E-racing Migrant Life: Examining the Implications of Arizona’s Anti-Immigrant Politics on a Global Scale

• In Event: ERacing Borders: Global Trends in Border Criminologies

Abstract

The migrant and refugee “crisis” in Europe demonstrates that global forces continue to push and pull people across national boundaries, with significant consequences. These forces will only intensify as human-induced climate change creates “new geographies of violence” (Parenti 2012) that render some locations uninhabitable, putting more people on the move in search of a livable life. In this paper, we use Arizona as a case study to examine how states negotiate deploy processes of racialization to mark bodies, creating the conditions that enable flexible incorporation or expulsion, depending on the needs of neoliberal racial capital and/or state legitimacy. We will analyze the various techniques that the state used to produce this outcome, including police raids, traffic stops, and the introduction of over 70 anti-immigration laws. In short, we contend that state actors in Arizona created the template for the state-sanctioned production and exploitation of deportable life. As countries in the global North grapple with unprecedented migration, what happened in Arizona deserves renewed attention from scholars and activists who seek to build a world “where all people have the freedom to live, love, and work wherever the please” (Repeal Coalition 2010).

Authors

• Luis Fernandez, Northern Arizona University

• Meghan McDowell, Old Dominion University