Navigating US Deportation Regime: Reflections on Agency and

Criminalization in the Experience of Ecuadorian Indigenous Migrants.

Gioconda Herrera

FLACSO Ecuador

October 2016

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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.