de genova 2002_migrant illegality deport ability

8/3/2019 De Genova 2002_Migrant Illegality Deport Ability

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Annu. Rev. Anthropol. 2002.31:4 19-47doi: 10.1 &i/annurw.anthro.31.040402.085432Copyright@ 2002 byAnnualReviews. All rightsdFirst publishedonline as a Review in Advance on June 14.2002

Nicholas P. De GenovaDepartment ofAnthropoiagy and Lcrtinalo Studies, Columbia University,1130AmsterdamAvenue. New York,NY 10027;emaiir npdl8@ca lumbia.edu

Key Words undocumented migrationlimmigration,illegal aliens, aw, labor,space, racialization,United States, Mexican b t in AmericanI bstract This article strives to meet two challenges.As a review, it provides acritical discussion of the scholarshipconcerning undocumentedmigration, with a spe-cial emphasis on ethnographically informed works that foreground significant aspectsof the everyday life of undocumented migrants.But anotherkey concern here is to for-mulate more precisely the theoretical status of migrant "illegality"and deportability inorder that further researchrelated to undocumented migration may be conceptualizedmore rigorously.This review considers the study ofmigrant "illegality"as an episte-mological, methodological, and political problem, in order to then formulate it as atheoreticalproblem. The article argues that it is insufficient to examine the "ilIegalityWof undocumented rnigrationonly in terms of its consequences and that it is necessaryalso to produce historically informed accounts of the sociopoliticalprocesses of "ille-galization"themselves,which can be characterized as the legal productionofmigrant"illegality."

INTRODUCTIONIllegal immigration has emerged as a generalized fact in virtually allof the wealth-iest nation-states {Sassen 1998; 1999, p. 143) as we11 as in many regional centersof production and consumption (Harris 1995)during the post-World War II era,regardless of the political culture or particular migration policies of any givenstate. Migrant "illegality" has risen to unprecedentedprominence as a ' ~ o b l e m "in policy debatesand asanobject of border policing strategiesfor states around theworld. The literature written in English on migrant "illegality"is predominantlyfocused on undocumented migration to the United States (cf. Harris 1995) andespecially on undocumented Mexican migration. There are, of course, historicalreasons for this uneven development in scholarship.

In Europe, "illegal immigration . .has emerged as a major issue"only "in thelast few years" (Sassen 1999, p. 104). By the 1970s, several Western Europeanstates-as well as Australia, Canada, Venezuela, and Argentina-were alreadyattempting to "regularize" undocumentedmigrants by recourse to "legalization"


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420 DEGENOVAprocedures (adjustments of status) and official "amnesties": 12,000were "legal-ized"inBelgium in 1974; 15,000in the Netherlandsin 1975;140,000n France in1981;44,000 in Spain in 1986, and 104,000 more in 1991 (Soysal 1994,p. 132);15,000 in Australia and 30,000 in Venezuela by the early 1990s (Hagan 1994,p. 174; cf. Meissner et al. 1986). Yet these figures are dwarfed by the 3.2 mil-lion undocumented migrants "legalized in the United States following the 1986"amnesty."Moreover,the U.S.Border Patrol's apprehension and deportation prac-tices began in the 1920s [contrast this with the case of Japan, where migrant"illegality" was made an object of law only in 1990, as Sassen (1998) pointsout]. The geographical unevenness of the scholarly literature on undocumentedmigrationreflects its character as a responseto real sociopolitical transforinations.Predictably, the revisionof analyhc frameworks and the development of new he -oretical perspectives have tended to lag far behind the sheer restlessness of life.Thus, this essay strives tomeet two challenges.As a review essay, it provides acritical discussionof the scholarship on undocumented migration, with a specialemphasis on ethnographically informed works that foreground significantaspectsof the everyday life of undocumented migrants. Other reviews in t h i s series thathave addressed some of the broader themes that frame the specific concern of thisessay include Alonso (19941, Alvarez (19951, Kearney (1986, 19951, and Ortiz(this volume). But another key concern here is to formulate more precisely thetheoretical status of the themes of migrant "illegality" and deportability in orderthat further research related to undocumented migration may be conceptualizedmore rigorously.

THE TUDY OF MIGRANT "ILLEGALITY" AS ANEPISTEMOLOGICAL, METHODOLOGICAL,AND POLITICAL PROBLEM

There is a vast social science literature on so-called "illegal aliens" and "ilIega1immigration."At the outset, it is worthwhile dwelling for a moment on the termi-nologies that signal more fundamental analyticcategoriesthatoperatepewasivelyin the formulationof the subject at hand. In this essay, the termundocumentedwil lbe consistently deployed in place of the category "illegal" as well as other, lessobnoxious but not less problematic proxies for it, such as "extra-legal,""unau-thorized," "irregular," or "clandestine." Throughout the ensuing text, I deployquotes in order to denaturalize the reification of this distinction whereverthe term"illegality"appears,as well as wherever the terms "legal"or "illegal" modify mi-gration ormigrants.Thus, he appearance of quotes around these terms should notbe understood to indicate the precise terminology that pertains in any particularnation-state context, or any historically specific instance, or any particular au-thor's usage, somuch asageneral analytic practiceon my part. Likewise, the term"migration" will be consistently deployed here to supplant "immigration."Unlessreferring specifically to immigration law or policy, I also deploy quotes wher-ever the terns "immigration"or "immigrant" appear, in order to problematize the


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MIGRANT "ILLEGALITY"AND DEPORTABILITY 421implicitly unilinear teleologyof these categories (posited alwaysfrom the stand-point of the migrant-receiving nation-state, in terms of outsiders coming in, pre-sumably to stay).This trategy allowsme to problematize theway that U.S.nation-alism, in particular, interpellateshistoricallyspecific migrations in its production of"immigration"and "immigrant"as an essentialized, generic, and singular object,subordinatedto that same teleology by which migrants inexorably become perma-nent settlers and the U.S.nation-state assumes the form of a "promised land'-aself-anointed refugeof liberty and opportunity. [For an expanded treatmentof this"immigrant" essentialism and the figure of "the immigrant" as an object of U.S.nationalism,see De Genova (1999, pp. 67-104; n.d.1;(cf. Chock 1991 and Honig1998,ZOOl)].

The onceptual problems embedded in terminology are symptomaticof deeperproblems of intellectual-and ultimately political-rientation. Remarkably, littleof this vast scholarship deploysethnographicmethodsor other qualitative researchtechniques to elicit the perspectives and experiences of undocumented migrantsthemselves, or to evoke the kinds of densely descriptive and textured interpretiverepresentationsof everyday life that socioculturalanthropologiststend to relish. If ,as Keamey (1986, p. 331) has suggested, the academic home ofmigration studieswas long a murky "back room of demography," where it did not receive much at-tention from anthropologists,then surely the study of undocumented migrationhaslong been ost in the shuffle somewhere in a corridor between demography,policystudies, and criminology. Indeed, much of the scholarship has been persistentlyprescriptive, either explicitly promulgatingone or anotherpurported "solution"tothe putative "problem," or simply deploying the entire arsenal of social scientificobjectivities in order to assess the presumed "successes" or "failures" of such leg-islative strategies or administrative and enforcement tactics. Portes (1978) madethis point nearly 25years ago, and the situation isnotdrasticallydifferent today.A sheexplained at that time, '"Thereasons for this emphasis are not difficult to deter-mine. Illegal immigration is one of those issues in which the interests of scholarsand government agenciesconverge.Hence, much of the recent literatureaimsatanaudience composed of decision-makers .. " 1 978, . 469). The concern of suchresearchers with @icy-relevance, now as then, entails presuppositions thoughwhich research is effectively formulated andconducted from the standpoint of thestate, with all of its ideological conceitsmore or less conspicuously smuggled intow. In contrast, from the standpoint of "the free movement of people," as Harrisputs it , "the problem is the state rather than those who are mobile" (Harris 1995,p. 85; cf.Carens 1987),Assuming that undocumented migration is indeed a "prob-lem," that the state genuinely seeks to remedy this situation on behalf of themajority of its citizenry and that the state is capable of actually effecting therecommendations of such studies, "studies which examine the problem within of-ficially pre-establishedLimits [.. ]yield a constrainedand impoverished product"(1978, p. 470). "If governmental definitions of reality do not coincide with thoseof other actors in the system," Whiteford elaborates, "that should not come as asurprise.What does seem surprising is thatsocial scientists. . share the worldviewof the bureaucrats" (1979,p. 134).


