They Watch for Color: Mixed-status Couples Experience With the Police
Document Type
Article
Publication Date
5-8-2019
Publication Title
Contemporary Justice Review: Issues in Criminal, Social, and Restorative Justice
DOI
10.1080/10282580.2019.1612245
ISSN
1477-2248
Abstract
This research qualitatively examines experiences with the police for 42 interracial mixed-status couples, living or originating mainly from the Southern United States. Race-based policing operates within a structure of racist nativism where white skin is a marker of U.S. citizenship, and brown skin is an indication of being foreign-born. Law enforcement at all levels, including the local level, situated their attention toward Latino immigrant men, especially those perceived as working-class, when compared to white U.S. citizen wives. The penalties for racial profiling included family strain through detention and deportation of Latin-American born men. In addition to human rights violations for undocumented Latino immigrants, U.S. citizens are serving as collateral damage in an already broken immigration system that racially profiles Latino immigrant men. Couples’ precariousness situations contest the rhetoric that police are only protecting citizens’ national security. Framed by racist nativism, the findings have implications for anti-oppressive, evidence-based immigration policy.
Recommended Citation
Schueths, April M..
2019.
"They Watch for Color: Mixed-status Couples Experience With the Police."
Contemporary Justice Review: Issues in Criminal, Social, and Restorative Justice, 22 (2): 139-156: Taylor & Francis Online.
doi: 10.1080/10282580.2019.1612245 source: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/10282580.2019.1612245
https://digitalcommons.georgiasouthern.edu/soc-anth-facpubs/87
Comments
Copyright and Open Access: http://sherpa.ac.uk/romeo/search.php?issn=1028-2580