Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-g7gxr Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-06T01:20:25.215Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Temporary Protection, Enduring Contradiction: The Contested and Contradictory Meanings of Temporary Immigration Status

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 December 2018

Abstract

In the construction of immigration status categories in law and social practice, the power of the nation‐state to define migrants’ status is pervasive but far from absolute. In this article, I examine the conditioned legality known as Temporary Protected Status (TPS) in US immigration law through a discussion of legal structures, historical frames, local discourses, and Salvadoran migrants’ lived experiences with liminal legality in rural Arkansas in the first decade of the twenty‐first century. I argue that migration policy, though fraught with ambiguity and contradiction (see Coutin 2007; Coutin and Yngvesson 2008), functions both to reproduce and to mask the benefits to the nation‐state from the ambiguous inclusion and simultaneous exclusion of migrant workers. In spite of the efficacious ways immigration policies discipline and constrain, within these limits migrants, legal practitioners, and others respond as critical agents to the policy structures shaping their lives.

Type
Articles
Copyright
Copyright © American Bar Foundation, 2014 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

References

Agamben, Giorgio. 2005. State of Exception. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Bailey, Adrian J., Wright, Richard A., Mountz, Alison, and Miyares, Ines M. 2002. (Re)Producing Salvadoran Transnational Geographies. Annals of the Association of American Geographers 92 (1): 125144.Google Scholar
Bruno, Andorra. 2012. Immigration of Temporary Lower‐Skilled Workers: Current Policy and Issues. Washington, DC: Congressional Research Service.Google Scholar
Cacho, Lisa Marie. 2012. Social Death: Racialized Rightlessness and the Criminalization of the Unprotected. New York: New York University Press.Google Scholar
Calavita, Kitty. 1998. Immigration, Law, and Marginalization in a Global Economy: Notes from Spain. Law and Society Review 32 (3): 529566.Google Scholar
Calavita, Kitty. 2005. Immigrants at the Margins: Law, Race, and Exclusion in Southern Europe. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Capps, Randolph, Henderson, Everett, Kasarda, John D., Johnson, James H. Jr., Appold, Stephen J., Croney, Derrek L., Hernandez, Donald J., and Fix, Michael E. 2007. A Profile of Immigrants in Arkansas. Washington, DC: Urban Institute.Google Scholar
Capps, Randolph, McCabe, Kristen, Fix, Michael, and Huang, Ying 2013. A Profile of Immigrants in Arkansas: Changing Workforce and Family Demographics, Volume 1. Little Rock, AR: Winthrop Rockefeller Foundation and Migration Policy Institute.Google Scholar
Coutin, Susan Bibler. 1998. From Refugees to Immigrants: The Legalization Strategies of Salvadoran Immigrants and Activists. International Migration Review 32 (4): 901925.Google Scholar
Coutin, Susan Bibler. 2000. Legalizing Moves: Salvadoran Immigrants’ Struggle for US Residency. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press.Google Scholar
Coutin, Susan Bibler. 2007. Nations of Emigrants: Shifting Boundaries of Citizenship in El Salvador and the United States. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.Google Scholar
Coutin, Susan Bibler. 2011. Falling Outside: Excavating the History of Central American Asylum Seekers. Law & Social Inquiry 36 (3): 569596.Google Scholar
Coutin, Susan, and Yngvesson, Barbara 2008. Technologies of Knowledge Production: Law, Ethnography, and the Limits of Explanation. PoLAR: Political and Legal Anthropology Review 31 (1): 17.Google Scholar
De Genova, Nicholas P. 2002. Migrant “Illegality” and Deportability in Everyday Life. Annual Review of Anthropology 31:419447.Google Scholar
De Genova, Nicholas P. 2005. Working the Boundaries: Race, Space, and “Illegality” in Mexican Chicago. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.Google Scholar
Dery, David 1998. “Papereality” and Learning in Bureaucratic Organizations. Administration and Society 29 (6): 677689.Google Scholar
González, Juan. 2000. Harvest of Empire: A History of Latinos in America. New York: Viking.Google Scholar
Hamilton, Nora, and Stoltz Chinchilla, Norma 2001. Seeking Community in a Global City: Guatemalans and Salvadorans in Los Angeles. Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press.Google Scholar
