Migrant illegality is a state-produced subjectivity, not a natural condition

Evidence

‘‘Illegality’’ as a category, much like ‘‘citizenship,’’ entails a set of practices instituted through the law and enforced by the state policing. In practical terms, however, the relationship between the law and the state can be inconsistent, because it depends on implementing strategies and tactics in a particular political and historical context. State control regulates migrant illegality through the selective use of the concept of ‘‘deportability.’’ The construction of ‘‘illegality’’ and ‘‘deportability’’ is based on a set of criteria that creates notions of the illegal migrant based on multiple logics that cross the terrain of politics, economics, and culture. For example, the citizens of many nation-states regard migration as a threat to their welfare, even when migrant labor is used to produce a fresh workforce or to create a reserve army of labor. Yet both the worker and the state draw such distinctions among migrant laborers; thus, the social status of migrant workers becomes important to the state as a mechanism to exert economic and social control over such labor. This is accomplished not only through direct policing but also through the creation of statuses that are self-policed. Illegality then becomes a mode of subjectivity that creates its own set of practices and processes. — Junaid Rana, Terrifying Muslims, 656

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to Foucault’s concept of self-policing subjectivity and state power; resonates with the discipline-and-punish framework the author invokes. — connects to: Undocumented presence in the United States is a civil, not criminal, offense — Andrew L. Whitehead, American Idolatry, 640
• DEFINE: Defines illegality and deportability as state-constructed categories rather than neutral legal descriptions of migrant status.