The Determinants State-Level Immigration Law in New Immigrant Destinations

Project Title: Immigration Law in New Destination States

PIs: Hana Brown (Wake Forest University) and Jennifer Jones (University of Notre Dame)

This project examines why some states have adopted anti-immigrant laws while others have embraced newcomers with more supportive incorporation initiatives. The investigators examine immigration law in the U.S. South, a prominent new immigrant destination region marked by radically different state-level approaches to immigration governance. The researchers draw on interviews, media analysis, and archival data to understand the origins of different enforcement regimes. Findings will clarify patterns of access to key institutions that affect immigrant incorporation with significant implications for communities, organizations, and state entities that work with new immigrant populations. More broadly, this project will reveal the forces that drive a patchwork policy system that increasingly grants subnational entities jurisdiction across a range of legal issues.

In the United States and globally, immigration laws exist at the intersection of two prevailing trends: the criminalization and racialization of non-citizens and the devolution of legal enforcement to subnational authorities. Dominant explanations for variation in state immigration law emphasize the role of partisan politics, political ideology, and demographic change. However, these paradigms cannot satisfactorily explain recent lawmaking patterns in new immigrant destinations. Comparing two cases (Alabama and Georgia) where conservative politics and a growing Latino population gave rise to omnibus anti-immigrant laws to two cases (Mississippi and North Carolina) where the same forces did not have the same result will help to specify the dynamics that drive the criminalization of immigrants and the extension of states' punitive powers. The researchers examine the role of interracial activist networks in thwarting enforcement efforts. Specifically, the project examines Black-Latino coalitions as (1) cultural brokers, race makers who strategically shape beliefs about Black-Latino commonalities and diffuse these racial schemata across media, legal, and political forums and as (2) organizational brokers, liaisons who forge or activate networks across established legal movements (labor, civil rights) to heighten the political risks of supporting anti-immigrant laws and pressure lawmakers to reject such reforms. Findings will help elucidate how social context and non-state actors shape immigration law and specify the central role that advocacy organizations and legal processes play in the racial formation process. As the country becomes majority-minority, such findings will also have important implications for our understanding of the role of the legal context in shaping immigrant incorporation and racialization in the contemporary United States.