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"Illegality" (much like citizenship) is a juridical status that entails a socialrelation to the state; as such, migrant "illegality" is a preeminently political iden-tity. To conduct research related to the undocumented noncitizens of a particularnation-state from the u n e x d e d standpoint of its citizens,then, involves the kindof uncritical ethnocentrism that is, by definition, a perversion of anthropology'sputative aims as a distinctive mode of inquiry (DeGenova 1999, 2003). Thereis a still deeper methodol~gical roblem,however. It is necessary to distinguishbetween studying undocumented people, on the one hand, and studying "illegal-ity" and deportability, on the other. The familiar pitfalls by which ethnographicobjectification becomes a kind of anthropologicalpornography--showing it justto show it, as it weebecome infinitely more complicated here by the dangerthat ethnographic disclosure can quite literally become a kind of surveillance, ef-fectively complicit with if not altogether in the sewice of the state. As Foucaultobserves, in his characteristic style that so elegantly states the obvious, "the ex-istence of a legal prohibition creates around it a field of illegal practices" (1979,p. 280). In the case of undocumented migrants, the ethnographic documentationand exhibition of such practices can have quite practical consequences and entailcertain ethical quandaries and strategicrisks at the levelsofboth research practiceand representation.

It is important to clarify that undocumented migrants, s such,do not comprisean objectively or inwinsically self-delimiting domain for anthropological study.As Malkki argues with respect to "refugees,"the analyhc validity and usefulnessof the term undocumented migrants is that it supplies "a broad legal or descrip-tive rubric" that includes within it a tremendous heterogeneity (Malkki 1995,p. 4%; cf. Brennan 1984, Couper 1984).Undocumented migrations are, indeed,preeminently labor migrations (cf. Burawoy 1976;Bustamante 1972,1976,1978;Castells1975;Chavez 1992a,pp. 139-55; HondagneuSotelo2001;Keamey 1998;Rouse 1995a,b), (Note that the U.S. Border Patrol, from 1925-when it was firstcreated--until 1940, operated under the auspices of the Department of Labor). Assuch, undocumented migrations would be inconceivablewere it not for the vduetheyproducethrough the diverse services they supply to citizens."Illegality," hen,both theoretically and practically, is a social relation that is fundamentally insep-arable from citizenship. Furthermore,concretely, there are no hermetically sealedcommunities of undocumentedmigrants. In everyday life, undocumented migrantsare invariably engaged in social relations with "legal"migrantsaswell as citizens,and they commonly live in quite intimate proximity to various categoriesof "docu-mented"persons--sometimes as spouses,frequently asparentsorextended familymembers (often sharing the same households), as well as neighbors, coworkers,and so on."Ona day-to-daybasis, their illegality may be irrelevant to most of theiractivities,only becomingan ssuein certaincontexts . .Much of the time they areundifferentiatedfrom those around them, but suddenly . egal reality is superim-posed on daily life" (Coutin2000, p.40; cf . Corcoran 1993,pp. 14451) . Tocon-duct research on undocumented migrants as such+onceptualized in isolation-istherefore to perpekate a rather egregiouskind of epistemic violence on the social


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MIGRANT "ILLEGALITY" AND DEPORTABILlTYreality of everyday life for those migrants. Furthermore, by constituting undoc-umented migrants (the people) as an epistemological and ethnographic"object"of study, social scientists, however unwittingly, become agents in an aspect of theeverydayproduction of those migrants' "illegality"-in effect,accomplicesto thediscursive power of immigration law. In her ethnography ofSanctuary Movementactivists struggles on behalf of securing refugee status and political asylum forundocumentedCentralAmericans, Coutin (1993)emphasizes the everyday socialrelations that help tosustainwhat she calls "alienation" (the process through whichindividualscome o be defined as"illegalaliens")."Given the pervasivenessof thissystem," Coutin (1993, p. 89) contends,"myact that constructs individuals' legalidentities has political implications."Notably, in her ethnography of Salvadoranlegalization struggles, Coutin is explicit inher characterizationof the research as"an ethnography of a legalprocess rather than of a particular group" (2000, p. 23).There is a need for such research on "illegality"qua sociopolitical condition, incontradistinctionto research on undocumentedmigrants qua "illegal aliens."

A premier challenge, therefore, is to delineate the historical specificity of con-temporary migrations as they have come to be located in the legal (political)economies of p d c u l a r nation-states. Only by reflectingon he effects of sociole-gal, historical contexts on researchdoes it become possible to elaborate a criticalanthropologicalperspective that is notcomplicitwith thenaturalization of migrant"illegality." t thus becomes possible for the ethnographic study of undocumentedmigrations toproduce migrant "illegality"as the kind of ethnographic object thatcanserve the ends of a distinctly anthropologicalcritiqueof nation-statesand theirimmigration policies, as well as of the broader politics of nationalism, nativism,and citizenship.' What at first appeared to be a merely terminological matter, then, upon morecareful consideration, is revealed to be a central epistemological and conceptualproblem, with significant methodological ramifications,ethical implications, andpolitical repercussions.

THE STUDY OFMIGRANT "ILLEGALITYnAS A THEORETICAL PROBLEMUndocumented migrations are, as I have already suggested, preeminentIy labormigrations, originating in the uniquely restless creative capacity and productivepower of people. The undocumented character of such movements draws ourcritical scrutiny to regimes of immigrationlaw and so demands an analytic accountof the law as such, which is itself apprehensibleonly through a theory of the state.Likewise, the spec ific character of these movements as labor migrations withina global capitalist economy demands an analysis of the mobility of labor, whichitself is only understandable through a critical theoretical consideration of laborand capital as mutually constituting poles of a single, albeit contradictory, socialrelation.


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This review is concerned with the theoretical challenge of denaturalizing mi-grant "illegality," not merely as a fetish that commandsdebunking but rather as adeterminant (or real) abstraction produced as an effect of the practical materialityof the law. Sassen contends that migrations are not autonomous p r o c e s s e e e y"do not just happen; they are produced. And migrations do not involve just anypossible combination of countries; they are patterned" (1998, p. 56). This argu-ment applies even more decisively to undocumented migrations: They are notself-generating and random; they are produced and patterned. It is useful here toconsidera distinction between that which simply falls outside of any precise legalprohibition and so is beyond the law's pumiew, on the one hand, and that whichis constituted as "illegal,"on the other (cf. Heyman & Smart 1999,p. 1) . The lawdefines the parameters of its own operations, engendering the conditions of pos-sibility for "legal"as well as "illegal"practices. "Illegalities"are constituted andregimented by the l a w a c t l y , explicitly,in a manner that presumes to be moreor less definitive (albeit not without manifold ambiguities and indeterminacies,always manipulable in practice) and with a considerable degree of calculated de-liberation. Furthermore, at the risk of sounding autological, within the contextofany given state, the history of legal &bate and action concerning "immigration,"and the determinanteffects so produced by the law comprise, precisely, a history.There is , therefore,a methodologicaldouble-emphasishere on the productivity ofthe law as well as on its historicity.The recent proliferation andaccelerationof transnationalmigration has involvedtheglobal emergenceof a variety of sociohistorically distinctundocumented migra-tions aswell asa concomitantvariety of sociohistoricallyparticular configurationsof migrant "illegality."Demographic perspectives in particular seem stubborn1yresistant, if not inherently averse, to assigning the law a primary role in definingthe character of migration processes.By recourse to a discourse of demographicsinfluencing the effective operation of law, laws hemselves appear to merely pro-vide a neutral framework. Thus, the inequalities generatedby the law's apparentlyuniform application among asymmetrically constituted migrations from distinctsending countries tend to be naturalized. This essay insists on the historical speci-ficity of the distinct configurations of "illegality"that aremutually constituted byparticular migrations within the respectiveimmigration regimesof specificnation-states.Hence, this is likewise acall forresearch that is emphatically concernedwithdistinct migrations and that repudiates the validity of any claim to the existence of"the"(generic)"immigrant experience"; there simply is no such animal.The history of immigration law, in any given state, is nothing if not a historyof rather intricate and calculated interventions. This should not be understood tosuggest that such a calculus is simply derivative ofsome pparently coherent andunified strategy.Nor should this contention be misconstrued to imply that this his-tory is merely a functional by-product of somepresumed (and thus, teleological)structural logic. Both of these analytic frameworkswould suggest an externalityof structure and struggle, and thus, would fall into the trap of reifying (again)the already fetishized divide between social relations and the objectified forms


