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Navigating US Deportation Regime: Reflections on Agency and
Criminalization in the Experience of Ecuadorian Indigenous Migrants.
Gioconda Herrera
FLACSO Ecuador
October 2016
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Ecuadorian Migration to the USA: 2000-2016
50 years of masculine migration. Recent changes:
• From transnational connections to the “restrictive turn”.
• From circular and temporal movments to inmobility
• From men to women and children migration
• From undocumented to “illegal” and deportable.
• From deportability to deportation
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Context
Great Recession (2008):• Financial crisis ; Unemployment in construction sector and
other migrant labor niches such as textiles (outsourcing).
Restrictive migration policies:• Securitization of the border (since 1996) – detention and
removals. • Law reinforcement – detention and deportations.
Impacts on the social organization of migration:• More violence at the Border • Self policing and self control in everyday life.
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Deportation policies in the US: from the construction of illegality to the construction of
criminality
• Massive deportation: more resources, more budget ,more detentions and more facilities (detention centers).
• Selective deportation: “criminals” are deported not “illegals”.
• Racial and gender construction: Latino and black men (90% of deportees).
• Changes in Law increases categories of irregularity. Minor infractions become criminal offenses.
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Literature on Deportation
• Golash Boza: neoliberalism, capitalism and massive deportation.
• De Génova: Legislation, bureaucracies and procedures create more vulnerable workers. Deportability is disciplining workers.
• Boehms: impacts on everyday life (family separations, loss of status, stress)
• Brotherton and Barrios: stigma in countries of origin. New displacements.
Agency and vulnerability of deportation
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The Construction of Deportability
How does illegality emerge in the social organization of migration?
The journey to the North: four to five countries . More contact with transnational crime and detentions. Becoming “Illegal” and making themselves invisible (Mexicans).
Settlements: new neighborhoods, scattered in the city. Weak family networks.
Labor: permanent mobility (roofing, domestic work, nails)
Precarity and temporary jobs, movement from one place to another.
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From Deportability to Deportation
Construction of criminality. Itineraries of detentions from the beginning of migration
• Detentions at the Border
• Detentions while driving
• Fake driving license, alcohol consumption, street violence.
• Accumulation of minor infractions
• Incarceration
• Deportation
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Strategies
• Invisibility and self control : no driving, stay at home, constant mobility.
• Legal paths: gender differences
• New York: more liberal context. Ecuadorian are perceived as hard working and family men.
• Deportation against domestic violence and lack of remmittances
• Minors (teenagers) sent back home for disciplining purposes.
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Conclusions
• Forced transnationalism
• New forms of transnational families that intersect with issues of citizenship and gender. Mixed families.
• Double vulnerability complementing each other: labor and legal.
• Social construction of deportability and deportees.