Toward a Cultural Sociology of Immigration Control: A Call for Research

Abstract

The criminalization of immigration has garnered a great deal of attention in the United States and abroad. Most research, however, examines the political and legal shifts that produced the contemporary system, as well as the implications of these shifts for immigrant communities. The cultural changes that have occurred for frontline immigration agents as an occupational group have not received the scrutiny they deserve. I argue that the control culture of immigration enforcers is a critical mechanism that stifles the viability of humanitarian-minded legal reforms in the U.S. immigration system. I call for a cultural sociology of immigration control work, with an emphasis on the perceptions, skills, and normative valuations of frontline immigration enforcers, and identify three specific areas for future research: (1) studying immigration enforcers as social control agents, (2) expanding analyses of immigration implementation beyond discretionary decision-making, and (3) disrupting the tendency to take the nation-state as the primary unit of analysis in migration studies. By pursuing this agenda on immigration agents’ work lives, we will better understand the rationalities that underlie their behaviors and shape immigration law in action.