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MIGRANT "ILLEGALITY"AND DEPORTABILITY 425

of their appearance (Bonefeld 1994, 1995; Holloway 1995). That is , by treatingthe law as effectivelydefinitive,coherent, and complete, such perspectives tend torecapitulate thereification of the state's authority and power, which the state itselfpropagates. On he contrary, the intricate history of law-making is distinguishedaboveall by the constitutiverestlessnessand relativeincoherence of various strate-gies, tactics, and compromisesthat nation-states mplement atparticularhistoricalmoments, precisely to mediate the contradictions immanent in social crises andpolitical struggles, above all, around the subordinationof labor (cf.Bonefeld 1994,1995; Holloway 1994,1995).Thus, immigration laws serveas instrumentsto sup-ply and refine the parameters of both discipline and coercion, but this is largelyso through the deploymentof those laws as tactics.By emphasizing this "tactical"character of the law, it is imperative to recall that tactics that aim to make a disci-plined and manageableobject of any given social group are conjunctural and cannever be assured of thecertaintyof their realization. These actics are ensnared ina stnggle to subordinatethe intractability that is intrinsic to the constitutive role oflabor within capital-what Marx described as "a protractedand more or less con-cealed civil war" (Marx 1976, . 412 [18671;cf.Bonefeld 1995,Holloway 1995).Tf we understand the state to be a particularization of "the political"-which is tosay, "the abstraction" [and separation] "ofcoercionfrom he immediate processofexploitation" (Holloway 1994, p. 31 f. Pashukanis 1989,p. 143 [1929])-then itis useful here tounderscorethat labor plays sucha constitutiverolenot only withincapital but also within the capitalist state itself. As Holloway writes, "Once thecategories of thought are understood as expressions not of objectified social rela-tions but of the struggle to object@ them, then a whole storm of unpredictabilityblows through them. Once it is understood that money, capital, the state . " [andhere I would add, emphatically, the law] " . . renothing but the struggle to form,todiscipline, to structure what Hegel calls 'the sheer unrestof ife,' then it is clearthat their development can be understood only aspractice, as undetermined strug-gle" (Holloway 1995, p. 176).. It is this appreciation of the law-as undeterminedstruggle--that I want to bring to bear on how we might apprehend the historicityof immigration law, especially as it has devised for its target those characteris-tically mobile social formations comprised by labor migrations, particularly theundocumented.One prominent forrndation of the theoretical problem concerning the produc-tivity of the law, and the production of migrant "illegality" n particular, has beenderived from Foucault's analysis(1979)of modernpower asproductive,andspecif-ically, from his discussion of "illegalities"and "the production of delinquency"(1979, pp. 257-92).Behdad (1998) advances a Foucauldean rendering of U.3.-Mexicoborder en-forcementin terms of discipline, surveillance, andtheproductionof delinquency-emphasizing the critical role that the "illegality" of the undocumented plays fordisciplining and othering all noncitizens, and thus forperpetuatingmonolithic nor-mative notions of national identity for citizens themselves. (Note that Behdad'sinvocation of the "delinquency"of the undocumentedresonateswithBustamante's


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much earlier 119761 revisionist recourse to the sociological convention of "de-viance" as a means for situating socia1 perceptionsof the undocumented that cul-minate in discriminationand subjection to organized controlby the state. (B y wayof contrast, foran unreconstructed deployment of the categoryof "deviance"withrespect to undocumented Irish migrants in the United States, see Corcoran 1993).Unfortunately, however, Behdad refers only superficially to border enforcementpractices and otherwiserevealsa regrettabledisregard for any considerationof thelaw itself and its historicityin generatingthepertinentsociopoliticalcategoriesthatmight substantiate his theoretical insights. Coutin (1993, 1996,2000) is likewiseexplicit in her efforts to deploy Foucaultys nsights for theorizing the relationshipbetween law andmigration,but she is considerably more precise than Behdad inher examination of how immigration law produces its subjects. Coutin admirablyinsists that one must not presuppose the category of "illegal immigration,"whichitself should be under critical scrutiny, and argues for a consideration of U.S.immigration law's productionof "illegality,"stressing the power of the law to con-stitute individuals through its categories of differentiation. Furthermore, Coutin'swork (1998, 2000; cf. Coutin & Chock 1995) is quite grounded (both histori-cally and ethnographically)and does indeedprovide excellent,detailed,empiricaldiscussionsof how immigration law structured the experiences of undocumentedSalvadorans who later sought asylum statusas refugees.

Coutin's reliance on a Foucauldean conception of power leads to an emphaticinterest in understanding immigration law as comprising "more than legal codes,government policies,and bureaucratic apparatuses"(1 993, p. 88, emphasis added).This orientationproves tobe methodologicallyenablingfor Coutin's ethnographyof how "a myriad of practices, usually carried outby people who have no connec-tion to the government,produce knowledge that constitutes individuals ascitizens,illegal aliens, legal residents, asylees, and so forth" (1993, p. 88). As suggestedabove, Coutin offers crucial insights into the production of"illegality" n everydaylife-precise1 y where ethnographic approaches can make their greatest contribu-tion. She points to a variety of ways that surveillance in the United States hasbeen increasingly displaced in recent years from immigration authorities, to localpolice,to other stateofficials (e.g., clerksin a variety of bureaucraticcapacities re-lated to public education, housing,andwelfarebenefits), to private citizens-fromemployer verification of the work authorization of migrantworkers, o charitableorganizations who scrutinize immigrationdocuments as a conditionof their socialservice provisioning, to college admissions and financial aid officerschargedwithmonitoringthe legal statusesofprospective students (Coutin1993,p. 97; f.Cautin2000, p. 1 1;cf. Mahler 1995,p. 161; foranexample of an employercomplainingthat the 1986 U.S . immigration law "forces us [employers] to do thepolice workfor the government . o do their surveillance,"see Repak 1995, p. 157).In herwork on Salvadoran "legalization" struggles, Coutin-revisiting a pointmade much earlier, in passing, by Castles & Kosack (1973, p. 105)with regardto undocumented migrant workers in Western Europe+reativeIy expands hertheorization of "illegality" in terms of a consideration of the multiple ways in


