate fates, succeeding in some states, but failing dismally in others. This paper examines why racially restrictive immigration policies have garnered widespread political support in some new immigrant destinations but not others. We conduct a qualitative comparative analysis of the immigration policy regimes in Alabama and Mississippi. Despite their similar racial demographics and immigration settlement patterns, the two states have adopted radically different approaches to immigration enforcement over the last decade. Combining archival and media data, our results suggest the importance of multi-racial civil rights coalitions in thwarting racialized anti-immigration policies. We find that such a movement arose early in Mississippi, as immigrant rights activists allied with and borrowed discursive tools from Black civil rights groups in their battle against anti-immigration policies. These alliances allowed immigrant rights groups to prevent the passage of over 200 anti-immigrant bills introduced in the last decade in the state. In Alabama, on the other hand, we find that the absence of such organizing facilitated passage of one of the nation’s strictest anti-immigrant bills. These findings suggest that political organizing among non-citizen and racial minority groups can prompt a realignment of civil rights agendas and provide a barrier against anti-immigration policies.

Authors

• Jennifer A. Jones, University of Notre Dame

• Hana Brown, Wake Forest University