'Bad Hombres': The Effects of Criminalizing Latino Immigrants through Law and Media in the Rural Midwest Cover Image

'Bad Hombres': The Effects of Criminalizing Latino Immigrants through Law and Media in the Rural Midwest
'Bad Hombres': The Effects of Criminalizing Latino Immigrants through Law and Media in the Rural Midwest

Author(s): Andrea Gómez Cervantes, Daniel Alvord, Cecilia Menjívar
Subject(s): Law, Constitution, Jurisprudence, Media studies, Criminology, Migration Studies
Published by: Transnational Press London
Keywords: immigration policy; Latino/a; Executive Orders; Kansas; Midwest; criminalization; rural communities; media; stereotypes;

Summary/Abstract: In this article we explore the policy and legal build-up that led to the 2017 Executive Orders targeting Latino/a immigrant families and communities. We provide a historical backdrop for the merging of criminal and immigration laws that has contributed to the criminalization of the behaviors, bodies, and communities of Latino/a immigrants. We then look at the media narratives that burry immigrants’ complex identities and reproduce daily the demonization of Latino/as as criminals. Together, these factors contribute to socially construct a “Brown Threat” which reproduces anxieties and fears about crime, terror, and threats to the nation, affecting the everyday lives of immigrants and non-immigrants alike, though in different ways. Based on an 18-month ethnography in a small Kansas town carried out before and after the signing of Executive Orders in 2017, we examine the spill-over effects of this environment on Guatemalan immigrant families as well as on non-immigrant Anglo-white residents in a rural community.

  • Issue Year: 15/2018
  • Issue No: 2
  • Page Range: 182-196
  • Page Count: 15
  • Language: English