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MIGRANT "ILLEGALZTY"AND DEPORTABILITY 427which the contradictionbetween undocumentedmigrants'physicaland social pres-ence and their official negation as "illegals" generates "spaces of nonexistence"(Coutin 2000, pp. 27-47). The social space of "illegality" s rtn erasure of legalpersonhood-a spaceof forced invisibility, exclu sion, subjugation,andrepressionthat "materializesaround [theundocumented] wherever they go" (p, 30) in the formof real effects ranging from hunger to unemployment (or more typically, severeexploitation) to violence to death-that is nonethelessalways already confoundedby their substantive social personhood. Coutin outlines several dimensions of thenonexistence imposed by migrant "illegality": the delimitation of reality to thatwhich canbe documented (Coutin 2000,p. 30;cf.Cintron 1997,pp. 5160;Mahler1995, pp. 159-87); the "temporalization of presence," whereby the undocumentedcome to be qualified or disqualified for adjustments of legal status accordingto the accumulation of continuous, verifiable (documentable) "illegal" residence(Coutin2000, p. 31);"legalaconsanguinity,"whereby immigration policiesnullifythe legal legitimacy of certain kinship ties (Coutin 2000, pp. 32-33; cf. Heyman1991,pp. 197-200); enforced clandestinity(Coutin2000,p. 33; cf. Chavez 1992~1,pp. 1 5 7 4 9 ;Rouse 1992); he transformation o f mundane activities-such aswork-ing,driving,or traveling-into illicitacts,related to compounded legal ineligibility(Coutin 2000, . 33; cf. De Genova 1999,2003; Heyman 1998b; MahTer 1995);restricted physical mobility,paradoxicallyeffected as a consequence of the initial,unauthorized mobility of undocumented migration, which signifies a measure ofcaptivity and social death (Coutin 2000,pp. 33-34; cf . Corcoran 1993, pp. 15 1-55; Hagan 1994, pp. 16364, Patterson 1982;Rouse 1992); and restricted socialmobility, related to compounded legal ineligibility (Coutin 2000,p. 34;cf.Jenkins1978, Portes 1978). Although she does not comment on it, anotherfeatureof theseconditions of nonexistence that arises in the comments of one of Coutin's undoc-umented interlocutors is something that might be called an enforced orientation tothe present, or in Carter's (1997, p. 196) eloquentphrase, "the revocability of thepromise of the future,"occasionedby the uncertainties arising from the possibil-ity of deportahon, which inhibit the undocumented from making many long-termplans (Coutin 1993, p. 98; cf. Chavez 1992a, pp. 1 5 8 4 5 ; Hagan 1994, pp. 94,129, 160), although they nevertheless do inspire various short- and medium-termprecautions(Chavez 1992a,p. 164).In al l of this,Coutin's contribution to a deepertheorization of everyday life for undocumented migrants is extraordinary and sug-gestsmany avenues for further ethnographic inquiry, including the investigationof ho w the incommensurability of multiple interrelated forms of existence andnonexistence can enable certain evasions and subversions of legal obligations en-tailed by the putative social contracts from which the undocumented are excluded(Coutin 2000, pp. 43-44], and more generally, may facilitate participation in mul-tiple transnational,political,economic, and social spaces that generatenew claimsof belonging and formationsof citizenship (Coutin2000,pp.4 5 4 7 ; cf. Appadurai1996;Basch etal. 1994;De Genova 1998;Flores&Benmayor 1997;Glick Schilleret al. 1992; Kearney 1991, 1996; Rosaldo 1994, 1997; Rouse 1991, 1992, 1995a;Sassen 1996a, 1996b, 1998; Whiteford 1979).


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428 DEGENOVAThe requirement for the undocumentedto refashion their social status with false"papers" raises more general theoretical questions about legal legibility. "Legal-ization" required documentation from the undocumentedin order to prove contin-

uous unauthorizedresidence within the space of the U.S. nation-state.A verifiablepast became the condition of possibility of a documentable present, which itselfwould serve as a conditionof eligibilityfor adocumented future (cf . Coutin 2000,pp. 4%77). This points toward the more general sociopoliticalcondition of "thedocumented" themselves. Republican formsof governmenthave created their cit-izens in relation to a founding document-a constitution-"and as a result, whathad been aconcreterelationshipbetween subject and monarch became an abstractlinkage between individuals and the law . [granting] citizens a legal existenceinaddition to their physical existence, a juridical form of being that continues to beaffirmed through birth certificates, death certificates,and the like" (Coutin 1993,p. 94 , emphasis in original; cf. M m s 1985).

There is amore general problem of methodologicalpresentism that iscommonin ethnographic work, however, to which Coutinbecomes susceptible. Though herexaminations of the revisions in immigration law that transpired during her studyare indisputably incisive, Coutin nevertheless largely presupposes the extant U.S.immigration regime that preceded the 1980s and 1990s (the specific period of herresearch),and thus shedoesnot examine thehistoricalgenesis of the contemporaryU.S. conomy of "legality" and "illegality." As a result of these limitations ofhistorical horizon, coupled with the theoretical orientations that justify them byseeking to transcend an analysis of "legal codes" and "government policies" infavor of a privileging of the more capillary forms of power, Coutin's specificargument about U.S. immigration law's production of "illegality"remains rathertoo partial. Indeed, thoughCoutin's work demonstrates thatFoucauldeananalysesof power are instructivefor law as a broad discursive fieldof sigdyingpractices, italso demonstrates the insufficiencies of such a theoretical approach, in its anemictreatment of the state--not in the reified (structuralist)senseof a fixed institutionalmatrix, but rather as a site of struggle in itself.Ultimately, Coutin's analysis of the law, as such, is much more illustrative ofthe conditions of possibility of "legalization" (the production of "legal"status forrnigrantslrefugees who were previous1y undocumented) than of the law's actualproduction of "illegality"(cf.Coutin& Chock 1995).Incontrast,Hagan (1994), inherethnography of "legalization"by undocumented GuatemalanMayan migrantsin the UnitedStates, concisely but admirably identifieshow thehistoryof revisionsin U.S. immigration law, beginning in 1965, has been instrumental in producingMexicardmigrant "illegality" in its contemporary configuration (cf. De Genova1999, 2003). Not confining her historical horizon to the narrower parameters ofherown study, Hagan perceptively identifies how the earlier revised immigrationpolicies actually "generated" the new undocumented influx from Mexico, whichcame to be sacially and politically constructed as a new "social problem" (Hagan1994, p. 82). In addition to Coutin's (1998, 2000) and Hagan's (1994) studies,there have been othernoteworthy ethnographiesthat have included considerationsof undocumented (primarily Central American) migrants' participation in the


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MIGRANT "ILLEGALITY"AND DEPORTABILlTY 429

"legalization" program established by the 1986 U.S. immigration act (Hamilton& Chinchilla 2001, Mahler 1995, Repak 1995, Villar 1999;cf. Baker 1990,1997;Hagan& Baker 1993).It isnonethelessanothermatter entirely to study the sociopo-litical processes of "illegalization"(cf. Calavita 1982, p. 13; 1998, pp. 531-32,557; Joppke 1999, pp. 26-31).

