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Despite public concern over immigration enforcement, little attention has been given to transgender immigrants, who are disproportionately at risk for arrest and deportation. Organizations dedicated to protecting LGBT people’s rights and immigrant rights have been working to address this issue and shape policy decisions to better protect transgender immigrants in detention centers; however, research has not investigated how these organizations frame transgender immigrant detainees and their experience in detention to accomplish their goals. This current study uses a content analysis of public documents spanning 2009–2021 from the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and the Transgender Law Center (TLC) to investigate how two legal advocacy organizations frame the issue of transgender immigrants within detention centers. The ACLU rarely discusses transgender immigrants and thus upholds cisnormativity. When they do discuss transgender immigrants, their transgender identity is referenced as a singular issue in isolation from other facets of their identity. The TLC, on the other hand, frames immigration detention for transgender immigrants as part of a larger web of oppression. Through a comparison of the ACLU and TLC, this study underscores the role of cisnormativity as a tool for racialized social control. Findings highlight the importance of a critical, intersectional approach to immigration advocacy and scholarship that challenges the cisnormative assumptions guiding the current immigration system. Implications for future research and service provision are discussed.
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Apathy and Color-Blindness in Privatized Immigration Control
Despite several widely covered scandals involving the role of for-profit corporations in administering immigration policy, the privatization of immigration control continues apace with the criminalization of immigration. How does this practice sustain its legitimacy among the public amid so much controversy? Recent studies on the criminalization of immigration suggest that supporters would explicitly vilify immigrants to defend the privatization of immigration control. Research on racialized social control, on the other hand, implies that proponents would avoid explicit racism and vilification and instead rely on subtler narratives to validate the practice. Drawing on a qualitative analysis of over 600 frames derived from nearly 200 news media articles spanning over 20 years, we find that journalists and their sources rarely vilify immigrants to justify the privatization of immigration control. Instead, they frame the privatization of immigration detention as a normal component of population management and an integral part of the U.S. economy through what we call the apathy strategy—a pattern of void in which not only the systematic oppression of immigrants is underplayed, immigrant themselves also become invisible.
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- Award ID(s):
- 1850712
- PAR ID:
- 10138865
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Sociology of Race and Ethnicity
- ISSN:
- 2332-6492
- Page Range / eLocation ID:
- 233264921984614
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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- Free Publicly Accessible Full Text
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Accepted Manuscript1.0
- Journal Article:
- https://doi.org/10.1177/2332649219846140
