Publications [#291290] of Matthew S. Whitt

Chapters in Books

1. MS Whitt. "Sovereignty, community, and the incarceration of immigrants." Death and Other Penalties: Rethinking Prisons and Capital Punishment (Forthcoming 2015): 174-192.
   (last updated on 2016/06/16)

   Abstract:
   Examining the recent punitive turn in U.S. immigration control, this chapter argues that the United States criminalizes undocumented immigrants in order to exercise a fundamental prerogative of state sovereignty—the ability to reconstitute the political community by differentiating members from non-members. Demographically, the U.S. differentiates members from non-members by incarcerating and deporting immigrants whose very presence is deemed illegal. Ideologically, U.S. law and policy contrast the figure of the ‘criminal alien’ to that of the presumptively law-abiding citizen. In opposition to those who purportedly ‘have not earned’ their place in the community, the citizen is presented as a morally virtuous individual who ‘deserves’ the benefits of permanent residence and full membership. This form of ideological differentiation, even more than geographic separation, is crucial to the persistence of sovereignty in a globalizing era.