Indeed,"illegalizations"-or what I call the legalproductionofmigrant"illegal-ity"--supply the foundational conditions of possibility for these programs, var-iously called "legalizations," "regularizations,"or "amnesty," that institute anofficial adjustment of status for the undocumented.Every "illegalization" mpliesthe possibility of its ow n rectification. Once we recognize that undocumented mi-grations are constituted in order not to physically exclude them but instead, tosocially include them under imposed conditions of enforced and protracted vul-nerability, it is not difficult to fathom how migrants' endurance of many years of"dlegality"can serve as adisciplinary apprenticeship in the subordination of theirlabor, after which it becomes no longer necessary to prolong the undocumentedcondition.Furthermore,every "legalization"has an inherentlyepisodicand strictlypartial character that never eliminates the field of "illegality" but rather, in concertwith the amassing of immense quantities of data for scrutiny by the authorities,simply refines and reconstitutes that field forthe ineligible who wil l remain undoc-umented along with all subsequent "illegal"arrivals. This kind of rationalizationtends to be a rather explicitfeatureof such "regularizing"operations,asinthe 1986law in the United States (De enova 1999, 2003; cf. Coutin 2000,p. 16; Mahler1995, pp. 159-87) as well as the 1972 regulations enacted in France (Castells1975). ndeed, in this light, "legalizations"are themselves disciplinary and serveas instruments of labor subordination.Here, it is useful to recall both Coutin's pointconcerning theperceived subversivenessofmigrant "illegality" 1 993,p.95;2000,pp. 43-44) and Behdad's insight into the usefulness of migrant "illegality" as ajus-tificationforexpanded surveillanceagainst all of the state's subjects 1 998,p. 106).An attempt to incorporate someof the Foucaddean insights into the productiv-ity of power with Gramsci's conception of hegemonyas a contingent interlockingof coercion and consent (197 1 [1929-19351)' as well as a synthesis of legal an-thropologicalperspectives and critical legal realism, is elaborated by Heyman &Smart (1999). Positing the analytic necessity of coupling law and its evasion andthe theoretical challenge of conceiving of states and illegal practices as counter-parts, these authors develop a position that resembles my own perspective. Theyemphasize "the incompleteness of formal states and the unlikelihood that they willmaster their own and people's 'illegal' maneuvers"@. 2). In this way, they alsocritique the totalizing aspects of Foucault's treatment of power and instead favoranalyses that foreground the indeterminacy, ambiguity, open-endedness, nd du-plicityof practicesandprocesses "onboth sides of the statelillegalpractice nexus"(p . 7). They seek to destabilizethe hegemonic claims by which states project theirown purportedly definitive authority, integrity, and boundedness,yet without everrelinquishing a focus on he state as such @p. 1G11). Furthermore, they sustaina combined attention to both the legai formalism that imbues an ideology of thepurity of the state's orderliness, sovereignty, and legitimacy, on he one hand, and


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the empirical messiness that reveals how that ideology "disguises the ambiguousdealings of its agents" (pp. 11-14). Likewise, illegality is not essentializedas de-viance, subversion,or the putative subcultureof a stigmatizedgroup, but instead,is construed as an option or resource available to diverse groups at particular mo-ments, includingelitesand state functionariesas well as states themselves (pp. 13,19).Intheserespects,Heyman& Smartcritically recuperatemany of the hallmarksof legal anthropology-an awareness of the play of law in its practical contexts,the persistenceof plural andnonlegal modalities, the importance of sociohistoricalspecificities,and an analytic distinctionbetween legitimacy and legality@. 8).

Tt is noteworthy that Heyman & Smart's position marks, in important respects,a considerable theoreticaladvance from Heyman's earlierwork, n which he con-tends,rathermore simplistically, that "states are aggregationsof rules .. and thebureaucratic organizations required to implement these rules; for short, states arerulesof the game"(1 994,p. 5 1).Hey man makes a compelling case forethnographyin his insightful work on the U.S.BorderPam1 (1995,1998b) nd the ways that defacto policies actually guide law enforcementwith respect to the undocumented.He falls prey to a familiar anthropological trap, however, by articulating a the-oretical/methodologicaI disinclination to examine law itself, advancing instead aone-sided preference for studyingthestate "frombelow,"through the ethnographyof local enforcement practices (1 998b). Clearly, Heyman & Smart's approach-explicitlyrequiring"thatstates be viewed 'hm elow' and 'from within' asmuchas 'from above"' (1999, p. 15Eismore sophisticatedand significantlyproblema-tizes the one-sidednessof a complacent anthropologicalpredilection for the view"from below."In much of his prior work (1991, pp.40,197; 1998a,pp. 2&29), Heyman's gen-eralorientationto the practices ofeveryday life, includingundocumentedmigrants'border crossings as well as law enforcement's efforts at apprehension, obstructshis capacity to appraisethe larger forcesatwork n the "iilegalization" of migrantswho cross the U.S -Mexicoborder. ThoughHeyman discerns the decisive facts inthe history ofU.S immigration law since 1965 that would substantiate an accountof the legal production of migrant "illegality" n its contemporary formulation,henonetheless persists in treating undocumented migration as if dramatic revisionsof the law had not been instrumental in restructuring it. Heyman argues:

The migration laws of theUnitedStatesrely on 'numericalcontrol': numericaltargetsforfinitesocial types. . . Yet such numbers mismatch the social processof migration and inclusion into the host society .. In real-world migratorysituations,peopleadaptnumerical-legalcategoriesto these actualconnectionswhen possible, and ignore the law when t does not fitmigratoryintentions . . .Unlike numerical control,actual migration is flexible in who enters and howlong they stay, and adaptsquickly to the actual niches and labordemand (thatis, therealities) of U.S. society.As a result,either the migrant network systemmanipulates the legal systemto its own nds .. orpeoplemigrate illegally ..If current U.S. migration is disordered, the reordering of immigration soughthere simulates, but enriches, the naturalistic migration system. (1998a,pp. 28-29; emphasis added)


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MIGRANT "ILLEGALITY" AND DEPORTABILlTY 431

Here, Heyman problematizes the law's quotas and preferences, but his critiqueremainsatthe formal level, suggesting ameremismatch between legal abstractionand actual migration patterns that he depicts as "naturalistic"and systematic. Thisis a rather grave example of how the fetishization of "demographics," referredto above, can derail a critical analysis of the law. By naturalizing migration pro-cesses themselves, Heyman tends here to naturalize "illegality"and diminish thesignificance of thehistorical specificitiesof the law by characterizing its apparatusof "numerical control" as little more than a symptom of an abstract rationalityill-matched to the "natural" flexibility and opportunism of "real-world" migrationscenarios.Again, Heyman & Smart's insistence on the combined examinationofillegal practices inconcert with the law itself is an immeasurablymore promisingline of inqujl.Everyday life forthe undocumentedhasbecomemoreandmoresaturatedby theregimes that receiving states impose through immigration laws. Historical schol-arship on U.S. immigration law has been recently described as still "a relativelynew field"(Lee 1999,p. 86). Nonetheless, recent scholarshipon the history of U.S.immigration, naturalization,and citizenship law has begun to demonstrate the ex-tent to which legislation is in factonly one feature of the law. Research on law alsorequires an investigation of judicial cases and administrative decisions affectingthe implementation of admission and deportationprocedures, as well as policiesregulating access to empIoyment, housing, education, and eligibility for varioussocialwelfare benefits (Ancheta 1998,Chang 1999,Fitzgerdd 1996,Haney L6pez1996,Hing 1993,Johnson 1993,Kim 1994,Salyer 1995;cf.Lee 1999).Anthropol-ogists interested in the everyday life of the undocumented need notbecome legalhistorians.Yet, with respect to the"illegality"of undocumented migrants, a viablecritical scholarshipis frankly unthinkable without an informed interrogationofim-migration law. However, anthropologistsare often insufficiently concerned with,if not sorely negligent of, wen the elementary aspects of the legislative historyaffecting the formulation of "illegality" tself, especially as it pertains to particularmigrations.Moreover, when ethnographers make even brief passing mention ofimmigration law, it is not uncommon to find that crucialdetails of these legal his-torieshavebeen woefully misrepresented fe.g., Chavez 1992a, p. 15; Chock 1991,p. 291). Thus, the heatrnent of "illegality"as an undifferentiated, transhistoricalfixture is, sadly, a recurring motif in much of the scholarship on migration (e.g.,Passel 1994, Reimers 1985).

THE VISIBILITY OF "ILLEGAL IMMIGRANTS"AND THE NVISIBILITY OF THE lX WMigrant "illegality"is produced as an effect of the law, but it is also sustainedas an effect of a discursive formation (cf. Carter 1997, pp. 129-58). Calling theapparent naturalness of migrant "illegality"into question requires a critique ofthe ways that the sociospatial presuppositions and conceits of nationalism havesignificantly shaped the very conceptualizationof migration itself and a critiqueof how scholars have reproduced what Alonso (1994) calls "dominant strategies


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432 DEGENOVAof spatialization" in the very paradigms that organize academic knowledge (DeGenova 1998). It is imperative in a review such as this to clarify that the socialscience scholarship of undocumented migration is itself often ensnared in thisdiscursive formation of "illegality" (cf.De Genova 1999,2003).

