For many people, migration is about escaping persecution and state violence. But in the context increasingly criminalisation of migration, state violence may characterise the lives of immigrants. Hosts Ala Sirriyeh and Michaela Benson are joined by Professor Cecilia Menjívar to discuss her work with Central American migrants in the US. She highlights how those taking part in her empirical research from Arizona to Kansas revealed to her the ways in which the infrastructures of immigration enforcement and control in the US shape migrant lives and the parallels they draw in state violence before and after migration. And she stresses the urgent need to consider legal status as an axis of social inequality in contemporary society. 

In this episode we cover …

1. U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE)
2. Legal violence and legal liminality
3. Legal status and social inequalities

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… that brought to me the parallels between life under state terror in Central America, and life under legal terror brought about by immigration enforcement in the United States

• Cecilia Menjívar

Find out more

Find out more about Cecilia’s work on the UCLA website and follow her on Twitter

We recommend her work on Legal Liminality and her co-authored research with Leisy Abrego on Legal Violence

Our headline was this article from the LA Times about US Immigration and Customs enforcement in the shift from Trump to Biden.

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