Strangers at home: deportation, criminal aliens, and concepts of justice in the United States
| dc.contributor.author | Cobb, Tracey B. | |
| dc.contributor.supervisor | Xu, Feng | |
| dc.date.accessioned | 2021-08-17T19:56:03Z | |
| dc.date.available | 2021-08-17T19:56:03Z | |
| dc.date.copyright | 2021 | en_US |
| dc.date.issued | 2021-08-17 | |
| dc.degree.department | Department of Political Science | |
| dc.degree.level | Master of Arts M.A. | en_US |
| dc.description.abstract | The passage of the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act (AEDPA) and the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act (IIRIRA), in 1996 marked an abrupt and devastating turning point in the long history of US deportation regime, turning deportation into a massive machine that has shattered the lives of thousands of deportees and their families, and wreaked havoc on immigrant communities. My thesis argues that contemporary deportation policy in the United States is the result of a centuries’ old conflict between the country’s self-presented image as a land of immigrants and its history of nativist, anti-immigrant state policies and practices, a tension that continues today. I situate this conflict in the history of US deportation law since the colonial period. I then analyze the discourse surrounding the passage of the 1996 laws and find that although the harsh laws were purported to be needed for protecting the internal security of the United States, in reality, lawmakers capitalized on Americans’ fear of crime and long-simmering anxiety over immigration in order to win political points at the expense of immigrants. Through a case study of Cambodian refugees, I show how the US deportation regime has become another step in the cycle of displacement that many Cambodian refugees have suffered since the involvement of the US in Southeast Asia in the 1970s. I conclude that US deportation policy of criminal aliens causes more harm than good and is ripe for reform under a new, more sympathetic political climate. Empirical data for the thesis come from secondary literature, documentary analysis, data analysis and legal research. | en_US |
| dc.description.scholarlevel | Graduate | en_US |
| dc.identifier.uri | http://hdl.handle.net/1828/13259 | |
| dc.language | English | eng |
| dc.language.iso | en | en_US |
| dc.rights | Available to the World Wide Web | en_US |
| dc.subject | immigration | en_US |
| dc.subject | deportation | en_US |
| dc.subject | United States | en_US |
| dc.subject | refugee | en_US |
| dc.subject | international law | en_US |
| dc.subject | removal | en_US |
| dc.subject | AEDPA | en_US |
| dc.subject | Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act | en_US |
| dc.subject | IIRIRA | en_US |
| dc.subject | Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act | en_US |
| dc.subject | criminal alien | en_US |
| dc.subject | crimmigration | en_US |
| dc.title | Strangers at home: deportation, criminal aliens, and concepts of justice in the United States | en_US |
| dc.type | Thesis | en_US |