Indeed, across an extensive, multidisciplinary,social science literature, one en-counters a remarkable visibility of "illegal immigrants" swirling enigmaticallyaround the stunning invisibility of the law. Only infrequently does one encounteran explicit discussion of the law, much less the history of its revision and re-formulation. When irnmi-on law is addressed directly, a detailed empiricalinvestigation of its actual operations is not provided (e.g., Cardenas 1975, Garcia1995, Heller 1992, ohnson 1997, assen 1990). The material force of law, itsinstnmentality, its historicity, itsproductivity of some of the most meaningful andsalient parameters of sociopolitical life-all of this seems sErangely absent, withrather few exceptions.This entanglementwithin the fetishismof the law (Pashuka-nis 1989 [1929]; cf. Collins 1982) tends to characterize even the work of scholarswho criticize the disciplinarycharacterof the Border Patroland the policingof mi-grant workers' documentedor undocumentedstatuses and who questionorfranklyreject the dubious distinction between "legal"and"illegal"migrations(e.g.,Cock-croft 1986, p. 214; Johnson 1997,pp. 171-74; Mirand6 1987,p. 127). Rather thaninvestigate critically what the law actually accomplishes, much scholarshiptakesthe statedaims of theIaw, suchasdeterringundocumented migration,at face-valueand hence falls into a ndive empiricism. Many scholars then proceed to evaluatelegislation-and specificaily, various effortstoreshct undocumentedmigration-in order to sustain the claim that these legal efforts were somehow not effectiveor were simply "failures" e.g., Cornelius 1989,pp. 10-14). Furthermore, there isa subcategory of scholarship that is derivative of this naive empiricism, wherebythe overtly restrictive intent of particular laws is not only taken at face-value,butalso supplied with a preemptive apology. Such commentators (e.g., Hondagneu-Sotelo 1994, p. 26) assert that the effects on particular migrations of changes ina state's immigration laws can be somehow presumed tohave been inadvertent-unanticipatedandthusunintendedconsequences.This show of "good faith"towardthe state, and its underlying belief in the law's transparency, does not even allowfor the possibility that the law may have been instrumental in generating param-eters of migrant "illegality." Still other researchers (e.g., Reimers 1985, Tienda1989, Zolberg 1990)do den* crucial aspectsof legal histories that resuIt in theexpansion or reconstitutionof migrant "illegality,"only then to persist in treating"illegal immigration" as a transparent and self-evident fact. There is, in short, anunfortunatetaken-for-grantedness hat bedevils much of this scholarship, result-ing from an uncritical reproduction of hegemonic common sense. In the best ofcases (e-g.,Bach 1978; Burawoy 1976; Cdavita 1982; Cockcroft 1986; Coutin1996,2000; Kearney 1996, 1998; Portes 1978; Tienda 1989; Zolberg 19901, theexplanatory power of the work is dulled, and its cr it ical potential is inhibited; inthe worst scholars naturalize he category of "illegality."The tenuous distinction between "legal" and "illegai" migration, which hasbecome increasingly salient throughout the world, was deployed to stigmatize


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MIGRANT "ILLEGALITY AND DEPORTABILITY 433and regulate mainly Mexican migrant workers in the United States for much of thetwentieth century.Indeed, the Annual Reports of theU.S. mmigrationandNatural-ization Service (INS) long divided statistics for their apprehensionsof "deportablealiens" into tw o discrete categories-Mexicans and All Others. In 1973, for in-stance, the INS reported thatMexicans literally comprised 99%of all apprehended"deportable aliens" who had entered surreptitiously (Cardenas 1975, p. 86). Se-lective enforcement of the aw--coordinated with seasonal abor demand by U.S.employers (as well as the occasional exigencies of electoral politics+has longmaintainedarevolvingdoorpolicy,whereby massdeportationsareconcurrentwithan overall, large-scale, more or less permanent importation of Mexican migrantlabor (Cockroft 1986). One of the consequences of this history of selective borderenforcement is that the sociopoliticalcategory "illegal alien" itself-inseparablehorn a distinct "problem"or "crisis"of governanceand sovereignty-has come tobe saturated with racializeddifference and indeedhas long served as aconstitutivedimension of the r a c i a l i d inscription of "Mexicans" in the United States (DeGenova 1999, 2003; cf. Ngai 1999, 2003). Although he has rather little to saydirectly about undocumented migration and the socid condition of "illegality,"Vklez-Tb%ez (1996)advances the idea of a "commodity identity" for Mexicans inthe United States-a concept originally articulated specifically for undocumentedMexicanmigrants by Bustamante (1 978). Vklez-Ibfiez suggests importantwaysin which the stigmatizationof undocumented M ex ic an ea s a people reducible tothe disposability of their labor for a price-has become central to the racializa-tion of all MexicanslChicanosand otherLatinos (regardlessof immigrationstatusor even U.S. citizenship). During the Great Depression, this more prainly racistcharacter of Mexican criminalizationbecame notoriously and abundantly mani-fest, culminating in the sy sternatic exclusion of Mexican migrants and Chicano(Mexican American) U.3 . citizens alike from employment and economic relief,followed by the forcible deportation of at least 415,000 Mexicans and Chicanosand the "voluntary" repatriation of 85,000 more (Balderrma & Rodriguez 1995,Guerin-GonzAles 1994, Hoffman 1974). People were expelled with no regard totheir status as legal residents or U.S. citizens by birth-imply for being "Mexi-cans."The conjunctures ofmigrant"illegality,"nativism, and racialization shouldbecome increasinglyprominentin future research (cf. Balibar 1991a,b,c,d;Bosniak1996,1997;Chavez 2001;De Genova & Ramos-Zayas 2003; Carter 1997;Perea1997;Pred 2000; Sanchez 1999; Vila 2000).Though Mexican migrants are very commonly he implied if not overt focusof mass-mediated,journalistic, as well as scholarly discu ssions of "illegalaliens"(Chavez 2001, Garcia 1980, Johnson 19971, the genesis of their condition of "il-legality" is seldom examined. In my own research, I have sought to interrogatethe history of changes in U.S. immigration law through the specific lens of howthese revisions-especially the imposition, since 1965, of numerical reshctionson"legal"migration from Western Hemisphere countriesAave had a dispropor-tionately deleterious impact on Mexican migrants (De Genova 1999, 2003). Inher historical research, Ngai (1999, 2003) makes an analogousargument for theperiod beginning in the second half of the 1920s, on the basis of substantially


