Racial panic narratives shape immigration illegality and state targeting

Evidence

From evidence gathered surrounding two events—one an instance of moral panic and the other, of peril—I argue that such racial constructions are instrumental in anti-immigrant narratives and in forming conceptions of illegality. It is through this logic that transnational migrants are located as both religious and racial subjects in the U.S. public sphere and through which Muslims, with their patterns of multiple migration, become state targets of fear and panic. — Junaid Rana, Terrifying Muslims, 78

Categorization

• XREF: Extends the moral panic concept from Cohen’s original framing (in the reader’s library) to race-based panics targeting Muslim migrants. — connects to: Moral panics about racialized criminals resolve economic crises via law-and-order solutions — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of…, 93