The lived experience of female college-educated Iranian immigrants with faith-based institutional discrimination

• In Event: 20452 - MENA Global Migration and Identities

Abstract

This article examines applicability of “crimmigration system” and “legal structural violence” to Executive Order 13769 and Presidential Proclamation 9645, enforced by former President Trump as the “sovereign power” from 2017-2021 and commonly known as the “Muslim ban.” A growing number of legal scholars have studied undocumented immigrants’ detention, deportation, and abuse; and expansion of a global phenomenon dubbed as “crimmigration,” a form of legal violence that blurs the lines between immigration and criminal laws; and is intimately tied to immigrants’ racialization and “othering.” However, a new scholarship expands the applicability of crimmigration studies to also include immigrants with legal status. Drawing on qualitative data collected from in-depth interviews with a sample of female college-educated Iranian immigrants with legal status in California, findings indicate that 1) as a form of de jure institutional discrimination and a nascent form of legal structural violence, the Muslim ban is indeed part of the crimmigration system; and 2) as a legally-sanctioned ethnic-based policy the ban has negatively affected immigrants’ lived experiences at work, school; as well as within their families.

Author

• Homa Sadri, University of California-Irvine