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434 DEGENOVA

differentmodes of migrant inclusion andexclusion.It is crucial to explorehow theU.S. nation-state came to deploy a variety of different tactics at distinct historicalmoments, o systematically recreate "illegality" n ways that have ever more thor-oughly constrained and circumscribed the social predicaments of undocumentedmigrants.Mexican scholars of Mexican migration to the United States (publishing pri-marily in Spanish, but also, to a limited extent, in English; e.g., Bustarnante 1972,1976, 1978) have tended to be much more inclined to approach the topic in termsof the structural featuresof U.S. capitalism and labor demand and to engagein thekinds of analyses that cast a critical light on "iIlegaiization."Many U.S. scholars(including some Chicanos), however, when not preoccupied with policy-drivenquestions, more typically have tended to approach the subject through the hege-monic sociological rubric of "settlement"and"assimilation" fcf.De Genova 1999,pp. 19-104; n.d.1. (On his score, arguing for Mexican migration as a temporarynational economic development opportunity, Gamio 1971 [1930], as a student ofBoas and a founder of Mexican Anthropology, is the most prominent exceptionamong Mexican researchers.) Beginning with the very earliest efforts of anthro-pologistsand sociologists to produce socia l scienceaccountsof Mexicanmigrantsin the United States, the literature has been distinguished by a strikingly dis-proportionate, seemingly compulsive obsession with "the transition . from animmigration of temporary laborers to oneof settlers"(Clark 1974 [1908],p. 520).In 1911, the Dillingham U.S.mmigration Commission produced its ow n assess-ment: 4LBecausef their [Mexicans'] strong attachment to their native land, lowintelligence, illiteracy, migratory life, and the possibility of their residence herebeing discontinued, few become citizens of the United States" (quoted in Weber1982, . 24).And further:"While they are not easily assimilated, this is of no verygreat importance as long asmost of them return to their native land. In the case ofthe Mexican, he is less desirable as a citizen than as a laborer" (quotedin Calavita1992, . 180;cf. Reisler 1976a, 1996 [1976b]).In a significant sense, the themes that revolve arounddiscerningwhether ornotMexican migrants to the United States can or will "assimilate," and the variety ofways that this question has been elaborated through the "sojourner'-"settler"binary, have remained quite ubiquitous ever since (e-g., Gamio 197 1 [1930];Bogardus 1970 [1934]; Chavez 1988, 1991, 1992a,b, 1944; Cornelius 1992;Durand & Massey 1992; Hondagneu-Sotelo 1994; Massey 1987; Massey et al.1987; Massey & Liang 1989;Portes & Bach 1985; Smith 1996; Suhz-Orozco1998; Rouse 1992;Villar 1990).In his ethnographicmonograph,Shadowed Lives:Undocumented Immigrants in American Sociery, Chavez (1992a) explicitly coun-terposes the analytic categories "migrants"(as "sojourners") and "settlers,"as heexplains that he "concludedthat the important story to be told is that of the transi-tionpeople undergo as they leave the migrant life and instead settle in the UnitedStates"(1992a, p. 4;cf. 1991,Chavezet al. 1989). Chavez then proceeds to invokean anthropological analogy-the rite of passage-as the organizing theoreticalmetaphor through which he characterizes the process of migrant"settlement":


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436 DEGENOVACoutin Br Chock 1995; Gonzalez & Fernandez 1979; Hondagneu-Sotelo 1994;Kearney 1986; Rouse 1992; cf. Burawoy 1976; Kearney 1991,1996,1998;Ortiz,thisvolume).What has been insufficientlyexplored ishow hehistorical productionof the racialized figure of "the Mexican," as male "sojourner,"has been renderedsynonymous with migrant"illegality."This linkage has becomemore readily visi-ble with the increasing equationof undocumentedmigrant womenwith permanentmigrant (family) settlement (Chock 1995, 1996; Coutin & Chock 1995; Roberts1997;cf. Lawe 1996,pp. 15940). Chock poignantly identifies the pervasive pre-sumption that "a natural relationship between babies and mothers [blurs] lines ofrights and responsibilities mapped by the state between two categories of people(citizen and alien)," such that "women's fertility [multiplies] the risk to the nation"(Chock 1995,p. 173).

THE BORDER SPECTACLEUndocumented migration, andMexicanmigration inparticular, has been renderedsynonymous with the U.S. nation-state's purported "loss of control"of its bordersand has supplied the pretext for what has in fact been a continuous intensifica-tion of militarized control on he U.S.-Mexico border (Dunn 1996,Jimknez 1992;cf.Andreas1998;Heyman 1991,1999;Kearney 1991,1998). Overstayinga v i s athe rather discrete act by which very significant numbers of people become un-documented migrants--is, after dl,not terribly dramatic. Hence , it is precisely"theBorder" that provides the exemplary theater for staging the spectacle of "theillegal alien" that the law produces. The elusiveness of the law, and its relativeinvisibility in producing "illegality," requires the spectacle of "enforcement" atthe U.S.-Mexicoborder that renders a racialixd migrant "illegaiity" visible andlends it the commonsensical air of a "natural" fact.There is a patternofpolicing that is critical foi the perpetuation of the "revolv-ing door" policy: the great majority of INS apprehensions of "deportablealiens"consist of thosewho have just surreptitiouslycrossed the Mexican border, and thishas increasingly been the case. These enforcement proclivities and perogatives,and the statistics they produce, have made an extraordinary contribution to thecommonplace fallacy that Mexicans account for virtually all "illegal aliens," haveserved to restage the U.S.-Mexicoborder as the theater of anenforcement"crisis,"and have rendered "Mexican"the distinctive nationa&acialized name for migrant"illegality. Heyman 1 995)describes what he calls"the voluntary-departure com-plex,"whereby "deportable aliens"apprehended at the U.S -Mexicoborder (whoare, predictably, overwhelmingly Mexican) "are permitted (indeed, encouraged)to waive their rights to a deportation hearingand return to Mexico without lengthydetention,expensive bonding, nd trial," and hen, upon releaseinMexico near theborder, "they can and do repeat their attempts to evade border enforcement untilthey finally succeed nentering"(1995,pp. 26-71. Heyman thus establishesthatthe U.S. tate maximizes arrests and enhances the mass-mediated impression of"border control," while actually negating the efficacy of those apprehensions and


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MIGRANT "ILLEGALITY"AND DEPORTABILiTY 437

facilitating undocumented abormigration.Indeed, undocumentedborder-crossinghas become a staple for journalistic "participant-observation"; see, e.g.,Conover1987;Decker 1994;Dwyer 1994.The operation of the "revolving door" at the U.S.-Mexico border couples anincreasinglymilitarized spectacle of apprehensions, detentions, anddeportations,with the banality of a continuous importation of undocumented migrant labor(Cockcroft 1986).Indeed,Mexican as well asCentralAmericanmigrants' border-crossingnarrativesquite ofien relate experiencesof tremendous hardship that arecommonlyjuxtaposed with accountsof easy passage (Chavez 1992a;Davis 1990;De Genova 1999, 2003; Kearney 1991; Marttnez 1994; e.g., Guillkn 2001, Hart1997,Perez 1991) . These samenarrativesarecommonlypunctuated with accountsof life in the United States that are distinguished by arduous travail and abun-dant exploitation@eGenova 1999,2003;Kearney 1991;Mahler 1995; Martinez1994). The legal production of Mexican (and also Central American) migrant "il-legality"requires the spectacle of enforcement at the US.-Mexico border for thespatialized differencebetween the nation-states of the United States and Mexico(and effectively, a l l of Latin America) to be socially inscribed upon the migrantsthemselves--embodied in the spatialized(and racialized) status of "illegal alien."The vectors of race and space,therefore, areboth crucial in the constitution of theclass specificity of Mexican abor migration (DeGenova 1999,2003).The "illegality"effect of protracted and enduring vulnerability has to be recre-ated more oftenthan on the occasionsof crossingthe border. Indeed, the 1986U.S.legislation,for instance,which institutedfor the first time federal sanctionsagainstemployers who knowingly hired undocumented workers,was tantamount to anextensionof the "revolving door"to the internal labor market of each workplacewhere undocumentedmigrants were employed.By establishingan affirmatived efense for all employers who could demonstrate that they had complied with theverification p r o c e d ~ i m p l y y having filled out and kept on file a routine 1-9form attestingto the documentcheck, withoutany requirement that they determinethe legitimacyof documents presented in that verificationprocess-the legislationinsulated employers from any penalty. What this meant in practice was that theemployer sanction provisions generated a flourishing industq in fraudulentdocu-ments,which merely imposedfurtherexpenses andgreaterlegal liabilitiesuponthemigrant workers themselves, while supplying protection for employers (Chavez1992a, pp. 169-71; Cintron 1997, pp. 5 l a , Coutin 2000, pp. 49-77; Mahler1995, pp. 159-87; f. U.S.Department of Labor 1991, p. 124). It also required aheighteningof INS raidsonworkplaces. Given that inspectors are required to giveemployers a three-day warning prior to inspections of hiring records, to make t"pragmaticallyeasy" for employers to comply with the letterof the law (Calavita1992,p. 1691,and that, in order to avoid finesassociated with infractions, employ-ers typically fire or temporarily discharge workers known to be undocumentedprior to a raid--these provisions have primarily served o introducegreaterinsta-bility into thelabor-market experiencesof undocumentedmigrantsand to institutean internal "revolvingdoor."What areputatively "employersanctions," then, have


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438 DEGENOVAactually functioned to aggravatethe migrants' conditionof vulnerability and haveimposed new penalties upon the undocumented workers themselves (cf. Sassen&Smith 1992).