Haney López, Ian. 1996. White by Law: The Legal Construction of Race. New York: New York University Press.Google Scholar
Kapoor, Ilan. 2008. The Postcolonial Politics of Development. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Kretsedemas, Phillip. 2009. Immigration Enforcement and the Complication of National Sovereignty: Understanding Local Enforcement as an Exercise in Neoliberal Governance. In Nation and Migration Past and Future, ed. Gutierrez, David G. and Hondagneu‐Sotelo, Pierrette, 5171. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press.Google Scholar
Lakhani, Sarah. 2014. From Problems of Living to Problems of Law: The Legal Translation and Documentation of Immigrant Abuse. Law & Social Inquiry 39 (3): 643665.Google Scholar
Le Espiritu, Yen. 2000. Asian American Men and Women. Walnut Creek, CA: Altamira Press.Google Scholar
Mahler, Sarah. 1995. Salvadorans in Suburbia: Symbiosis and Conflict. Boston, MA: Allyn & Bacon.Google Scholar
Márquez, John. 2010. Nations Re‐Bound: Race and Necropolitics at the US and EU Borders. Paper presented at the Annual Law and Society Association Annual Meeting, May 27–30, in Chicago, IL.Google Scholar
Marrow, Helen. 2011. New Destination Dreaming: Immigration, Race, and Legal Status in the American South. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.Google Scholar
Massey, Douglas S. 2008a. Categorically Unequal: The American Stratification System. New York: Russell Sage Foundation.Google Scholar
Massey, Douglas S., ed. 2008b. New Faces in New Places: The Changing Geography of American Immigration. New York: Russell Sage Foundation.Google Scholar
Massey, Douglas S., and Bartley, Katherine 2005. The Changing Legal Status Distribution of Immigrants: A Caution. International Migration Review 39 (2): 469484.Google Scholar
Massey, Douglas S., Durand, Jorge, and Malone, Nolan J. 2002. Beyond Smoke and Mirrors: Mexican Immigration in an Era of Economic Integration. New York: Russell Sage Foundation.Google Scholar
Menjívar, Cecilia. 2006. Liminal Legality: Salvadoran and Guatemalan Immigrants’ Lives in the United States. American Journal of Sociology 111 (4): 9991037.Google Scholar
Menjívar, Cecilia, and Ábrego, Leisy 2012. Legal Violence: Immigration Law and the Lives of Central American Immigrants. American Journal of Sociology 117 (5): 13801421.Google Scholar
Miyares, Ines M., Wright, Richard, Mountz, Alison, Bailey, Adrian J., and Jonak, Jennifer 2003. The Interrupted Circle: Truncated Transnationalism and the Salvadoran Experience. Journal of Latin American Geography 2 (1): 7486.Google Scholar
Mize, Ronald L., and Swords, Alicia 2010. Consuming Mexican Labor: From the Bracero Program to NAFTA. Toronto, ON: University of Toronto Press.Google Scholar
Motomura, Hiroshi. 2008. Immigration Outside the Law. Columbia Law Review 108 (8): 20372097.Google Scholar
Mountz, A., Wright, R., Miyares, I., and Bailey, A. J. 2002. Lives in Limbo: Temporary Protected Status and Immigrant Identities. Global Networks 2:335356.Google Scholar
Ngai, Mae M. 2005. Impossible Subjects: Illegal Aliens and the Making of Modern America. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Ong, Aihwa. 1999. Flexible Citizenship. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.Google Scholar
Ong, Aihwa. 2006. Neoliberalism as Exception. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.Google Scholar
Paret, Marcel. Forthcoming. Legality and Exploitation: Immigration Enforcement and the US Migrant Labor System. Latino Studies 12 (4).Google Scholar
Sadowski‐Smith, Claudia. 2009. Unskilled Labor Migration and the Illegality Spiral: Chinese, European, and Mexican Indocumentados in the United States, 1882–2007. In Nation and Migration Past and Future, ed. Gutierrez, David G. and Hondagneu‐Sotelo, Pierrette, 277302. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press.Google Scholar
Striffler, Steve. 2005. Chicken: The Dangerous Transformation of America's Favorite Food. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
Wasem, Ruth Ellen, and Ester, Karma 2011. Temporary Protected Status: Current Immigration Policy and Issues: CRS Report for Congress. Washington, DC: Congressional Research Service.Google Scholar

Statutes Cited

Nicaraguan Adjustment and Central American Relief Act, 8 U.S.C. §§ 201–203 (1997).Google Scholar
Temporary Protection Status, 8 U.S.C. § 1254a (1990).Google Scholar