Abstract
Through an exploration of relevant legislation and court cases, this article discusses the contemporary constitution of neoliberal subjects via the devolution of select immigration powers to state and local governments by the federal government of the United States. Since the latter decades of the nineteenth century, the federal government has had plenary power over immigration, which has enabled it to treat “people as immigrants” (or as “nonpersons” falling outside of many Constitutional protections), simultaneously requiring that states and cities treat “immigrants as people” (or as persons protected by the Constitution). Beginning in the mid-1990s, however, the devolution of welfare policy and immigration policing powers has challenged the scalar constitution of personhood, as state and local governments have newfound powers to discriminate on the basis of alienage, or noncitizen status. In devolving responsibility for certain immigration-related policies to state and local governments, the federal government is participating in the rescaling of membership policy and, by extension, the rescaling of a defining characteristic of the nation-state. This recent rescaling is evidence of the contemporary neoliberalization of membership policy in the United States, and specifically highlights the legal (re)production of scale.
Highlights
Through an exploration of relevant legislation and court cases, this article discusses the contemporary constitution of neoliberal subjects via the devolution of select immigration powers to state and local governments by the federal government of the United States
Beginning in the mid-1990s, the devolution of welfare policy and immigration policing powers has challenged the scalar constitution of personhood, as state and local governments have newfound powers to discriminate on the basis of alienage, or noncitizen status
I focus on the shifting scalar constitution of personhood and alienage in the United States or, in other words, historical and contemporary changes in the ability of different scales of government to create and enforce laws discriminating against individuals as a function of their “alienage,” or noncitizen status
Summary
The Center for Comparative Immigration Studies University of California, San Diego. Rescaling the “Alien,” Rescaling Personhood: Neoliberalism, Immigration, and the State. Through an exploration of relevant legislation and court cases, this article discusses the contemporary constitution of neoliberal subjects via the devolution of select immigration powers to state and local governments by the federal government of the United States. Reflecting these neoliberalizing tendencies, the court cases and policies discussed indicate not a complete devolution of immigration power to the local scale, but a partial, incomplete, and contingent devolution, with states and local governments being left to figure out the details of how to implement the federal government’s mandate, and the federal government still maintaining ultimate Constitutional control and veto power over this policy realm An outcome of this piecemeal devolution of membership policy has been the constitution of what I call the “neoliberal subject”: an alternative, evolving institution of “membership” for noncitizens living within the territorial boundaries of the nation-state. I trace the way in which the line between the treatment of people as immigrants and immigrants as people was drawn fairly rigidly on scalar and jurisdictional lines until the mid-1990s, with the federal government charged with the former and states and cities charged with, or restricted to, the latter
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