The events of 2016 catapulted immigration policy to the forefront of
public debate, and Donald Trump's administration has signaled a harsh
turn in enforcement. Yet the deportation, detention, and border-control
policies that North American and European countries have embraced are by
no means new. In this book, sociologists David C. Brotherton and Philip
Kretsedemas bring together an interdisciplinary group of contributors to
reconsider the immigration policies of the Obama era and beyond in terms
of a decades-long "age of punishment."
Immigration Policy in the Age of Punishment takes a critical,
interdisciplinary, and transnational look at current issues surrounding
immigration in the U.S. and abroad. It examines key features of this age
of punishment, connecting neoliberal governance, global labor markets,
and the national obsession with securing borders to explain critical
research and theory on immigration enforcement. Contributors document
the continuities between presidential administrations and across
countries from many perspectives, with chapters discussing Canada,
Australia, France, the UK, the Dominican Republic, and Mexico in
addition to the U.S. They offer macro-level analyses of deportations and
border enforcement, analyses of national policy and jurisprudence, and
ethnographic accounts of the daily life experience of the
prison-to-deportation pipeline, the making of deportability, and
post-deportation transitions for noncitizens. This book highlights new
directions in critical immigration policy and enforcement and
deportation studies with the aim of problematizing the age of punishment
that currently reigns over borders and those who seek to cross them.