The "illegalities"of everyday life are often, literally, instantiated by the lackof various forms of state-issued documentation that sanction one's place withinor outside the strictures of the law (Cintron 1997, Coutin 2000, Hagan 1994,Mahler 1995). The policing of public spaces outside of the workplace, more-over, serves to discipline undocumented migrants by surveilling their "illegal-ity" and exacerbating their sense of ever-present vulnerability (Chavez 1992a;Coutin 2000; e Genova 1999,2003;Heyman 1998b;Mahler 1995;Rouse 1992).The lack of a driver's license, for instance, is typically presumed by police inmost states in the U.S. to automatically indicate a migrant's more generally un-documented condition (D e Genova 1999, 2003; cf. Mahler 1995, pp. 146-471.'Such forms of everyday "illegality" are responsible for many undocumented mi-grants' encounterswith everyday forms of surveillance and repression. But thereare also those "illegalities" that more generally pertain to the heightened policingdirected at the bodies, movements, and spaces of the poor-especially those spa-tialized as "foreigners"in the United States, Europe, Canada, and Australia andthose racial& as not-white in particular (cf.Balibar 1991a,c,d; Calavita 1998;Carter 1997;Haney Lhpez 1996; Lowe 19%; Paul 1997; Pred 2000; Satzewich1991; Saxton 197 1) . Subjection to quotidian forms of intimidation and harass-ment reinforces undocumented migrants' vulnerability as a highly exploitableworkforce.Yet the disciplinazy operation of an apparatus for the everyday production ofmigrant "illegality" s never simply intended to achieve the putative god of depor-tation. It is deportability, and not deportation per se, that has historically renderedundocumented migrant labor a distinctly disposable commodity.There has neverbeen sufficientfunding for the INS to evacuate the United States of undocumentedmigrants by means of deportations,noreven forthe BorderPatrol to"hold the line."The INS is neither equipped nor intended to actually keep the undocumented out.The very existenceof the enforcementbranchesof the INS (and the Border Patrol,in particular) is premised upon the continued presence of migrants whose un-documented legal status has long been equated with the disposable (deportable),ultimately "temporary"character of the commodity that is their labor-power. h-deed, although the Border Patrol has, since its inception, defined unauthorizedentry as "a continuous offense [that] is not completed . until the alien reacheshis interior destination," and so defined its jurisdiction as effectively the entireinterior (Ngai 2003), INS enforcement efforts have disproportionately targetedthe U.S.-Mexicoborder, sustaining a zone of relatively high tolerance within theinterior (Chavez 1992a, Delgado 1993).The true social role of INS enforcement'Thereareonly four states in he UnitedStates that issuedriver's licenses toanystateresidentwho can pass the driving test, regardless of their legal status; they are North Carolina,Tennessee,Utah, andVirginia (NewYork Times,4 August 2001).


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(and the Border Patrol) is in maintaining the operationof the border as a "revolv-ing door" (Cockcroft 19861, simultaneously implicated in importation as much asdeportation (Calavita 19921,and sustaining the border's viability as a filter for theunequal transfer of value (Keamey 1998).Migrant "illegality" is lived through a palpable sense of deportability, whichis to say, the possibility of deportation, the possibility of being removed fromthe space of the nation-state.There are some significant analogies between mi-grant deportability and the threat of deportation confronted by denationalizedcitizens [as, for example, with European Jews and Gypsies under Nazi Gemany(Agamben 1998, pp. 126-35,16&80), orwomenwho were U.S. citizens by birthbut denationalized for having married noncitizenmen (Bredbenner 1998), or po-litical dissidents under McCarthy-era legislation that still remains in effect in theUnited States (e.g., Randall 1987; cf. Nathan 1991,pp. 9&108)], bu t my focushere is the specificity of migrant deportability. What makes deportability so de-cisive in the legal production of migrant "illegality" and the militarized policingof nation-state borders is that some are deported in order that most may remain(un-deported)-as workers, whose particularmigrant statusmay thus be rendered"illegal." Therefore, migrant "illegality" is a spatialized social condition that isfrequently central to the particular ways that migrants are r a c i a l i d as "illegalaliens" within nation-state spaces, as for example when "Mexicans" are racializedin relation to "Amer-icanW-nessn theUnited States(DeGenova 1998,1999,2003).Moreover, the spatialized conditionof "illegality" reproduces the physicalbordersof nation-states in the everyday life of innumerable places throughout the interi-ors of the migrant-receiving states. Thus, he legal production of "illegality" as adistinctly spatialized and typically racialized social condition for undocumentedmigrants p rovides an apparatus for sustaining their vulnerability and tractabilityas workers.

CONCLUSIONThere is nothing matter-of-fact about the "illegality" of undocumented migrants.As Calavita has argued with respect to immigration law in Spain, "There maybe no smoking gun, but there is nonetheless a lot of smoke in the air" (1998,p. 557). "IllegaIity" is the product of immigration laws-not merely in the abstractsense that without the law, nothing could be construed to be outside of the law;nor simply in the generic sense that immigration law constructs, differentiates,and ranks various categories of "aliens"-but in the more profound sense that thehistory of deliberate interventions that have revised and reformulated the law hasentailed an active process of inclusion through "illegalization."Undocumentedmigrant labor has been criminalizedas "illegal" and subjectedto excessive and extraordinary forms of policing. The undocumented have beendenied fundamental human rights and many udimentary social entitlements, con-signed to an uncertain sociopolitical predicament, often with little or no recourseto any semblance of protection from the law. The category "illegal alien" is a


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440 DEGENOVAprofoundly useful and profitable one that effectively serves to create and sustain alegally vulnerable-and hence, relatively tractable and thus "cheap"-reserve oflabor. That proposition is quite old; indeed, it is so well established and well doc-umented as to be irrefutable (cf.,for example, Burawoy 1976;Bustarnante 1972,1976, 1978; Calavita 1990, 1992; Castells 1975; Cockcroft 1986;Delgado 1993;Galarza 1964;Gamio 197 1 [1930]; Gledhill 1998; Grasmuck 1984; Hondagneu-Sotelo2001 Jenkins 1978; Kearney 1996; Kwong 1997;McWilliarns 1949;Piore1979;Rouse 1995a; Samora 1971; Sassen 1988; Smith 1998;Taylor 1932). A cen-tral contention of this review has been that, in and of itself, this important criticalinsight into the consequences of migrant "illegality" is insufficient insofar as itsorigin may be left unexarnined and thus naturalized.We must go further and ex-amine the fundamental origin of the status "illegal"(and its attendant sociospatialcondition of deportability) in the law itself-what I call the legal production ofmigrant "illegality."

ACKNOWLEDGMENTSThe authorwould like to express his gratitude and appreciation for the resourceful-ness and meticulous attention of Ryan Chaney and Ashley Greene, whose energyand diligence as graduate student research assistantswere invaluablein the prepa-ration of this review.TheAnnual R s v k w ofAnthropology is online at http:l/anthm.annualreviews.org

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