Paper short abstract:

Based off fieldwork in Atlanta, GA, this paper underscores how immigrant policing efforts constrain undocumented immigrants’ health-related rights in the United States. Informed by theories of citizenship, this paper further highlights how immigrant policing upholds rights-based power hierarchies.

Paper long abstract:

In the United States, immigration policies created at a state level join federal statutes to produce a multilayered immigration enforcement regime targeting undocumented immigrants. When combined with local police practices, increasingly harsh immigration regimes form a type of localized enforcement that moves the social and health-related precariousness of national borders into everyday spaces. Immigrant policing objectives in the US demand research attention as they are efforts to restrict undocumented immigrants' already constrained rights, and further contribute to notions of some immigrant groups as being undeserving of social services.

Drawing from theories of citizenship to examine power relationships and sets of rights and entitlements among specific populations, this paper explores how immigrant policing efforts in Atlanta, GA constrain some immigrants' rights and how those efforts are resisted.

Using data collected from interviews with undocumented immigrants, activists, health providers, and policy makers, I describe how immigrant policing shapes undocumented immigrants' ability to seek and access healthcare and activists' responses to increasingly localized immigration regimes. Data presented in this paper demonstrate how theories of citizenship allow for examining power relationships that shape and determine rights and can further shed light on the lived experiences of populations most impacted by legislative efforts to constrain sets of rights. Furthermore, findings from this paper highlight how policy efforts may be used to maintain social hierarchies based on categories such as race and immigration status. Lastly, this paper emphasizes how rights-based methodologies allow for greater access to hidden, vulnerable, populations.